Any app can access the Bluetooth system and therefore monitor for in-range beacons, including Eddystone beacons, even in the background. Now that you have your URL on an Eddystone beacon, the only way to currently make use of it is with the latest version of Chrome on iOS. This will retrieve the URL and other beacon data online from the vendor and write it to the beacon over bluetooth. The information held by the vendor about the beacon then needs to be synced with the device, for example by using a management app when in the vicinity of the beacon. The Eddystone standard includes a scheme for compressing URLs to make them a bit more compact, but in practice shortened URLs are likely to be used. The picture shows Kontakt.io's management interface for Eddystone beacons - you can specify a URL, but it must not exceed 18 bytes once encoded. ![]() This lets you configure basic settings of your beacons, and may offer extended features such as associating content or data with beacons, to be retrieved via an API using the beacon's unique ID. Typically, beacon vendors will offer a management system when you purchase their hardware. Yes, you read that right - Eddystone is not yet supported in Android or in the Android version of Chrome! We'll show how it looks to iOS users below, but first of all - how do you get your URLs onto your beacons? Configuring Eddystone Beacons Anyone can develop their own Eddystone app now, but curiously the only app currently offering support for real-world deployments is the latest version of Google's Chrome browser on iOS. The supporting software is being developed in the open, and is available on GitHub, for Android and iOS. Google ensured you could buy Eddystone beacons from Day One by partnering with hardware vendors, however software support was conspicuous by its absence. A mobile app is therefore absolutely required, since the unique IDs contain no intrinsic information. Importantly, iBeacons cannot transmit URLs - typically the unique ID is used to look up associated information, either held offline in the receiving app, or retrieved from the web. However, the structure of the data transmitted is different, meaning that software on any receiving device must be able to recognise and decode the different frame types being broadcast.Įddystone's UID frame is analogous to iBeacon's single frame type, which includes unique identifiers and a value representing the beacon's transmission power. So, from a hardware perspective, devices are very similar. What About iBeacon? (Google vs Apple)Īpple's iBeacon standard has been around since 2013, and both standards are built on Bluetooth Low Energy. TLM - Telemetry information about the beacon, such as battery voltage and temperature. ![]()
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