building a mobile location aware system with beacons

Tim Messerschmidt Head of Developer Relations, International

Braintree_PayPal

@Braintree_Dev / @SeraAndroid

Building a Mobile Location Aware System with Beacons

#OSCON

@Braintree_Dev / @SeraAndroid#OSCON

A Beacon’s Purpose

Location Awareness

Source: http://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accurate-is-the-gps-on-my-smart-phone-part-2

GPS 3m

A-GPS 8m

WiFi 75m

Cellular 600m

Leveraging Your Phone’s Hardware

GPS vs Bluetooth Smart

Bluetooth vs Bluetooth Smart

Triangulation

Beacon

PositionMeasuring Angles From a Fixed Location

Trilateration

Beacon

BeaconBeacon

PositionMeasuring Distances From a Fixed Location

Applying This to the real world

Behind the Magic

Beacon Device

Behind the Magic

Beacon Device Endpoint

Popular Beacon Choices

Estimote 99 $ / 3

Gimbal 5 $

Bluecats 29 $

Kontakt.io 81 $ / 3

Advertising Beacons

UUID (16 Bytes): Large Beacon Group Major (2 Bytes): The Beacon Subset Minor (2 Bytes): The individual Beacon Tx Power: translates into distance

Avoid Being creepy

Deploying Beacons

Range vs. Battery

Replacing Batteries

SiGnal Interference

Confounding Factors

Microwave ovens Direct Satellite Services External electrical Sources Monitors and LCD Displays Anything that uses 2.4 or 5 GHz

SiGnal degradation

reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/2qv6xv/visualization_of_wifi_signal_strength_in_a_room

Low Interference

Wood Glass Synthetic Material

Medium Interference

Water Bricks Marble

Very High Interference

High Interference

Plaster Concrete bulletproof Glass

Attaching to a Beacon

dependencies { compile 'com.estimote:sdk:0.9.1@aar' }

Resolving The Dependency

Source: http://github.com/Estimote/Android-SDK

getMacAddress() getMajor() getMinor() getMeasuredPower()

The Estimote Beacon Object

Source: http://estimote.github.io/Android-SDK/JavaDocs/com/estimote/sdk/Beacon.html

getName() getProximityUUID() getRssi()

public class BeaconApplication extends Application { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); EstimoteSDK.initialize(this, ESTIMOTE_APP_ID, ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN); EstimoteSDK.enableDebugLogging(true); } }

Initializing the SDK

public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private BeaconManager beaconManager; @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); … beaconManager = new BeaconManager(this); beaconManager.connect(this); } @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), 22504, 44870); beaconManager.startMonitoring(regionOne); } }

Monitoring a Single Beacon

public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private BeaconManager beaconManager; @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); … beaconManager = new BeaconManager(this); beaconManager.connect(this); } @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), null, null); beaconManager.startMonitoring(regionOne); } }

Monitoring multiple BeaconS

public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback, BeaconManager.MonitoringListener { @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), null, null); beaconManager.startMonitoring(regionOne); } @Override public void onEnteredRegion(Region region, List<Beacon> list) { // Interact with the region final String regionId = region.getIdentifier(); … } @Override public void onExitedRegion(Region region) { // Notify the user that he left the region } }

Interacting with Regions

public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconManager.ServiceReadyCallback, BeaconManager.RangingListener { private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_ID = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private static final String ESTIMOTE_APP_TOKEN = "FROM THE ESTIMOTE CLOUD"; private BeaconManager beaconManager; @Override public void onServiceReady() { final Region regionOne = new Region("First region", UUID.fromString("Beacon UUID"), null, null); beaconManager.startRanging(regionOne); } @Override public void onBeaconsDiscovered(Region region, List<Beacon> list) { final Beacon closestBeacon = list.get(0); // Interact with the beacon } }

Ranging Beacons

public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BeaconConnection.ConnectionCallback, BeaconConnection.WriteCallback { private void configureBeacon(Beacon beacon) { final BeaconConnection connection = new BeaconConnection(this, beacon, this); connection.authenticate(); connection.edit() .set(connection.major(), 11) .set(connection.minor(), 3) .commit(this); connection.close(); }

// Implement the two interfaces for successful authentication and writing the configuration …}

Configuring Beacons

@Braintree_Dev / @SeraAndroid

Distance vs Signal Strength

Source: http://developer.estimote.com/android/tutorial/part-3-ranging-beacons

1m 2m 4m 8m

Important: While received signal strength, proximity zone and accuracy values can theoretically be used to derive a distance estimation, in practice this is far from trivial and requires complex mathematical models to account for fluctuations in the signal strength.

Long story short: do not expect distance estimations from beacons.

Measuring Distance

immediate (strong signal) near (medium signal) far (weak signal) unknown (very weak signal)

Measuring Distance

immediate (strong signal) - NFC near (medium signal) - Beacons far (weak signal) - Beacons unknown (very weak signal)

Measuring Distance

computeAccuracy() computeProximity() isBeaconInRegion() proximityFromAccuracy()

The Utils Class

Source: http://estimote.github.io/Android-SDK/JavaDocs/com/estimote/sdk/Utils.html

Ranging vs Monitoring

Testing BLE on Android

BLE & Android’s Emulator

Virtual Machine + USB BLE Adapter chrislarson.me/blog/emulate-android-and-bluetooth-le-hardware.html

Altbeacon

Eddystone vs iBeacon

reference Material

Beacon vs BLE: link-labs.com/bluetooth-vs-bluetooth-low-energy ALTBEACON: altbeacon.org iBeacon Specification: developer.apple.com/ibeacon Estimote JavaDoc: estimote.github.io/Android-SDK/JavaDocs Eddystone: github.com/google/eddystone

@SeraAndroid tim@getbraintree.com

slideshare.net/paypal braintreepayments.com/developers

Thank you!

building a mobile location aware system with beacons

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