Determining Location Using Beacons
Improve your customers’ experience with beacons
With beacon technology you can provide both an individual experience to your customers and better understand their behaviours.
This article will answer the following questions:
- What is a beacon?
- How do I choose which ones to use?
- What is ‘iBeacon’ and ‘EddyStone’?
- How do beacons compare to using GPS?
What are Beacons?
Beacons are bluetooth low energy (BLE) devices that can be as small as a small button battery to as large as 2cm x 10cm diameter. You place them in strategic locations and a smart phone can read their signal and detect the distance the phone is from them.
Using an Estimote beacon as an example (the blue and green ones pictured above), a beacon is:
| Component | Estimote specification |
|---|---|
| A small computer | 32 bit ARM Cortex MO CPU. |
| With other components | Estimotes have an accelerometer (e.g. to determine if the beacon has been picked up or moving) and a temperature sensor (e.g. to detect the temperature of a wine fridge). |
| A radio | 2.4 Ghz using Bluetooth 4.0 SMART. |
| A battery | CR2477 – 3 years on default settings. |
| A cover | Sealed plastic suitable for water affected areas. |
| A mounting mechanism | A re-stickable back |
Key Concepts:
Beacons are ideal for either indoor location detection where GPS signal is not reliable or for detection of location where GPS is not granular enough, such as in an exhibition.
Depending on the make and model you can expect to be able to detect a beacon for 20 – 50 meters.
They emit a bluetooth signal the same as you use for handsfree phone/car operation but don’t require the ‘pairing’ process. Each beacon emits a message using a particular data structure (called a ‘protocol’) via a bluetooth signal and any phone that is listening to the bluetooth frequency can read that message. The strength of the signal is used to determine how far you are from the beacon.
A smart phone can detect large numbers of beacons at the same time. For example if you were using 50 beacons in an exhibition it is possible that your smartphone will be able to detect them all at the same time.
Apple and Android smartphones can equally detect and respond to the same beacons.
They are ‘low energy’ devices intended to not cause interference and need low battery power. Because of this they are less than perfect: batteries do run out, the signal strength fluctuates, and the signals are absorbed by some materials and not others.
There are many manufacturers, protocols and programming options to consider when using beacons for location detection, so it is most important to be clear about the requirements of your application. The section below ‘Choosing a beacon manufacturer‘ is designed to help you do this.
We talk about ‘protocols‘ which define the structure of the data you get from a beacon. Below we discuss the different types of protocols and specify the iBeacon protocol as an example.
We are all familiar with using GPS to detect location, so we’ve also included a section on the similarities and differences of GPS and Beacons for location detection.
Choosing a beacon manufacturer
The table below will help you narrow down what type of beacon you will need for your application. There are a large and ever growing number of manufacturers, far beyond the scope of this article. For a detailed analysis of manufacturers have a look at the Aislelabs beacon guide (pictured).
For a beacon to be satisfactory for your application it must:
| Consideration | Discussion |
|---|---|
| Support the ‘protocol’ you wish to use. | See later discussion on protocols. |
| Have an appropriate battery life. | Is 3 months ok or do you need 3 years? Does the beacon have battery conservation options? Are you notified when a battery needs replacing? Is it easy to physically change the battery? |
| Have an appropriate form factor. | Will it fit where you want to put it? If you see it, does it look ok or will it be a distraction? Is it weather resistant if going outside? Can it be secured from theft? |
| Be configurable. | How easy is it to change the power output? If you need to, can you configure it remotely? How easy is it to configure them in bulk? How easy is it to assign a beacon to a particular ‘exhibit’? |
| Be cost effective. | What is the once off purchase price? What are the ongoing costs? |
| Support the additional features you need. Note: different manufacturers specialise in particular areas some of which may be critical to you. This is not an exhaustive list. |
Does it support motion detection? Can it detect temperature change? Can it hold ‘user data’ (e.g. a url)? Can the manufacturer provide you with analytics services? What other services and features are the speciality of a particular manufacturer and do you require these? |
Beacon Protocols
A protocol simply defines the data fields that you can get from the beacon. Things like its individual identification number, its power reading and how far it is away.
The most common protocol is the iBeacon protocol defined and introduced by Apple in 2013. Even though this is defined by Apple, it is freely available to be used by any beacon manufacturer and any smartphone manufacturer. You’ll find the details in the table below.
Google announced a competitor protocol late in 2015 called ‘Eddystone’ to fill a niche that they considered wasn’t being addressed. Generally to detect location using beacons you need to write an iOS or Android app, but there are some applications where it would be far better if a user could get directions without having to download an app, like when using their browser at a shopping mall. This is the additional feature that Google announced that their protocol will support.
A manufacturer can create their own protocol if they wish and they often do if they believe that the current offering does not support the needs of a particular target market. For example, the Gimbal beacon has a specialised security feature and the Estimote ‘Nearable’ protocol was introduced to target the ‘wearable’ market.
One thing to note is that even though there are a number of protocols, the beacon has to be configured to send out that protocol, therefore the beacon manufacturer decides which protocols their beacons can support and which one it comes configured for when delivered.
The Apple iBeacon protocol
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| proximityUUID | Your business’s UUID that the beacon is assigned to. When you listen for beacon signals you specify this value and you will only get these beacons message back. |
| Major id | A random number assigned to identify a beacon which you can change. For example, rather than register beacons for different projects to different UUID’s you could assign them to a common major code. The names ‘major’ and ‘minor’ have no significance – any differentiation between this is within your app. |
| Minor id | A random number assigned to identify a beacon. |
| Proximity | Values: Immediate, Near, Far, Unknown. With the Estimote beacons I have found that ‘Immediate’ is within 0.5m, ‘Near’ is within 2.0m and ‘Far’ could be anything greater than 2.0m and up to 50m. You will receive ‘Unknown’ values regularly. This means that for some reason the Bluetooth signal was temporarily interrupted. (No signal is receive if a beacon is out of range.) |
| Accuracy (i.e. distance) | Is intended to represent the distance in meters, but we advise not to use it in this manner as it will usually be wrong. You can use this to determine the relative closeness between two beacons. |
| Rssi (in dB) | Is the decibel reading of the signal strength, the root data that the above items are derived from. |
GeoLocation vs Beacons
The concepts for detecting a person’s proximity to something are the same whatever technology you use. There are two distinct components:
- Where you are, and
- How far away you are from the object.
When using GPS you define the central point then a radius. The circumference is called a GeoFence – you are either inside or outside the ‘fence’.
For beacons you place the beacon at the central point, decide the radius and use the beacon’s signal strength to see if you are close enough. You may also want to record the Latitude and Longitude of where you physically placed the beacon.
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GPS characteristics:
GPS uses signals from satellites rotating the earth which due to physical interference cause inaccuracies and aren’t good indoors. On one hand GPS technology can be extremely accurate but on the other, smartphone manufacturers limit this accuracy to conserve battery life, again causing accuracy problems when you need high granularity.
Beacon characteristics:
Beacons were designed to be independent and small, holding their own battery and minimising technology. They are ideal for close proximity location detection but the signal is absorbed by different materials in different ways and there is always a compromise between battery life and performance.
Using beacons to provide a personalised experience to your customers and drive your business further is now a technically mature capability, but to get started you need to be clear about your application and what options are available to achieve your desired goal.