I have a couple of questions concerning BLE beacons:
1) Are beacons based on nRF51822 chip the best solution? Or are there any other chips better than nRF51822? I want to take up BLE beacon development and struggling to find the right hardware for these needs. As a novice developer I want the beacon to be as cheap as possible in order not to waste money in case of a failure.
2) Is it possible to buy pure Eddystone beacon (not iBeacon)? The reason for choosing Eddystone is that Eddystone is capable of broadcasting URLs that are essential for me.
The second question stems from my failed attempts to find a pure Eddystone beacon on Chinese electronics sites like alibaba.com or aliexpress.com where the only firmware available is iBeacon. But iBeacon is not an option because it can't broadcast URL the way Eddystone does.
Apart from the above questions It would be great if someone wrote a quick guide for taking up BLE development with Eddystone and covered basic topics like: chip to use, beacon model, best website to buy beacons at, etc.
Thanks in advance,
Pavel
1) I've worked with Estimote beacons and Chinese beacons from Amazon and in my opinion, they do not differ in terms of accuracy too much. Especially for prototyping, I'd buy cheaper ones to test if your use case can be satisfied with BLE beacons. If it is too inaccurate with Chinese beacons, chances are that it won't work with more expensive ones either.
2) Why do you need the URL broadcast? If the app is going to use the url, it would have to be connected to the internet. Therefore, you can just query the beacon's IDs to a web service to get back an URL and use that. Personally, I think this is a better approach as you can configure the web service from anywhere to change the url for beacons where as if you want to change the URL of the Eddystone, you have to go to the beacon to configure it.
The nRF51822 is a common implementation, is flexible, well understood and can be very inexpensive. Be aware though that development costs, add on circuitry for power and/or peripherals, and packaging can easily eclipse the Bluetooth chip when you get to production cost savings.
If you want to buy an off the shelf beacon, most models supporting Eddystone also support iBeacon, simply because supporting both adds no additional hardware cost. Newer Radius Networks and Estimote beacons all support both. And, yes, cheaper generic Chinese suppliers often have bulk manufactured inventory from before Eddystone existed at only support iBeacon.
Related
I am involved working on new hardware LED products where we are selecting a Bluetooth chipset to use in multiple products controlled by iOS and Android apps, for at minimum the next 3-4 years. Also I am not the developer, a third party will be contracted for this project.
As part of background research, I wanted to ask for feedback from Stack Overflow communities' experience with programming for Bluetooth, more specifically with custom firmware and GPIO PWM for LED?
What kind of challenges did you come across?
Are there any granular details or features to look out for with the hardware?
**Edit: based on first answer-
Requirements:
BLE 5
I do need OTA update capability
Chip size not big constraint, plastic enclosure can accommodate up to 1 inch/25mm or bit more easily.
Not high temp application
Single-chip solution, that will be programmed with our firmware, controlling 4x PWM Channels is ideal for our LED strips, avoiding separate MCU
Cost per unit (lowest average cost/unit)- important factor at volume, TBD
**Qualities I can not gauge well myself, being a designer and not an experienced programmer:
Ease of integration/support (lowest cost of development)
Quality of the chip manufacturer's software tools
Quality of the chips documentation
I have found some questions related with Raspberry Pi that seem generally helpful, but those questions don't help me with features or the support and documentation as related to BT SOCs.
**Edit: Yes I we are only considering BLE, and the NORDIC Semiconductor link I have included below are BLE and BT 5.
NORDIC chips are on my short list, they seem well supported and capable of 3x or 4x PWM channels for example nRF52832 Nordic nRF52832 Spec info. or the newer model RF5340. Does anyone have experience with them?
I really appreciate any answers regarding development considerations with Bluetooth.
I will edit & clarify if needed.
If you wish to support iOS Apps, a BLE device is necessary, BT classic requires a special apple license (for your product) to be able to connect with iOS Apps.
But other than that, your specifications dont really help to rule out ANY chip.
The first question that comes to mind is what other features do you
have already on your specification list that could be satisfied with
a common solution. I.e. if you also need WiFi, don't choose two
separate BLE/WiFi Chips, buy a chip that can do both (it's both
2.4GHz RF). If you need OTA updates for your firmware, choose a chip manufacturer with extensive and well documented tooling.
Consider special requirements:
Do you need a very small chip?
Does it need to be run at high temperatures (i.e. inside a light bulb)?
Do you need to run at ultra-low-power?
Does it need a high performance RF transceiver?
Decide whether you need a single-chip solution, that will be programmed with your firmware, or if your firmware will run on a dedicated microcontroller which is connected to the BLE chip.
Unless you have absolutely no special requirements to narrow down the selection, I'd base my decision along these criteria (not ordered):
Ease of integration (lowest cost of development)
Cost per unit (lowest average cost/unit)
Quality of the chip manufacturer's software tools
Quality of the chips documentation
GPIO-PWM Output should be possible with almost any programmable BLE chip.
I am trying to build a system with a raspberry pi that allows clients access into a building depending on their membership status. Right now, it uses QR codes, but I want to know if it is possible to add a feature where it uses some technology like NFC or RFID or Bluetooth to detect their phone or RFID card from at least a foot away and confirm they have a membership.
Someone told me I could use RFID, but I am only aware of that being used in short-distance applications, like a card on a hotel door. I am not sure about Bluetooth either, because the phone would have to connect to the pi first, right? Maybe there is something I don't know about. So please offer any suggestions. Thanks
I think bluetooth does good work for tracking user. Since it's the best to handle large distances than NFC and RFID these two technologies are used for low range scenarios, check this link.
In addition, you can check distance(using Proximity and RSSI) and membership status as well. but you need to know how to handle bluetooth connectivity with raspberry pi check this link. as well create an app on that mobile phone to use Bluetooth (depending which OS you're using for Android, iOS).
Regards,
Is it possible to program a BT beacon to advertise a sequence of different Eddystone-URL/UID's in sequence? I imagine I could from something like a Raspberry Pi3 with a BT adapter, but I was wondering about something like an actual beacon.
Yes, this is possible. This technique is called "interleaving", and it is possible to do with both software beacons and hardware beacons.
Eddystone actually relies on this technique in order to match its multiple frames. When a receiver sees an Eddystone-TLM frame coming from the same device as Eddystone-URL or Eddystone-UID, it knows that the telemetry is for that beacon frame.
Using the same technique, it is possible to send out multiple URL or UID frames from the same device using different identifiers for each frame. Some commercial manufacturers such as Radius Networks support doing this in some of their products.
I dont think so. Im pretty sure you would need to have some smart device nearby that is running a program that is periodically changing the UIDs. The micro-controllers that power these beacons are pretty bare bones and are really optimized for transmitting bluetooth signals.
Here's how to do it.
EddyStone supports four types of payloads/frame-formats i.e, UID, URL, TLM, and EID.
Eddystone UID/EID are the frame-formats to use for this purpose.
As far as using the 'NordicSemiconductor NRF line' of beacons just make sure that these are fully Eddystone compliant i.e, support the EID frame-format.
Freely available Google Beacon Cloud platform is great for trying this out (called 'registering and provisioning your beacon').
It can be implemented w/o building or requiring any custom app at the client end.
On the client-side.
Use 'Google Nearby Notifications' & 'Google Nearby Messages'
On the server/cloud-side.
Google Proximity API for 'registering and provisioning your beacon'
Use 'Google Nearby Messages' API
Good luck with your project .
I have a bunch of generic beacons from China that I'd like to upgrade to Eddystone. How do I go about doing this?
Some beacon hardware vendors like Estimote and Kontakt.io now support Eddystone™ too. You are able to easily change the broadcasting scheme of your beacon to iBeacon or Eddystone protocol. In the below video by Pushmote URL, you can see how to change Estimote beacons' broadcasting scheme to Eddystone™ protocol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX0AlAOB6NU
As it's possible with Estimote and Kontakt.io beacons, it might be possible with yours too. Contact with your hardware manufacturer to see the possibilities.
I am quoting it from here
Generally the "transmit these bytes" instructions are carried out in
firmware on the beacon and can't be controlled in real-time via
software. Many beacon manufacturers have updated their provisioning
applications to allow their devices to broadcast Eddystone frames. For
generic beacons (maybe you mean raw BLE chips? or Arduino/R-Pi sets?)
you'll need to set the bytes to Tx manually since there's no generic
provisioning app (or not that I'm aware of).
Thanks to Michael Ashbridge (aka) mashbridge
Unfortunately, you probably can't. Generic beacons typically don't offer firmware upgrades, and few if any generic vendors offer Eddystone support.
Full disclosure: I am Chief Engineer at Radius Networks, which sells beacons with Eddystone support.
Does a hardware that needs to advertise BLE signals as an iBeacon need to be MFI certified? I have noticed that is easy to turn a Raspberry Pi into a device that can send out iBeacons.
I looked at Estimotes, and nowhere does it say that it MFI certified.
Will the CoreLocation API specific to iBeacons work with a non-MFI certified beaconing hardware?
You don't need to be part of the MFi Developer program, but if you want to use the iBeacon logo or market your product as being iBeacon compatible, you will need to be part of the iBeacon Program
As for Estimotes, I am assuming that they are in the program because they have the iBeacon logo under their 'certificates' section.
Apple's iBeacon certification program is the specific MFi-variant that applies to beacons. My company makes Raspberry Pi-based beacons that are iBeacon Certified as well as battery-powered and USB-powered units.
The certification program is a way of making sure that beacons meet Apple's requirements for proper operation. Vendors who make beacons that aren't certified may work just fine for development purposes. Often times, however, the broadcast frequency of these beacons is pretty slow (1 Hz or less to save battery power), which can make for less accurate distance estimates when using ranging APIs. Just make sure you test with these beacons before counting on them!