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Hi, this is Jakub, co-founder & ceo of Estimote. Yes, you are right - there are additional sensors into each Estimote Beacon like temperature & accelerometer. Y

Hi, this is Jakub, co-founder & ceo of Estimote. Yes, you are right - there are additional sensors into each Estimote Beacon like temperature & accelerometer. You can read more about them here: http://blog.estimote.com/post/87918401035/firmware-update-activating-accelerometer-temperature http://blog.estimote.com/post/87918401035/firmware-update-ac... The challenge with cheap, Chinese beacons is that beacon deployments in general are site-specific at the moment. They require configuration, enabling security, calibration, etc. We sell currently Dev Kits that consist of 3 beacons as well as free iOS & Android SDK, responsive support, 20K+ developers community portal, cloud-based fleet management tool and more. Each beacon is in fact tiny computer with ARM processor, flash memory and sensors. Thanks to our iOS app you can configure range of the beacon, optimize battery life and security. We update our firmware on monthly-basis so even if you bought beacons 6 months ago you can download the latest version over-the-air and enable sensors and new tech and there is more to come soon. We all agree that beacons will be everywhere in the future and deployed at scale. The fact is that beacons cost will be still tiny part of the budget dedicated to build the context-aware app. We have partnered with many companies like Knoll to build such apps (http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/17/estimote-knoll-partner-to-bring-ibeacons-into-office-space-planning/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/17/estimote-knoll-partner-to-b...) and believe the value is in the underlying software delivered together with high quality hardware.

roberthahn 12y ago
I checked out your site - how come there's no tech specs page? This is good info to have, but it's still incomplete. I'm still wondering: how much flash memory? Can a mobile app send messages to the mote to write data, or are the motes read-only points of contact?
- jimiasty 12y ago
  @Robert: there is 256K flash at the moment and there is two-way communication between phone and the beacon. At the moment it is possible to connect to the beacon as an admin and change its UUID, major, minor, broadcasted power/range, give a name, access temperature, motion-sensor. Technically it is also possible to store some information within the beacon, but just haven't enabled that for developers yet - how would you use it? In theory beacons is there to deliver a context, e.g. context of your fridge in the kitchen, so you phone in the background can respond and process/store data.
  - roberthahn 12y ago
    How I could use the storage, based on the store scenario you presented on your site: 1) Customer service: every time a mote gets a ping from a customer, log it. If the customer pinged the area 2-3x, send a message asking if they would like a sales rep to help them. 2) Analytics: building on 1), collect the logged hits from the devices and learn how customers move through the store, who moved through it (i.e.: any customers registered on a loyalty program?) 3) Admin user uses an app to configure coupons to store on the devices. 4) Track stock levels. If I could store stock levels on the beacons, then I could build an app that can be used to make queries ("Where can I find Levi's 501 Jeans with a 36 waist, 36 length?" "Oh, we have one pair left, look here…") Currently, the way you have to do these things now requires too many moving parts: a mobile app, the motes, and a web server for the mobile app to talk to. I believe the web server is unnecessary: if a user has data disabled, or if the store doesn't want to provide free wifi, then there's no way to facilitate these types of interactions.
    - bravo22 12y ago
      Robert, I'm fairly certain that is not possible with any BLE system. Main obstacle is that a slave device, such as a beacon, can only be connected to a single master at a time to do things like stock look up or other things you've listed. So while customer A is connected, customer B can not connect. There is also security issue of customer A connecting and then leaving the connection open, denying access to customer B. The way beacons work is turn the problem around. Your phone looks at the beacons that are near it, and make an educated guess as to it's location based on relative signal strengths and then go to a web app to fetch the data. Beacons don't get a "ping" from the customer. They are, just like their name suggests, beacons. They send a ping out with their id for whoever wants to listen. You can use passive BLE devices to listen for customer's BLE device, but only if those devices are in advertising mode which you'd have to put them into by an app running in the foreground. Usually stores use WiFi requests to track customers.
      - roberthahn 12y ago
        Thank you, bravo22. I appreciate the clarification - I obviously misunderstood the capabilities iBeacons offered. Kind of sad though, I think there's a huge opportunity in providing hyperlocal capabilities the way I described. So let me check my understanding: what I'm seeing is that there are only two scenarios that make iBeacons useful: * the mobile app has to have all possible beacon id's hard coded (or configurable by the user) and mapped to desired responses. The tradeoff is that any growth in the iBeacon network necessarily requires an app update. * the mobile app has to function like a dumb terminal, receive a ping, then query a separate server asking what's special about that ping. This avoids updating the app, but adds a whole new point of failure to the system. Thanks again for your response. very helpful.
localhost3000 12y ago
I appreciate what you guys are doing and get that you're here to make a profit etc but even now at this super early stage the market for beacon hardware is so competitive that you've totally priced yourself out for people like me. I'll be deploying >1000 beacons this year. Beacons take about 30 seconds to configure using a configuration app (of which there are many). The biggest cost in doing a deployment is literally transporting the thing to it's location and placing it. The hardware should cost next to nothing (which it will pretty soon). The real value, like you've said, is in the services running atop the hardware. Just my opinion... That said, I'm interested in hearing what a partnership looks like w/ you guys since, as I said, I am deploying many beacons this year and for the foreseeable future.
- bravo22 12y ago
  We're about a month away from releasing really inexpesnive iBeacons w/ sensors, ARM, etc. -- sub $10. You can program them to do additional processing if you want. What's your email address? Would love to have you as part of our beta.
  - localhost3000 12y ago
    ian.stanczyk at gmail
    - bravo22 12y ago
      Ok.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnweez 12y ago
    Could I get some more info on this as well? jar3737@gmail.com
    - bravo22 12y ago
      Sure.

roberthahn 12y ago

I checked out your site - how come there's no tech specs page? This is good info to have, but it's still incomplete. I'm still wondering: how much flash memory? Can a mobile app send messages to the mote to write data, or are the motes read-only points of contact?

jimiasty 12y ago
@Robert: there is 256K flash at the moment and there is two-way communication between phone and the beacon. At the moment it is possible to connect to the beacon as an admin and change its UUID, major, minor, broadcasted power/range, give a name, access temperature, motion-sensor. Technically it is also possible to store some information within the beacon, but just haven't enabled that for developers yet - how would you use it? In theory beacons is there to deliver a context, e.g. context of your fridge in the kitchen, so you phone in the background can respond and process/store data.
- roberthahn 12y ago
  How I could use the storage, based on the store scenario you presented on your site: 1) Customer service: every time a mote gets a ping from a customer, log it. If the customer pinged the area 2-3x, send a message asking if they would like a sales rep to help them. 2) Analytics: building on 1), collect the logged hits from the devices and learn how customers move through the store, who moved through it (i.e.: any customers registered on a loyalty program?) 3) Admin user uses an app to configure coupons to store on the devices. 4) Track stock levels. If I could store stock levels on the beacons, then I could build an app that can be used to make queries ("Where can I find Levi's 501 Jeans with a 36 waist, 36 length?" "Oh, we have one pair left, look here…") Currently, the way you have to do these things now requires too many moving parts: a mobile app, the motes, and a web server for the mobile app to talk to. I believe the web server is unnecessary: if a user has data disabled, or if the store doesn't want to provide free wifi, then there's no way to facilitate these types of interactions.
  - bravo22 12y ago
    Robert, I'm fairly certain that is not possible with any BLE system. Main obstacle is that a slave device, such as a beacon, can only be connected to a single master at a time to do things like stock look up or other things you've listed. So while customer A is connected, customer B can not connect. There is also security issue of customer A connecting and then leaving the connection open, denying access to customer B. The way beacons work is turn the problem around. Your phone looks at the beacons that are near it, and make an educated guess as to it's location based on relative signal strengths and then go to a web app to fetch the data. Beacons don't get a "ping" from the customer. They are, just like their name suggests, beacons. They send a ping out with their id for whoever wants to listen. You can use passive BLE devices to listen for customer's BLE device, but only if those devices are in advertising mode which you'd have to put them into by an app running in the foreground. Usually stores use WiFi requests to track customers.
    - roberthahn 12y ago
      Thank you, bravo22. I appreciate the clarification - I obviously misunderstood the capabilities iBeacons offered. Kind of sad though, I think there's a huge opportunity in providing hyperlocal capabilities the way I described. So let me check my understanding: what I'm seeing is that there are only two scenarios that make iBeacons useful: * the mobile app has to have all possible beacon id's hard coded (or configurable by the user) and mapped to desired responses. The tradeoff is that any growth in the iBeacon network necessarily requires an app update. * the mobile app has to function like a dumb terminal, receive a ping, then query a separate server asking what's special about that ping. This avoids updating the app, but adds a whole new point of failure to the system. Thanks again for your response. very helpful.

localhost3000 12y ago

I appreciate what you guys are doing and get that you're here to make a profit etc but even now at this super early stage the market for beacon hardware is so competitive that you've totally priced yourself out for people like me. I'll be deploying >1000 beacons this year. Beacons take about 30 seconds to configure using a configuration app (of which there are many). The biggest cost in doing a deployment is literally transporting the thing to it's location and placing it. The hardware should cost next to nothing (which it will pretty soon). The real value, like you've said, is in the services running atop the hardware. Just my opinion... That said, I'm interested in hearing what a partnership looks like w/ you guys since, as I said, I am deploying many beacons this year and for the foreseeable future.

bravo22 12y ago
We're about a month away from releasing really inexpesnive iBeacons w/ sensors, ARM, etc. -- sub $10. You can program them to do additional processing if you want. What's your email address? Would love to have you as part of our beta.
- localhost3000 12y ago
  ian.stanczyk at gmail
  - bravo22 12y ago
    Ok.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- johnweez 12y ago
  Could I get some more info on this as well? jar3737@gmail.com
  - bravo22 12y ago
    Sure.