Introduction to iBeacon or Beacon

In this blog i am going to share the information about Beacon or iBeacon.

Beacon and iBeacon is used exchangeably. It is a device that uses Bluetooth Low Energy for communicating with the devices (like mobile IOS and Android devices).This technology is first introduced by Apple.There are three property that has to be set for identifying beacon.

1. Proximity UUID- UUID is of 16 bytes represent the company owning a number of iBeacons. Example: E2C56DB5-DFFB-48D2-B060-D0F5A71096E0.
2. major- A 2 bytes integer typically used to represent a group of iBeacon.
3. minor-A 2 bytes integer that identifies a specific iBeacon within a group.
   Ex-UUID:17888888-5555-3333-7777-555555555555 Major:1 Minor:1

Beacon device has some fixed range and When the phone comes into the range of a beacon, the app is notified about this, even if the phone is locked or the app is not currently running.So basically the beacon signal is identified by the mobile app.The app then communicate with the backend server to get notify.

Suppose you are entering a store and get notified with welcome message and some of the discount offer also come on your mobile screen and when you leave the store one notification also come on your mobile screen like “Thanks for visit”.This is a kind of application with the use of beacon device we can achieve.

Beacon can be useful to keep people  on time.From employees clocking in at a manufacturing plant to teachers taking attendance at school, beacons can save some time by replacing the dreaded time card. As a worker or pupil passes a beacon, their arrival and departure times will be retrieved.

How Beacon works:-

Below diagram shows how beacons work and an app get notify.

When apps detect the Beacon, they make use of these three numbers to deduce the (UUID,major,minor) location of the user. The application sends the numbers to a Beacon provider Backend server and fetches a list of promotional information related to beacon of the particular place(for ex a store). Mostly,the Beacon manufacturer has their own backend server and they provide some REST API to communicate with the application.For example Gimbal Beacon provider has its own server which is Gimbal manager server that provide a great interface for manage the beacon.

Activating beacon using  Gimbal REST API:-

URL-https://manager.gimbal.com/api/beacons
Request Type-POST
JDON DATA
    {
        "factory_id":"aaaa-bbbbb",
        "name":"Jony's Beacon",
        "latitude":XX.XXXXXX,
        "longitude":YY.YYYYYY,
        "config_id":wxyz,
        "visibility": "private"
    }

Factory Identifier Required-The unique identifier of the beacon.

Name Required-The developer provided name for the beacon.

Latitude-The latitude of the place where beacon is located.

Longitude-The longitude of the place where beacon is located.

Visibility-The visibility of the beacon to other organization. Visibility can be private or public.

Private visibility lock access the Beacon from unauthorized users.However public Beacon is visible to all the users. Generally most of the Beacons are transmitting their data in public mode.

Thanks

Kundan Ray