building a mobile location aware system with beacons

Tim Messerschmidt Head of Developer Relations, International

Braintree_PayPal

@Braintree_Dev / @SeraAndroid

Building a Mobile Location Aware System with Beacons

#OSCON

@Braintree_Dev / @SeraAndroid#OSCON

A Beacon’s Purpose


Location Awareness


Source: http://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accurate-is-the-gps-on-my-smart-phone-part-2

GPS 3m

A-GPS 8m

WiFi 75m

Cellular 600m

Leveraging Your Phone’s Hardware


GPS vs Bluetooth Smart


Bluetooth vs Bluetooth Smart


Triangulation

Beacon

Beacon

Beacon

PositionMeasuring Angles From a Fixed Location


Trilateration

Beacon

BeaconBeacon

PositionMeasuring Distances From a Fixed Location


Applying This to the real world


Behind the Magic

Beacon Device

Advertisement


Behind the Magic

Beacon Device Endpoint


Popular Beacon Choices

Estimote 99 $ / 3

Gimbal 5 $

Bluecats 29 $

Kontakt.io 81 $ / 3


Advertising Beacons

UUID (16 Bytes): Large Beacon Group Major (2 Bytes): The Beacon Subset Minor (2 Bytes): The individual Beacon Tx Power: translates into distance


Avoid Being creepy


Deploying Beacons


Range vs. Battery


Replacing Batteries


SiGnal Interference


Confounding Factors

Microwave ovens Direct Satellite Services External electrical Sources Monitors and LCD Displays Anything that uses 2.4 or 5 GHz


SiGnal degradation


reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/2qv6xv/visualization_of_wifi_signal_strength_in_a_room


Low Interference

Wood Glass Synthetic Material

Medium Interference

Water Bricks Marble

Very High Interference

Metal

High Interference

Plaster Concrete bulletproof Glass


Attaching to a Beacon


dependencies { compile 'com.estimote:sdk:0.9.1@aar' }

Resolving The Dependency

Source: http://github.com/Estimote/Android-SDK


getMacAddress() getMajor() getMinor() getMeasuredPower()

The Estimote Beacon Object

Source: http://estimote.github.io/Android-SDK/JavaDocs/com/estimote/sdk/Beacon.html

getName() getProximityUUID() getRssi()


public class BeaconApplication extends Application { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); EstimoteSDK.initialize(this, ESTIMOTE_APP_ID, ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN); EstimoteSDK.enableDebugLogging(true); } }

Initializing the SDK


public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private BeaconManager beaconManager; @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); … beaconManager = new BeaconManager(this); beaconManager.connect(this); } @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), 22504, 44870); beaconManager.startMonitoring(regionOne); } }

Monitoring a Single Beacon


public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private BeaconManager beaconManager; @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); … beaconManager = new BeaconManager(this); beaconManager.connect(this); } @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), null, null); beaconManager.startMonitoring(regionOne); } }

Monitoring multiple BeaconS


public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback, BeaconManager.MonitoringListener { @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), null, null); beaconManager.startMonitoring(regionOne); } @Override public void onEnteredRegion(Region region, List<Beacon> list) { // Interact with the region final String regionId = region.getIdentifier(); … } @Override public void onExitedRegion(Region region) { // Notify the user that he left the region } }

Interacting with Regions


public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback, BeaconManager.RangingListener { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private BeaconManager beaconManager; @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), null, null); beaconManager.startRanging(regionOne); } @Override public void onBeaconsDiscovered(Region region, List<Beacon> list) { final Beacon closestBeacon = list.get(0); // Interact with the beacon } }

Ranging Beacons


public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconConnection.ConnectionCallback, BeaconConnection.WriteCallback { private void configureBeacon(Beacon beacon) { final BeaconConnection connection = new BeaconConnection(this, beacon, this); connection.authenticate(); connection.edit() .set(connection.major(), 11) .set(connection.minor(), 3) .commit(this); connection.close(); }

// Implement the two interfaces for successful authentication and writing the configuration …}

Configuring Beacons

@Braintree_Dev / @SeraAndroid

Distance vs Signal Strength

Source: http://developer.estimote.com/android/tutorial/part-3-ranging-beacons

0

25

50

75

100

1m 2m 4m 8m


Important: While received signal strength, proximity zone and accuracy values can theoretically be used to derive a distance estimation, in practice this is far from trivial and requires complex mathematical models to account for fluctuations in the signal strength.

Long story short: do not expect distance estimations from beacons.

Measuring Distance



immediate (strong signal) near (medium signal) far (weak signal) unknown (very weak signal)

Measuring Distance



immediate (strong signal) - NFC near (medium signal) - Beacons far (weak signal) - Beacons unknown (very weak signal)

Measuring Distance



computeAccuracy() computeProximity() isBeaconInRegion() proximityFromAccuracy()

The Utils Class

Source: http://estimote.github.io/Android-SDK/JavaDocs/com/estimote/sdk/Utils.html


Ranging vs Monitoring


Testing BLE on Android


BLE & Android’s Emulator

Virtual Machine + USB BLE Adapter chrislarson.me/blog/emulate-android-and-bluetooth-le-hardware.html

http://chrislarson.me/blog/emulate-android-and-bluetooth-le-hardware.html


Altbeacon


Eddystone vs iBeacon


reference Material

Beacon vs BLE: link-labs.com/bluetooth-vs-bluetooth-low-energy ALTBEACON: altbeacon.org iBeacon Specification: developer.apple.com/ibeacon Estimote JavaDoc: estimote.github.io/Android-SDK/JavaDocs Eddystone: github.com/google/eddystone

@SeraAndroid [email protected]

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Thank you!

building a mobile location aware system with beacons

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