2015 is already off to a great start at Estimote HQ. More and more companies are using our beacons to grow their businesses, we’re shipping stickers, and our SDK is updated with Apple Watch support. While most of this growth is made possible by our over 40,000 strong native mobile community, we believe it’s just as important to build for a whole spectrum of developers. Today, we’re happy to announce Estimote SDK support for C# and Javascript along with our partners Xamarin and Evothings.
Xamarin and C#
The Xamarin Platform enables developers to create native iOS, Android, and Windows apps in C# and share code across all platforms. With 950,000 active developers in the ecosystem, it’s no surprise that C# developers have been building with Estimote from the beginning. Over the past year, we’ve been working directly with Xamarin to create a binding for the Estimote SDK–you might have seen the first stages of this collaboration a few months ago. Now, a new component is available. The latest Xamarin binding supports the newest stable version of the SDK (2.4), which includes integration with Estimote Stickers and our brand new trigger engine.
The Xamarin component for Estimote gives you access to features that until now were only available for Objective-C and Swift developers. The coolest addition is full support for stickers. You can now detect stickers and perform monitoring and ranging based on ID or sticker type (monitor for fridge, dog, or bag stickers etc). The binding opens up our trigger engine (one of the most powerful elements of our SDK), allowing you to include additional logic into your app, based on motion, orientation, temperature and time sensor data. Changing beacon settings and turning on Secure UUID can also be done using Estimote Cloud. Last but not least, the binding supports C# features including events and async/await support.
Are you ready to build apps using C# and Estimote SDK? Good! You can download the component and read a great introduction on the Xamarin blog.
Evothings and JavaScript
Web developers also love beacons. And Estimote loves developers who love beacons, so we’re excited about the work Swedish startup Evothings is doing. They are on a mission to make it easy to build Internet of Things projects with JavaScript and HTML5. Since rolling out support for Estimote Beacons in 2014, they’ve now released an update to include nearables and Estimote Cloud integration as well.
Similar to Xamarin, Evothings’ JavaScript API lets you monitor and range for stickers, as well as leverage trigger mechanics to elevate your apps with more context. Most importantly, the API is built into their core product: the Evothings Studio. It allows developers to see changes instantly because the app automatically reloads on all connected devices as soon as a file is saved. Support for nearables is implemented as a Cordova/PhoneGap plugin. It’s open source and can be used to build a native app ready for publication on the App Store. The plugin also supports Estimote Beacons.
Estimote Nearables are a completely fresh take on beacon technology. The potential areas of use of nearables surpass those of basic iBeacon by far. We are proud to make nearables available to JavaScript developers and are excited to do this together in partnership with Estimote. - Mikael Kindborg, Lead Architect at Evothings.
Grab the Evothings Studio Starter Kit for nearables and start coding!
The best is yet to come
We promised you in January that we’re focused on bringing beacons and nearables to all types of developers and programming languages. We want to expand into new platforms and technologies so that every programmer can build their own contextually aware apps. Let us know how we can support you as you build with these new programming tools. Don’t hesitate to drop us a line, tweet @Estimote, and start a discussion on our new Community Forums!
Wojtek Borowicz, Community Evangelist at Estimote