Let's Talk About Beacons • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#71

Post by DannyBee » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

ljoshua wrote: post #61

DannyBee wrote: post #44

Beacons. The thing where everyone has some idea of what they want people to see it as useful for (Ads, etc), but don't understand how to jive this from what consumers want from them. At this stage, it still looks like a technology solution in search of a consumer problem (it certainly solves the "how do i push indoor location based ads/etc" problem, but consumers don't care or want that). Watching most of these compa…

What would be some of the better alternatives for doing indoor location? It'd help me a bunch to see a few examples, as I was previously thinking of beacons for this purpose.

You can do a better job of indoor location by using tv signals, than you can with beacons.

(All of the antennas are registered, along with type, propagation, etc, with the FCC, and they produce a large database)

Not that TV signals are great.

But even the bluetooth group itself says not to use beacons:

"According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group,[24] Bluetooth is all about proximity, not about exact location. Bluetooth was not intended to offer a pinned location like GPS, however is known as a geo-fence or micro-fence solution which makes it an indoor proximity solution, not an indoor positioning solution."

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#72

Post by heywire » Tue, Nov 04, 2014, 10:25 PM UTC

Am I the only one who keeps my Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned off unless I am specifically using them? I do this both for security/privacy and battery reasons.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#73

Post by TomGullen » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:26 AM UTC

I think a cool use would be some sort of high tech paintball game. Have objectives to hold with beacons, and a listening device on all players guns. You can earn points by holding certain positions. You could come up with some pretty fun/dynamic scenarios.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#74

Post by ljoshua » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:44 AM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #71

ljoshua wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be some of the better alternatives for doing indoor location? It'd help me a bunch to see a few examples, as I was previously thinking of beacons for this purpose.

You can do a better job of indoor location by using tv signals, than you can with beacons. (All of the antennas are registered, along with type, propagation, etc, with the FCC, and they produce a large database) Not that TV signals are great. But even the bluetooth group itself says not to use beacons: "According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group,[24] Bluetooth is all about proximity, not about exact location.…

Interesting thought. But I can't sample TV signals from a mobile device. I'm looking at applications that can be implemented underground as well, unique use case. And in this case, proximity might be just fine enough rather than positioning.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#75

Post by driverdan » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 2:16 AM UTC

How hard would it be to log all beacon identifiers detected by your phone and then have your phone (or another device) cycle through the list and rebroadcast them continuously? Seems like you could have some fun at large events with that.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#76

Post by wgato » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 2:25 AM UTC

primitivesuave wrote: post #27

Based on several months of experimentation last year when iBeacon dropped, we concluded that Beacons will be more pervasive in personal automation rather than business automation. The author of the post talked about some great business use cases, but in general these expect the user to have the beacon's corresponding app. For any kind of app, the user has to opt-in, so the apps they are most likely to opt into are th…

i use screen for that

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#77

Post by hallman76 » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 2:47 AM UTC

chrisBob wrote: post #45

bennyg wrote: post #15

As an iOS developer who has spent the last 9 months making beacon enabled things for my employer, I personally think beacons are shit. Some of my findings over the last 9 months: - Estimated battery life was estimated very poorly. - Nobody likes things they didn't ask for getting sent to their phone. - Indoor navigation that relies on iBeacons only is going to shoot you in the foot. I recommend www.indoo.rs as the on…

Is there a specific reason for the coin cell batteries? I would be much happier paying the same amount for something that looks like a AA battery and will last a few years.

I got some demo units from these guys[1] that use AA batteries for that very reason.

no affiliation. haven't tested the units yet. [1] http://www.bluecats.com/

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#78

Post by Pxtl » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 3:06 AM UTC

TomGullen wrote: post #73

I think a cool use would be some sort of high tech paintball game. Have objectives to hold with beacons, and a listening device on all players guns. You can earn points by holding certain positions. You could come up with some pretty fun/dynamic scenarios.

Yeah, that was my reaction - AR gaming would be the killer app.

Also, my wife works at a school that allows students to sign out of their classes into other classes. Beacons would be great for this - "student X is not in the room they said they'd be in".

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#79

Post by Pxtl » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 3:11 AM UTC

I'm more impressed that phones can get any positional info from beacons. Determining distance to a radio source is hard with any fidelity - light is pretty fast.

So can phones get decent info about distance to any WiFi/bluetooth source, or is there something about beacons?

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#80

Post by Pxtl » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 3:11 AM UTC

I'm more impressed that phones can get any positional info from beacons. Determining distance to a radio source is hard with any fidelity - light is pretty fast.

So can phones get decent info about distance to any WiFi/bluetooth source, or is there something about beacons?