Speaking of indoor navigation, you need a ton of points to do it well (whether that's beacons or wifi routers, you decide). I recommend as the only solution that got close to what we needed (though it's still pretty darn immature). Indoor navigation that relies on iBeacons only is going to shoot you in the foot. Nobody likes things they didn't ask for getting sent to their phone. Estimated battery life was estimated very poorly. Some of my findings over the last 9 months: Apple announced iBeacon technology to help smartphones identify their position and location in indoor spaces.As an iOS developer who has spent the last 9 months making beacon enabled things for my employer, I personally think beacons are shit. The technology is based on the standard Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol, and is supported on all major smartphones including both Android and iPhone. IBeacon refers to tiny battery powered devices which emit Bluetooth LE signals. The iBeacons, or just beacons, transmit a unique signal multiple times every second which can be received by phones within a few meter radius. Phones can accurately position themselves by receiving signals from all nearby beacons. The mechanism is very similar to how ships used to use lighthouses – the lighthouse would emit light which was picked up by passing by ships. Unlike GPS, beacons can be used for accurate positioning indoors. Numerous applications have emerged – including indoor navigation, location based marketing, location based customer service, clienteling, and personalized assistance. Since the beacons use standard Bluetooth LE, it is supported well on both Android and iOS.Īs the name suggests, the Low Energy variant of Bluetooth is extremely power efficient. In our previous report, we examined the impact of beacons on both iPhone and Android. Under real-life scenarios,a phone’s battery drain should be less than 1% because of nearby beacons. In this report, we examine battery life of beacons themselves.īeacons have been gaining popularity recently. The majority of them are powered by battery. In this report we present the first comprehensive comparison of various beacon hardware available in the market. Beacons come in all form and shapes, with diverse chipsets, battery sizes and firmware. We have stress tested beacons from 16 different vendors over past three months, examining every aspect of them under different conditions. In our previous report, we compared the impact on the phone battery (link), in this report we compare the beacons themselves across different parameters.īattery consumption behavior of beacons is very important, especially when deploying them in a large enterprise setting. With thousands of beacons in field, monitoring for their battery levels and replacing them as battery drains can be a significant undertaking. It is therefore desirable to use beacons with longer battery life.īeacons are small battery powered devices. The backend cloud server processes the information and performs further analysis guiding specific location based behaviors in the mobile device.īeacons consist of four primary components which we detail below: The signal is picked up by the phone, and often transmitted to a cloud server via the internet. The hardware consists of a microcontroller with a Bluetooth LE radio chip and a battery. New radio chips are optimized for Bluetooth LE, whereas older versions were designed for Bluetooth Classic which had higher power consumption. The radio chip is commonly manufactured by two major companies: 1) Texas Instruments and 2) Nordic Semiconductor. Companies such as BlueGiga and Gimbal use the underlying hardware from Texas Instruments (TI) but with their custom firmware before selling them to beacon vendors.Ĭoin cell batteries are the most popular choice for most beacons. These batteries are dense Lithium Ion cells and provide up-to 1,000 mAh of stored power in a very small form factor. Coin cell batteries are otherwise commonly used in key fobs and digital watches.Ĭommonly available coin cell sizes are 240 mAh (CR2032, small size), 620 mAh (CR2450, medium size) and 1,000 mAh (CR2477, large size). Some beacons also use Alkaline AA batteries, which are commonly used in digital cameras and TV remotes. A typical AA battery provides around 2,000 mAh power but at a significantly larger size than coin cell batteries. Lastly, some beacons are externally powered.
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