CASE FOR "BEACONS"

I am writing this compendium on “Beacons” to provide me an opportunity to pry out the innards (and accoutrements) of it from the brains of my Linkedin compatriots. I hope, the critics will not shy away from laying bare my ignorance on this.

“Beacons” is a marketing term pervading the hi-tech industry, roughly from the time Apple announced its iBeacon technology in 2013. It loosely refers to a host of hardware devices and software technologies: a) Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio wave transmitting devices that broadcast ID combinations, that can uniquely identify a device, b) Cell phone app to locate the BLE radio waves emitting device, based on its proximity to the device, and c) Server side (back-end) scripting, that can obtain actionable information from pre-defined database rules/tables.

STANDARDS: As customary, Apple has iBeacon and Google has Eddystone – two competing standards, awaiting words on world domination. Will other tech goliaths like IBM, Facebook and Microsoft get into the fray and dictate their own standards or collaborate to form a standard for commoners, all out of their zeal for altruism? You bet they will, not out of their altruism, but out of their desire to make bucks, either in the short term or to lay a path for future revenue.

Now, iBeacon standard dictates that the device using (adopting) it be configured with UUID, Major Minor, and Tx – a set of instruction, totaling 21 (16+2+2+1) bytes long, that can identify a device (Beacon) uniquely and its proximity to the cell phone.  

Eddystone standard provides 3 options: Eddytone URL, Eddystone UID and Eddystone TLM. Eddystone URL is a standard for Physical Web and it requires beacon browser; app not required for this. Eddystone UID consists of a 16 digit string – 10 digits for identifying an entity like company name and 6 digits for the unique value of a device, within the higher level entity. Eddystone TLM is used for transmitting telemetry data: temperature, battery voltage, number of Ad frames, and time since last reboot.

 Again, as customary, an Open Source Specification called, AltBeacon, exists.  It is a proposal authored by Radius Network.

Lastly, Beacons operate in the 2.4 - 2.48 GHz Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) frequency band

DEVICES: Manufacturers of the beacon hardware, can configure them with iBeacon or Eddystone protocol. Also, device manufacturers provide Apps or SDK to modify the UUID, Major and Minor combination and to switch to Eddystone standard – UID and URL.  There are quite a few Beacon manufacturers worldwide.

FUN PART: Building Apps.

Problem: It is no secret that high voltage transformers are everywhere in India – near your bus stop, next to your clothesline, and right inside your favorite cricket ground (field). And there are frequent complaints that people are getting too close to them. Now, the mayor of this major city has enlisted the service of Data Software Services (DSS) to provide a low cost solution to identify the transformers that are amidst high foot-fall (human use) areas. Data Software Services got their architects together and narrowed down a “iBeacon based mobile app" solution, and are hoping that the mayor will be impressed by this solution. 

Solution: DSS, rather than conferring with the mayor and other bureaucrats and obtaining their pre-approval, has decided to build a prototype. 

Now, DSS chose the Beacons manufactured and marketed by New Age Technologies (NAT) . DSS ordered 6 iBeacon based Beacons from NAT. NAT, as per DSS’ instruction, programmed the Beacons to allocate a unique number for the UUID and has provided DSS, access to their app, that can be used for altering the UUID, Major and Minor.

DSS worked in an agile mode to build an iOS based app. Its technology stack included, Swift for programming the client, Xcode for the IDE, LAMP stack for the OS, aatabase and server side scripting and Digital Ocean for cloud based hosting.

The simple prototype has a screen that will identify the Beacon, as it gets within the range. iBeacons work on 4 ranges – Immediate, Near, Far and Unknown. This app is programmed to work in the Far range and it obtained the UUID, Major and Minor, transmitted it to its cloud database and fetched the output – a warning message that states, “You are too close to a high voltage transformer. Please move away immediately”.

To prepare for the demo, DSS, with the help of the Electricity Board, affixed all 6 Beacons to the periphery wall of the transformer set-up. DSS obtained a 2-hour appointment with the mayor and demonstrated the app, by having the mayor use it. Happy ending! Mayor was impressed and he moved the bureaucrats to allocate the project to DSS. It could easily be a $100,000 worth project. DSS is elated!