As if the visual clutter created by outdoor advertisement wasn't enough, now I'll get garbage on my phone? No, thanks. I don't know why everyone is talking about pushing ads in the first place, whenever BLE beacons come up. I'm excited to see where Estimote takes beacons though, since they seem to be doing the most R&D type pushes with this technology compared to the other manufacturers. Obviously at 10,000 beacons we're talking enterprise pricing, but even if you were to get that to around $5 that's still too much for what's essentially a CR2032 battery and a tiny radio chip. Even then, for $30/beacon I can get ones that run off the wall circuit and last until that's off (for all intents and purposes, longer than 5 years). I also found that almost all clients scoff at ~$33/beacon when you're pitching something in the 10,000 beacon range. I don't mean to bash your company at all here, so I'm sorry if this comes off that way. I was excited when I saw your indoor SDK, but it's too simplistic and not realistic enough for the production apps we have and are building (walking around and mapping every single room in a hospital is untenable). All 3 Estimote beacons are dead, and they all died around the same time (one in super conservative mode, one in what should be a normal use case, and then one in max power mode). The beacons my company received from you guys must have been out of the norm then. Hold the phone between you and the beacon and get a decent signal, then turn 180 degrees so that you are between the phone and the beacon. But they die too quickly, and don't provide granular signal data. And that's only because they don't have batteries. The only beacons that don't are RadBeacons USB sticks that plug into wall outlets. Did I mention power yet? All of the beacons we started with around 9 months ago have dead batteries. Using beacons for granular location-aware uses might as well go out the window if you're looking for accurate and precise readings around ~1-3ft. Speaking of indoor navigation, you need a ton of points to do it well (whether that's beacons or wifi routers, you decide). I recommend as the only solution that got close to what we needed (though it's still pretty darn immature). Indoor navigation that relies on iBeacons only is going to shoot you in the foot. Nobody likes things they didn't ask for getting sent to their phone. Estimated battery life was estimated very poorly. Some of my findings over the last 9 months: If you are unable to discover your beacon using the RadBeacon Config App, unplug the RadBeacon, wait 5 seconds, and plug it back in. This will restart the 30 minute configuration window and your beacon should show up in subsequent scans.As an iOS developer who has spent the last 9 months making beacon enabled things for my employer, I personally think beacons are shit. This feature is a security precaution to limit the possibility of third party manipulation of your beacons once they have been installed and configured. After this 30 minutes period elapses, the beacon will no longer be connectable from other Bluetooth 4.0 devices without restarting that window. It is highly recommended that you make a priority changing the PIN for your RadBeacon device.īeacons are only initially configurable for a period of 30 minutes after they are powered. As with previous versions, the default PIN is all zeros, or '00000000'. With version 3.2.3 we are introduced stronger eight (8) digit PINs. For firmware versions prior to version 3.2.3, configuration of beacons requires a four (4) digit PIN. With the RadBeacon app you can scan for nearby configurable RadBeacon proximity beacons, display their operating settings and make modifications to those settings. In addition to full control over the beacon advertisement data configuration, the transmit power and advertising rate are adjustable to suit a wide variety of deployment scenarios.ĭownload the RadBeacon Config App for you device. RadBeacon USB is over-the-air configurable using the RadBeacon App for iOS.
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