I was thinking can we make Pebble watch to transmit signal strength over bluetooth and use it as a bluetooth advertisement device. This way Pebble itself can be used to do something that we have iBeacons doing.
Any thought about it?
No. Pebble does not provide any Bluetooth LE APIs (as of march 2014).
iBeacon is a Bluetooth LE based protocol. You will have to wait for Pebble Bluetooth LE apis to do that.
Related
Is there a way to find out the RSSI or Link Quality of a BLE connection after we perform connect in Linux environment?
hci_read_rssi() from hci_lib.h in Bluez, "hcitool rssi ", "hcitool lq ", and also the vendor specific HCI_VS_Read_RSSI (0xFDFC) command (https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/swru442b/swru442b.pdf because of the Wl1837MOD chipset that we are using) they all seem to work only on BR/EDR connections and not on LE connections.
Is there a way to find out RSSI or Link Quality or any signal strength from the Bluez APIs for connected BLE devices..?
I am using Bluez V5.48 and hCI/LMP version is Bluetooth 4.2
I will be grateful for any suggestions.
Thanks,
Vinay
It seems like not possible via DBUS API. as it states:
int16 RSSI [readonly, optional]
Received Signal Strength Indicator of the remote
device (inquiry or advertising).
I did not try by myself but you might be able to do this via Noble.js. 'rssiUpdate' event listener.
I'm planning to replace the Beacon tag of my Bluetooth (BLE)-based localization System with a smartwatch. Therefore, the smartwatch has to be able to advertise bluetooth signals. However I can't find any information about smartwatches using BLE advertising methods. I actually don't want to use an additional smartphone which would be able to advertise. I already found that the iWatch and the Moto 360 are probably not able to advertise.
Does anyone know if there's (or will be) a smartwatch available that is able to advertise BLE signals?
Thanks a lot!
el Baum
Ok, this is not possible for Sony Smartwatch atleast. This is because in order to be able to broadcast a BLE advertisement of your choosing, any given Android device has to be able to support BluetoothAdapter.isMultipleAdvertisementSupported(). Unfortunately, this feature is not available on most Android Wear devices.
If your Android device does support multiple advertisement, then you can create an advertisement packet and use the BluetoothLeAdvertiser object to start advertising.
Can a Bluetooth device act as a beacon and simultaneously be used for other functions?
I've tried looking around, without finding a concrete answer to this question.
A beacon is a Bluetooth Low Energy device that is advertising. The BLE radio is separate from the classic radio, and since the Bluetooth specification does not restrict the operation of classic Bluetooth along side Low Energy functionality then there is no issue performing classic Bluetooth operation while the device is acting as a Beacon.
I'm attempting to use a classic bluetooth chip to possibly send out signals to another device with a classic bluetooth chip.
Now would it be possible to create a beacon with classic bluetooth?
You certainly can. A Bluetooth LE beacon typically sends out regular advertisements with a unique identifier that can be picked up by a receiving device (typically a mobile phone) doing a Bluetooth LE scan. Since you can also send out advertisements and do scans with classic Bluetooth, you could build the same thing with this technology.
The main disadvantage is that classic Bluetooth uses much more power, both for transmitting the beacon signal and more importantly for doing the scans. So if you are using mobile phones to detect the beacons the battery drain will be much higher than if using Bluetooth LE.
i know that iBeacon use only advertising channel. which means there is no need connection.
im trying to make my own beacon module which send and receive data.
im curious about what makes the packet in iBeacon format(prefix /UUID / minor/ major/ TX) in communication ?
is it firmware?
let's assume that
when i make my iPhone act as iBeacon , it will send the advertising packet. which means it sends data in iBeacon format. but after turn off the app for iBeacon, i try to use my iphone
to send some files to laptop via Bluetooth low energy mode as usual.
then it will send data in bluetooth standard format. is this right?
given that situation, my iphone can be both iBeacon and just normal phone capable of bluetooth low energy.
i think also the beacon module can be like that. how about the product recently released? like estimote, redbearlab and so on. after connection, do they receive data?
Every iBeacon product works a little differently, but it is common for a product to be connectable for configuration purposes over Bluetooth LE.
Radius Networks' RadBeacon, for example, has firmware that sends out its advertisement as needed to be a standard iBeacon. The same firmware will allow a connection over Bluetooth LE, exchanging data with an external client (the RadBeacon app for iOS). This connectability is outside standard iBeacon functionality, using proprietary techniques that are still part of the larger Bluetooth LE standard.
Your understanding is therefore correct.
Full disclosure: I am Chief Engineer at Radius Networks.