Year of the iBeacon?A short deep dive into the world of beacons

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About

• Cornelius Rabsch, Founder & CTO Beaconinside1

• Background eBay & kaufDA

• Mobile (at home, in store, while on the go) shopping -> beacons

• @rabschi | c.rabsch@beaconinside.com

1 Check out beaconinside.com

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Agenda

1. Bluetooth 4.0

2. What is iBeacon?

3. How is it used?

4. Be aware of...

5. Trends

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Bluetooth 4.0

Designed with ultra low-power consumption, worldwide operation, robustness and short range in mind. Bluetooth Smart & Smart Ready devices. BLE supported since iOS 5 (2012).

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The birth of iBeaconJune 2013 WWDC

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What is iBeacon?

• Based on Bluetooth 4.0

• Passive broadcasting devices

• Permanent advertising (>=100ms), range up to 50m

• iBeacon Portal: https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon

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iBeacon APIs

• CoreLocation (iOS7)

• Region Monitoring

• Ranging

• Cellular, WiFi, GPS & iBeacon

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Beacon IDs

Proximity UUID (128 bit)

F0018B9B-7509-4C31-A905-1A27D39C003C

Major, Minor

1-65,535

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iOS Beacon Ranging

NSUUID *uuid = [[NSUUID alloc] initWithUUIDString:@"F0018B9B-7509-4C31-A905-1A27D39C003C"];

CLBeaconRegion* region = [[CLBeaconRegion alloc] initWithProximityUUID:uuid identifier:@"My Region"];

[self.locationManager startRangingBeaconsInRegion:region];

- (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didRangeBeacons:(NSArray *)beacons inRegion:(CLBeaconRegion *)region { // do awesome things }

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CLBeacon accuracy

Not a distance estimate!

Indicates the one sigma horizontal accuracy in meters. Use this property to differentiate between beacons with the same proximity value. Do not use it to identify a precise location for the beacon. Accuracy values may fluctuate due to RF interference. -- Apple doc

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iOS 7 RolloutApprox. 80% of iPhone market enabled via software update

Sep 2013

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Reverse engineering, davidgyoung 3

Sep 2013

3 StackOverflow: What is the iBeacon Bluetooth Profile?

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iBeacon Developer Kits

Sep 2013"Estimote wins best hardware startup at Techcrunch Disrupt SF"4

4 Estimote

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It's real!1st iBeacon Cases

Apple Store 10, MLB 9, Shopkick 11

11 iBeacon goes mainstream with Macy’s roll-out, likely before it hits Apple Stores

9 MLB’s iBeacon Experiment May Signal A Whole New Ball Game For Location Tracking

10 Apple's iBeacon location-aware shopping goes live today

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Enterprise-ready Beacons

• Longer battery lifetime6

• Certification (FCC, IC, CE)

• Gimbal (spin-off Qualcomm)

• Beaconinside

6 Disclaimer: Compare capacity & configuration not marketing claims

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iBeacon Misconceptions 5

Beacons Deliver Content, Beacon Distance is Accurate, Beacons are detected immediately

Jan 2014

5 5 fundamental misconceptions about Beacon technology by Radius Networks

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Feb 2014Proximity Beacon Specification, it's official!2

2 https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon

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iBeacon Reference Designs 22 23

23 TI SensorTag now supports iBeacon technology

22 Nordic Semiconductor launches reference design for Bluetooth Smart beacons

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iOS 7.1 & 7.1.2Mar & Jun 2014

• iBeacon now works in background after hard closes 7

• No more BLE stack crashes when scanning for longer periods 8

8 Apple iOS 7.1 Launches Major iBeacon Improvement

7 iOS 7.1.2

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iBeacon, more than just retail

• Office analytics

• Museum guides

• Interactive events

• Scavenger hunts

• ...contextual applications

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Indoor Navigation• Proximity & fingerprinting profiles

• Indoo.rs: S.F. airport guiding blind travelers18

• Project ELI30 - contextual content for the visually impaired

• Estimote Indoor Location SDK19

19 Sep 2014 - Introducing the Estimote Indoor Location SDK, the next level of context for mobile apps

30 Project ELI

18 indoo.rs San Francisco International Airport

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Android Lollipop16

BLE scanningBLE peripheral mode

(Android >4.3 D.I.Y.)

16 Android 5.0 APIs

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Samsung Placedge31

Nov 12 2014

• Fully managed beacon platform by Samsung

• Placeedge beacons required

• Only target Samsung devices with SDK

• Fragmentation

31 Official Placeedge Portal

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Embedded beacons

• Tado thermostat

• IoT BLE dev kits (BLEduino, piBeacon21)

• Wearables

• Apple TV, Apple watch?

21 piBeacon - DIY Beacon

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BLE Gateways 13

13 Introducing the Kontakt.io Cloud Beacon

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Open vs. Closed Beacon Networks 14 15

Freeloading/Anti-harvesting, Beacon spoofing

15 May 2014: Who’s Watching Your Beacons? The Role of Wikibeacon and Other iBeacon Databases

14 Nov 2014: The Potential Of Beacon Technology

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Beacons & Privacy"Hundreds of devices hidden inside New York

City Phone Booths" – Buzzfeed

Oct 2014

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WWDC June 2014: iOS 8

• AppStore Near Me lock-screen icon

• New location permissions

CLLocationManager- (void)requestWhenInUseAuthorization;- (void)requestAlwaysAuthorization;

• Visit monitoring, floor numbers

• Indoor positioning: M7, RF parametric data, motion sensor20

20 Apple taps into M7 & motion sensors for indoor positioning in iOS 8, signing up venues to contribute

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Beaconinside

• Enterprise-ready beacon platform

• Manage large infrastructures

• Set up beacon campaigns

• Insightful beacon analytics

• Beaconinside beacon

• <15 EUR 100+ pcs

• sales@beaconinside.com

• shop.beaconinside.com

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Questions?c.rabsch@beaconinside.com

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