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It reminds me of the ridiculous excitement over iBeacons when Apple announced their proprietary NFC-like tech a few years ago. Virtually every iOS dev I know bo
by giobox 9y ago
It reminds me of the ridiculous excitement over iBeacons when Apple announced their proprietary NFC-like tech a few years ago. Virtually every iOS dev I know bought some cheap iBeacons thinking "wow this is so cool" and never ended up building anything useful. I wasn't immune either, as the abandoned iBeacon in my desk drawer attests to.
There's undoubtedly great use cases for NFC on phones (payments, travel passes, hotel room keys etc), but it's also a technology that often seems to attract developers solely because it seems 'cool', not because they have a problem that can be solved better with NFC than without it.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoiBeacon protocol is not proprietory. BLE covers larger area that NFC does not. I agree there aren't much real uses tho. But we might not know yet. For example LoRaWAN networks are deployed worldwide fairly quietly.
- abritinthebay 9y agoBeacons a) aren't Apple exclusive b) are really cool. The trouble is that the category of features they solve can often also be solved by GPS, Network, or other similar technologies. There are a myriad of cool things that Bluetooth Beacons can do but none of them are particularly consumer must-haves.
- wensheng 9y agoMight be off-topic, but anyone know what other techs provide indoor distance tacking/localization other than BLE beacons? WIFI's accuracy is too low.
- janekm 9y agoThere are very promising "ultrawideband" solutions (allowing distance to be determined from time of flight of a message rather than signal strength) but the use cases are limited as there is no existing infrastructure. The best that can be done on phones is "sensor fusion" from all available sensors (including wifi and BLE, also integration of motion data) but it requires very extensive mapping of the location in advance. iOS suppports this since a few releases ago but only for locations that have been mapped by Apple so the use cases are rather limited, presumably the mall/airport feature just shown used it.
- coupdejarnac 9y agoI worked at a consulting company about a decade ago that designed an indoor tracking system. It could track a device to within a meter, and that was no trivial undertaking. I always have a laugh when I see some startup making a child tracker/pet tracker using iBeacon. You need a large array of radios to track the beacons, you have to model the physics of the building's construction (absorption, Rayleigh scattering, etc), account for multiple floors, and come up with a working algorithm that combines all the RSSI readings to produce a precise location.
- RhodesianHunter 9y agoIt's not all that hard with RFID and the right antenna. It's done extensively in facilities with expensive equipment like refineries.
- coupdejarnac 9y agoIf you helped implement that system, I'd like to know more.
- pfranz 9y agoA lot of the coolness requires a critical mass. The idea is usually being a standard, being Apple supported, or being included in Android provides that...in practice, that hasn't been true. I look enviously at other countries that have been using feature phones for banking and p2p banking. The video of a guy in China assembling his own iPhone shows QR codes at each booth used for payment. There's no reason Smart Phones or NFC could do those things better, but we still don't have it and it won't be happening in the U.S. in near future.
- janekm 9y agoActually, interestingly, QR codes can be better for some payment scenarios than NFC. I live in China and I can go to my local corner shop, pick up a bottle from the fridge, and even if there's a queue at the register I can scan the code from a distance, pay and leave with a nod from the shop keeper. QR codes are also used for exchanging contact information... when I give a talk in China, I put my Wechat QR code at the end so any member of the audience can scan it from the slide for follow-up conversations.
- jimmcslim 9y agoPerhaps not coincidentally then, Apple is providing native support for QR codes in the Camera app in IOS 11.
- MBCook 9y agoThey specifically mentioned it on the slide of things that they were adding for China as well.
- hvidgaard 9y agoQR codes are cheaper, but NFC tags are more convenient. QR code are typically also all the same on a given label, where NFC can be programmed to have a unique id for each relatively simple.
- sangnoir 9y ago
- cmsimike 9y agoI am using iBeacons so that my automation knows what room I am in my apartment. I plan on doing 3d positioning with them eventually.
- neals 9y agoI built an app for the world-leading led-manufacturer. They have underwater-lightbulbs and tag them with NFC for servicing and tracking. They seal the tag in with the led inside the casing.