Estimote Beacons appeared on the market as simple broadcasting devices. Over the years, they’ve become smarter and more powerful—capable of locally processing dynamically generated data from sensors or GPIO input. With the introduction of Estimote Mirror, they’ve gained video capabilities to display contextually relevant information on any screen. All these innovations are making Estimote products essential in delivering context, and embracing the Internet of Things concept. Today’s announcement push us further this way enabling new IoT architectures like Edge Computing.
Beacons essential for IoT
The Internet of Things is a network between intelligent devices communicating with each other. This communication enables them to exchange information, understand context, and act on it. Thanks to huge internet accessibility, most sensors collect and send raw data to the cloud where actual processing takes place. The alternative for this centralized, cloud based architecture is Edge Computing: a topology where single sensor devices can perform computation locally. It allows for shortening the response time, improves reliability of the network, and lowers internet bandwidth use.
Edge computing requires sensors like beacons to be much more advanced. Recently, hardware improvements like Nordic’s nRF52 chip and more efficient energy sources made it possible to both improve computation power and make devices live longer. Bluetooth 5 standard, announced this year, strongly advances communication speeds, too.
Today, we are proud to announce the last piece of the puzzle to fully enable Edge Computing: local data storage!
Introducing Beacon Data Storage API
In simple words, Beacon Local Storage allows for storing any data on the beacon. You can use the available 128 kB of storage to keep text, pictures, or even audio data. Each data piece is available under the predefined string based key. Think of it as common dictionary like API familiar to any developer. Data can be written using the Beacon Local Storage API during an authorized connection to the beacon. Reading of the data does not require authorization, and can be performed fully offline by simply using a Bluetooth LE connection.
Beacon Local Storage can greatly boost existing projects. Make your shopping experience more relevant, based on customers visits. Migrate your hardcoded data from the mobile application to the spot it is truly related to. Deliver dynamic data offline in spaces where internet connection is poor. Improve the security of your deployment that requires physical presence.
A new world of experiences is possible as well! Make an offline loyalty app that collects secure codes from the beacons. Leave local messages dynamically generated by the people physically visiting a place. Create offline games for which delivered content can evolve over time. Your imagination is the limit!
How it works
To access Beacon Data Storage, we introduced a new API called Beacon Data Storage API to our Location Beacons. It is available through the Estimote SDK. Each device you discover is capable of an offline/online connection, delivering API to access read and write functionality. To perform the write operation, just use the code snippet below:
Reading data from the beacons is similarly simple:
You can also take a look at examples we’ve prepared for both iOS and Android platforms.
To ensure security, Estimote Cloud based authorization is required for the write operation, thus you need to have an internet connection. Reading data from the device is publicly available and completely offline. If data stored on the device needs to be secured, any encryption mechanism can be used before saving data to the beacon.
Are you as pumped as us? Drop as an email to contact@estimote.com. We would love to hear about your ideas for Beacon Data Storage.
Marcin Klimek, Product Manager at Estimote