Developing iBeacon apps can be hard. Not only do you have to take into account a whole new dimension of the user experience (also known as the physical world), but those pesky laws of physics also complicate things. Configuring a lot of beacons in a confined space can get messy; we probably know this better than anyone, with thousands of them scattered around our offices. So we’re excited to announce an update to make your (and our) lives much easier. The latest version of our app now includes Flip to Sleep, a neat new feature that lets you “mute” a beacon by simply turning it upside down.
Conditional broadcasting
If you’ve ever worked on a project involving tens of beacons (or hundreds, or thousands…), you probably remember that configuring them wasn’t the easiest thing on earth. If you had one pre-defined setting for all of them, that’s fine: you can just update the whole batch using Estimote Cloud or our iOS app. But if you had to connect to each one to set it up in a particular way, you would spend more time trying to figure out which beacon is which than actually changing their settings.
At some point, you would probably go the DIY-Faraday cage route and do something like this:
… or this:
Well, we’ve been there ourselves too:
But that all changes today. No more locking beacons up in your oven or fridge or wrapping them in aluminum foil to shield the signal. Conditional broadcasting, and the aforementioned Flip to Sleep mode in particular, solve this once and for all. After you enable it on your beacons, you can just turn them upside down and they’ll stop broadcasting. Put them in motion or turn to the original position, and they’ll resume broadcasting again.
Of course you can use Flip to Sleep in more creative ways than just as a substitute for a microwave oven when configuring beacons. It also comes in handy when you’re testing enter and exit region triggers. Up until now, you had to physically walk out of a beacon’s range. Good for your workout routine, not so much for app development. Removing and reinserting the battery to simulate entering a region is also a far cry from an optimal solution. Flip to Sleep comes to the rescue once more, because now you can trigger enter/exit events with as little effort as turning the beacon around. You might also want to use it for preserving battery life: especially if you’re using beacons from the early batches (2013 to mid 2014) that came with smaller batteries than the ones we’re shipping now.
All you need to do is update your beacons to the latest firmware (3.0.1) with the Estimote app or the SDK. Then connect to a beacon and scroll down to the ‘Sensors’ section. Tap on ‘Beacon in motion’, turn on the accelerometer and enable Flip to Sleep. It’s that easy! And it works on all units we’ve ever shipped; it’s based on the accelerometer, which was embedded into Estimote Beacons from the very first hardware version. Remember to turn it off when you install beacons for your production deployment, especially if you’re attaching them upside down (e.g., to ceilings or underneath tables).
Download the latest Estimote app (version 2.12) to enable Flip to Sleep and enjoy the ease of mind.
Flip to Sleep is not the only conditional broadcasting mode available with the latest firmware. Using the SDK, you can also enable Motion only. With this feature turned on, the beacon will only broadcast when it’s moving. It allows you to preserve battery life even further and create beacon-based interactions with movable objects like doors, chairs, or cars.
Help us solve your problems
We’ve made it our priority to release features like remote fleet management, batch update, and conditional broadcasting because we’ve heard from you that configuring and managing beacons is a pain when deploying at scale. We’re constantly striving to embody some of the central lessons we learned during Y Combinator, specifically “talk to your customers and build something people want.” We’ve learned that developers want tools that make it easier to build their own amazing products. So we want you to help us identify the biggest pain points of the development process for beacon-enabled apps. What’s hard, what’s confusing, what’s unclear? We’ve just opened a new thread on our Community Forums where you can share those issues. We will be watching it closely and adjusting our roadmap accordingly.
Of course, you can always reach us via email and on Twitter. Tell us what you think we should improve to make integrating iBeacon into your apps easier…. or how much you love Flip to Sleep!
Wojtek Borowicz, Community Evangelist at Estimote