After we introduced the next generation of Proximity Beacons, many of you asked if we were adding NFC support to Location Beacons as well. Today, we’re refreshing our flagship line of beacons with a programmable NFC tag… and so much more. We extended the range of Location Beacons to 200 meters and introduced a new API to store data in the beacon’s memory. The next addition, Sensors API, makes it easier to tap into many sensors on board Location Beacons, while the automatic firmware update goes a long way to improve fleet management.
One thing hasn’t changed: the new Location Beacons cost the same $99 for a dev kit of three!
Pre-order new Location Beacons
Shipping starts late September
200 m range
Recently announced Bluetooth 5.0 promises quadruple the range, but that’s still a long ways ahead—we need to wait for the final spec, hardware adoption, smartphone adoption, etc. With new Location Beacons, you can get the long range without the wait, and it’s fully compatible with Bluetooth 4.
We’ve added a new broadcasting power option, +10 dBm, which boosts the max range of a beacon to about 200 m. You can now use a single beacon to cover a huge lobby, or benefit from improved signal strength and stability in challenging environments—e.g., if a beacon is in a toll booth, and the user with a smartphone is inside the car, you’ll have success even with all the metal and glass barriers heavily weakening the signal. The long-range option also pairs extremely well with the Estimote Telemetry packet, allowing you to gather sensor and beacon health data (for fleet management purposes) from a distance. It’s also a great fit for the Physical Web and Estimote Here & Now, allowing you to send messages over longer distances.
Beacon Storage API
Location Beacons come with 1 Mb (i.e., 128 kB) EEPROM memory, and now you can use that memory to store your own data with our brand-new Beacon Storage API. It can be anything you want: plain text, JSON string, protobuf data, etc.
This is taking contextual data to the next-level: previously, beacons could tell apps the location of the user, but the apps still needed to fetch the relevant data from cloud backends. Now, you can put the data literally where it belongs, be it clues to your treasure hunt game, descriptions of the museum exhibit, ID of an employee that last checked on the beacon or the area, etc. Beacon Storage API can reduce your app’s reliance on stable Internet connection, drive down the latency, or even make it more secure by requiring a physical presence in order to access the data.
Sensors API
Location Beacons also come with a wide variety of sensors, and broadcast their data in real-time with Estimote Telemetry packets—all to add even more context to your apps. Today, we’re taking it to the next level by introducing Sensors API.
Our iOS and Android SDKs will now automatically relay all the Telemetry data to Estimote Cloud, where you can conveniently access it through the Beacon Dashboard:
… or consume it in your own app via our RESTful Cloud API:
$ APP_ID=my-sensors-app
$ APP_TOKEN=845b2f14a9fa54321ff8cf9b95a86054
$ BEACON_ID=046618f76a44404af14a546e7a37ac3b
$ curl -u $APP_ID:$APP_TOKEN \
https://cloud.estimote.com/v2/devices/$BEACON_ID/telemetry \
| python -m json.tool
{
"data": [
{
"ambient_light_level": 3,
"date": "2016-08-11T12:00:00.000Z",
"temperature": 13.1593427658081
},
{
"ambient_light_level": 2000,
"date": "2016-08-11T13:00:00.000Z",
"temperature": 23.6983528137207
},
(…)
Tapping into all the sensor data has never been easier! (And by the way, we’ve also added a barometer to the new Location Beacons, so that you can monitor atmospheric pressure of the environment, or estimate the altitude the beacon is at.)
Automatic firmware update
Software development went from huge, big-bang, packaged releases once every few years (think, Office 97, Office 2000, etc.), to continuous deployment where software updates are being pushed to production dozens of times every day. At Estimote, we believe the Internet of Things should adopt this modern approach. Last month we made it easier to upgrade your hardware infrastructure, and with the new Location Beacons, we’re making firmware upgrades fully automatic and painless as well.
With the new automatic firmware update, every user of your app with Estimote SDK embedded in it can now not only propagate the configuration changes, but also the latest beacon firmware.
NFC: ready, tap, go!
You already know what NFC is all about. We talked about it when updating Proximity Beacons, and the same, fully programmable NFC tag is now available in Location Beacons, too. Tap on a beacon, and it can prompt an action of your choice, whether it’s checking in, or collecting a loyalty coupon. And with the Estimote Android app, you can now also connect to a Location Beacon just by touching it.
5x responsiveness, 5 years battery life
The updated Location Beacons are now equipped with the nRF52 chip from Nordic Semiconductor, on par with our just-refreshed Proximity Beacon. This time, we’ve managed to increase the default responsiveness 5 times (!), and the battery life is still 5 years.
Ton of improvements, same price
Location Beacons, the most powerful beacons on the market, have just gotten better—and with all the new APIs, it’s now easier than ever to tap into all that power. And yes, you know it, it’s still the same $99 for a dev kit with three beacons. Pre-order yours today to be among the first to try them out!
Pre-order new Location Beacons
Shipping starts late September