BLE + Beacon

How BLE communication works?

Peripheral Devices● act like servers

Central Devices● act like clients

Publish & Subscribe● Peripheral publish ● Central subscribe, by reading or

letting peripheral notify when changes happen

BLE: Advertise and Connect

Advertising is one way: peripheral -> centralPackets can be up to 47 bytes

advertising communication channels the access address is always 0x8E89BED6

BLE: Advertise and Connect

After peripheral is discovered, connection can be established

Central can then read or write to peripheral(GATT)

get temp/humidity readingstemp: xhumidity: y

set desired temptemp: x

Beacons only advertise

Transmit packets of data in regular intervals, that gets picked up by devices like smartphones

Data coming from an Estimote beacon:

You can capture such data with PacketLogger(Download in Xcode/more developer tools

iBeacon advertisement format is fixed by AppleData coming from an Estimote beacon:

beacons in a chain of stores: same UUID

beacons in one of the stores:same Major #

in one store, every beacon has a different Minor #

TX power is strength of signal used to estimate distance

Beacon? iBeacon??Every iBeacon is a Beacon.

iBeacon is built into iOS 7 that let devices constantly scan for nearby bluetooth devices.

When iBeacon identifies a beacon, it can wake up an app even if app is closed.

For this to work:● bluetooth need to be on● app using iBeacon needs

to be downloaded● need to accept location

services in the app

Working with iBeacon

Building apps that are responsive to iBeacon:Use Apple’s Core Location API

iBeacon scanning apps:iOS: iB LocatorAndroid: iBeacon Scanner

These can be turned into iBeaconiPhone 4S+, Android 5.0, Bluetooth 4 laptops, Raspberry Pi

Beacon uses outside of marketing

LA parking signsCuseum

Beacon uses outside of marketing

Beacons in SpaceWayfindr