Beacon Technology — In and abouts

Imagine you are walking in a park and you see someone shouting, you look towards the person and you have a choice, to either do something about it or to ignore and keep walking, well beacons can be thought of as the person who is shouting and you are the mobile device, but lets rewind a little.

This technology was first introduced by Apple in 2013 as ibeacons . Initially it was made for marketing purpose , but it now has a wider spectrum where it proves to enhance customer engagement and experience.

Content — we will look at

• What is Beacon technology
• What it actually sends and does?
• How it works?
• What is required to deploy a beacon?
• What do they look like?
• Beacon Protocols
• Types of beacons?
• What information of mine does it collect and how
• How does it find my location?
• Where are beacons being used
• Real world use cases

What is Beacon Technology?

Imagine you walk into a H&M and your phone buzzes. On checking you see a message saying “Welcome to H&M. We have new arrivals, would you like me to direct you there?”.

Creepy? Fascinating? I’d say both. Getting such a message without being aware about the technology would definitely make you want to get out of there as soon as possible, but if you know about it would surely enhance your experience at the store.

So beacon is a tiny device (approximately like the size of airpod’s case) which sends out signal containing small amount of data to other mobile devices.

What does it send and what happens

So suppose lets assume your Bluetooth is on and your mobile device has the particular app (in case of example H&M app), now when you come within the proximity of beacon, a signal is sent to the mobile and that triggers an action in the app.

Meaning, all the beacon does is sends a signal and lets the app handle the rest. It doesn’t connect to any device, it cannot retrieve any data from any device, doesn’t get connected to the network. It is just like a lighthouse sending out signals or like the person shouting (example told in the beginning).

*The device’s bluetooth should be on and the respective app needs to be running behind for the beacon to be able to do its work.*

How it works?

Beacons use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) which is generally used when there is a transfer of less amount of data for a short period of time. It is dormant till the time a connection is initiated and are known for their low power consumption which also enables them to have a longer life. They can run on battery, USB, main power and even solar panels

What is required to deploy a beacon?

Mainly three things would be required

• The beacon hardware
• Web application
• Mobile application

And for it to work things needed would be :

• User’s permission
• Bluetooth has to be on
• App should also be running in the background

What do they look like?

They are small devices, easily mountable on walls, ceilings, under tables etc. If they were to be opened you would find a CPU, battery and radio inside. They are simple devices that are available in many colors and sizes.

Estimote Beacon anatomy

The famous beacon hardwares manufacturers in todays time are Estimote and Kontakt.io with many more emerging.

Beacon Protocols

Listed below are different protocols that run on top of the core BLE and beacon, you can see them as different ways in which beacon broadcasts information

ibeacon — is Apple’s protocol. This transmits UUID (universally unique identifier, holds a string of 24 numbers) purpose being that it gives the ibeacon an identity (like manufacturer, owner etc) to distinguish it from the other beacons which are being used by others. With ibeacon there is no need for the app to be running in the background.

Eddystone- is Google’s protocol. This transmits usually three frame types namely, URL (eliminates the need of mobile app), UID (similar to UUID but this holds a string of 6 numbers), TLM (telemetry packet- holds data about the beacon like battery or temperature)

Altbeacon — is Radius Networks protocol. The new thing this brings to the table is the ability to transmit signal for multiple vendors rather than just one. Along with that, they also give a platform for someone to develop an application that listens to beacons.

Types of beacons

Standard beacon - They broadcast ibeacon and eddystone protocols and are usually used for indoor tracking. They are small in size almost like the size of a golf ball

Small beacon- They are like a sticker which is like the size of a credit card. Is useful to track the employees

Parent beacon- These manage the beacon network , they connect with the beacons, gathers their data and sends it to cloud storage.

Dedicated beacons - These are beacons made to survive harsh weather conditions like dust, water, UV and others.

Video beacon- They are plugged in behind a display screen (TV or monitor etc) and when a customer is within proximity the content is shown on the display screen.

There are other beacons too like AI beacon (tracks gestures like customer behaviour etc), USB beacon(found in offices), sticker beacons(asset tracking) and many more.

What information of mine does it collect and how?

Primarily beacons are indoor mapping technology allowing stores or other events to track their customer’s behavior and enhance their experience and increase sales, but now the personal data like name, email, birthday, demographic, insights etc (which is in the app or manually input by user at that time) — may be collected to better your visit there (eg: if its your birthday you might get more a better discount etc). To clarify again, this data is not collected by the beacon it is sent to the server through app, beacons just send signals that trigger the respective app and rest is handled by app.

How does it find my location?

Well actually the beacon doesn’t track your location, your device tracks the beacons

Your device estimates the distance to the beacon by measuring how strong the signal (RSSI — Received signal strength indicator) from the beacon is and determines the position at meter level. This does not result in precise accuracy but the indoor positioning use cases don’t require such precision thus BLE is a suitable option which is even low cost, low power and easy to deploy.

Mainly there are two ways in which the beacons detect location

1. Trilateration

This requires the device to be within 6 meters of at least 3 beacons. The quality totally depends on the setup of the beacons (number of beacons used will be more). Through this way users location is displayed as a dot

2. Proximity Detection

Here every beacon can have a specified activation zone or geofence area, so whenever user walks into the area then the required content can be shared. But this does not show your location as a dot.

Where are beacons being used?

Beacons can be used in various places, listed below are few to give an idea about how they can be used.

• Location and Navigation - Since GPS works outdoors, a beacon can be used to do the same work indoors. They can help you find out where you are, where you can go and help in navigating in an unknown venue (like airports, museums, festivals etc).
• Engagement and interaction- Suppose you enter a retail store or are standing right outside its door, beacons can immediately send you coupons or discount information, thus helping the store to get a customers.
• Asset tracking- In the process of manufacturing and transport beacons can make it easy to track where a shipment is in its journey thus making it easy for the managers
• Data collection- You can get information on how your customers are moving or behaving in the store which helps to understand what in the store is working and what isn’t, like the layout or which section is visited the most or least etc. This thus helps the retailers to enhance the in-store experience and get better sales too.

Initially used for marketing, it now sees its usage in industries like

• Food Service
• Sport Venues
• Healthcare
• Travel and tourism
• Logistics
• Banking
• Entertainment

Interesting use cases in real world

In 2020 the deployment of beacons globally was expected to reach 400 million, so lets look at five amazing use cases

1. Right-hear

These are beacons that provide indoor navigation to blind people. It gives alerts, current location, live assistant and 360 deg orientation (helps to understand what around the person)

2. Blinq

This is a Swiss dating app which connects users who are in the same place at the same time. the beacons are installed in bars and clubs in Zurich and sends notification to app users if another single user who matches their interest is at the same location at that time. It is totally upto the user if they want to meet or not

3. Geo Trail Go

Children get bored when their parents are busy shopping, thus geo trail go is a solution being used in the Lyngby shopping center in Denmark where there is an indoor treasure hunt with indoor maps and games has been set up so that children can collect virtual treasure and points and entertain themselves while parents get more time and peace to shop, which also increases the sales of businesses

4. Bye bye bulletin boards-

In educational institutions the notice boards are often times not given so much attention and thus become pointless and also result in wastage of paper. By installing beacons students can be given push notifications on their device about the notice or information (provided they have a dedicated app on their phone).

Furthermore the beacons can also be used to take attendance too!

5. A Tourist Guide

Whenever you visit a tourist places like forts, ancient palaces, museums, monuments etc , there is a common problem faced that is getting a proper guide who gives you the TRUE information about the place and in a language you might be comfortable with.

Thus to solve that beacons are being installed in those areas so that visitors get all the information in a medium which will help them understand better, can be AR or video or audio which can even be gamified to enhance the experience

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So to conclude, beacon technology is not new but its usage in many fields is yet to be explored and challenged. With every passing year they become better and more equipped showing that customer engagement and experience need not be a complex task, instead its as easy as putting a sticker on the wall and all you need to do is sit back and watch the show.