We recently launched Estimote Location Beacons: our new flagship hardware with a host of exciting additions. They’ll start shipping later this month, but the SDK with support for all the new goodies is already out on GitHub. Over the next few weeks we’ll be publishing posts detailing particular features introduced with Location Beacons and SDK 4.0.
Today, we’re kicking off with an overview of the new stuff. Read on for details and don’t forget to take a look at the SDK; it’s available both on iOS and Android.
What’s new?
One of the key improvements introduced with Location Beacons is the ability to broadcast multiple data packets simultaneously. Below is a full list of formats supported by Estimote Location Beacons:
- iBeacon
- Eddystone-UID
- Eddystone-URL
- Eddystone-TLM
- Estimote Connectivity
- Estimote Location
- Estimote Telemetry
You can enable and disable the packets at will. And it’s not just that: you can also set different settings for Tx Power (range) and Advertising Interval for different packets. SDK 4.0 already supports that and Estimote app will as well with the next release.
To give you a glimpse of the Estimote packets you might have not known before:
Estimote Connectivity
The only connectable packet in the bunch. It’s used to identify the device and enable you to write new settings to beacons and update firmware. It’s also designed in such a way that when you’re connected to a beacon, it can still broadcast non-connectable packets. You cannot deactivate Estimote Connectivity.
Estimote Telemetry
Comprises sensor data, GPIO status, battery level, and firmware version. Will come very handy in fleet management and in cases requiring more context than just proximity.
Estimote Location
A custom packet designed around proximity. Just like iBeacon and Eddystone-UID it consists of a device identifier, but comes with an additional boon these two lack. Estimote Location includes additional information useful for estimating proximity. In the future we’ll use this both in our standard SDK and in Indoor Location SDK to improve accuracy.
All three Estimote packets can be detected in the background on both iOS and Android.
Another huge addition is the Configuration template. It’s an app template built on top of SDK 4.0 designed to make deploying a large amount of beacons much easier. The Configuration template includes off-the-shelf code & UI to govern how field personnel change beacons’ settings from their default values to ones specific to your deployment. This includes every physical setting of the beacon, and even a new and improved firmware update flow. And, as with all our app templates, it’s fully customizable to your specific needs. You can find the Configuration template in Estimote Cloud.
You’ll notice that configuring beacons and updating firmware is now blazing fast, thanks to SDK 4.0 and Location Beacons’ new firmware. Those improvements, combined with the Configuration template, means it’s now quicker and more efficient than ever to roll out hundreds and even thousands of beacons.
One more thing that will come in handy when installing beacons at scale are Conditional Broadcasting and Scheduled Advertising. Conditional Broadcasting isn’t new, because you were already able to ’mute’ your beacons by turning them upside-down, but Location Beacons introduce a new mode called Dark to Sleep. You guessed just right: thanks to the built-in ambient light sensor, beacons will stop broadcasting if the light in a room drops below a certain threshold. Scheduled Advertising is based on the built-in Real-Time Clock in Location Beacons and lets you specify times in which a beacon should go mute to conserve battery life, e.g., during the hours a store is closed.
Those of you with the souls of hardware hackers will also love GPIO support. The SDK (app update coming soon) allows you to configure the GPIO connector in Location Beacons as input, output, or UART interface. The last one can be used to define your custom data packets to broadcast alongside the predefined ones.
That’s a broad overview of what’s new and in the coming weeks we’ll be delving deeper into each of these individual features. We hope you love them and as always, you can share your thoughts on Twitter or via email.
Wojtek Borowicz, Community Evangelist at Estimote