iBeacon™ FAQ White Paper

iBeaconThe most frequently asked questions

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One of the most important jobs a business has, is listening to their clients...

In turn, a clients goals, strengths, weaknesses, and pain points help define our products and the businesses we build. That’s why this white paper is 100% focused on sharing the frequently asked questions we received around iBeacons, and our best practice responses to them.

As a successful iBeacon campaign is dependent on both software and hardware, and so Fosbury is delighted to co-publish this white paper with Estimote, a leading manufacturer of iBeacon hardware.

This iBeacon FAQ was answers questions with a wide range of complexity, from basic introductions to the device, to how to leverage mobile apps to increase in store purchases. We will try to cover everything we can here, but if you don’t have your questions answered, don’t worry. Estimote and Fosbury will cohost a video webinar on August 6th to answer any remaining questions live!

iBeacon The most frequently asked questions Estimote and Fosbury

1

What are beacons?

Beacons are small devices that broadcast a BluetoothSmart radio signal. You could see them as the next version of GPS. Instead of using satellites to triangulate your position in the world as GPS does, beacons transmit a low energy signal from a device with a radius of 50-100 meters to provide unprecedented location services that can accurately measure positioning down to inches.

Almost all of the logic behind a beacon deployment is through the supporting application on the devices (e.g. beacon aware apps on smartphones). The only role of the beacon is to notify the smartphone of its existence at the physical location. Beacons do not actively push out notifications (other than the beacon radio signal) nor does beacon actively track nearby users. The application on the supporting devices must handle all the logic after seeing nearby beacons.

The frequency of the beacon transmission depends on the

configuration of the beacon and can be altered using device specific methods. Both the rate and the transmit power have an effect on the beacon battery life. Beacons come with predefined settings and several of them can be changed by the developer.

Amongst others the rate and the transmit power can be changed as well as the Major and Minor values. The Major and Minor values are settings which can be used if you want to connect to specific beacons or if you want to work with more than one beacon at the same time. Typically, multiple beacon deployment at a venue will share the same UUID, and use the major and minor pairs to segment and distinguish subspaces within the venue. You can for example set the Major values of all the beacons in a specific store to the same value and use the Minor value to identify a specific beacon within the store.


2

Are beacons just for retail?

No, beacons are not just for retail, there are a lot of other situations where applying the two key concepts of this technology (micro-location and interaction/engagement/context) can prove to be very valuable.

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball has upgraded their "At the Ballpark" iPhone App with an iBeacon integration.

Each ballpark is equipped with a dozen iBeacons. The technology is used to automatically check you in when you enter the stadium. Once you're inside you'll be presented with exclusive offers, seat upgrades and general information. Pushing beacon technology to the next level, Target Field in Minneapolis, MN, will use beacons to present media, content and interactive features at this year’s All-Star Game.

National Geographic Museum

The museum in downtown Washington has installed beacons throughout its “A New Age of Exploration: National Geographic at 125� exhibit so it can deliver information relevant to a visitor, as well as track where visitors spend their time. That way exhibit designers can learn which displays are most popular, and which ones need to be tweaked to better appeal to visitors.


3

How is privacy managed for beacons?

Consumers may not be pleased about the fact of being monitored by retailers at every step in the store and have the right to know how their location information is used. Therefore, a person must choose to install software on their phones that enables ibeacon messaging.

Some (common sense) advice for retailers; to be successful, beacons-based marketing needs to be respectful of the consumer and must improve the shopping experience – not kill it. Retailers, be as transparent as possible and clearly explain how your beacons system works and how it interacts with your shoppers' smartphones; and share what data is specifically monitored and stored. Finally, do your best to build a clear and smooth Opt-in/Opt-out process.


4

Do beacons only work with iOS?

The great news about beacon technology is that both Apple (with iOS and OS X) and Google (with Android) support Bluetooth Smart – this means very, very broad availability (literally millions of devices are already beacon-enabled) and no danger of launching services that only target a single OS.

What about Microsoft? Microsoft appears to have recently added support for BluetoothSmart in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8; Nokia's recent Lumia WP8 phones are confirmed to include BluetoothSmart hardware.

96%iOS

29%Android

iPhone 4S or later, iPad 3 or later, Any iPad mini, iPod touch 5th generation or later. Macs (equipped with at least OS X 10.9 Mavericks): mid-2011 MacBook Air, Mac mini, mid-2012 MacBook Pros.

Samsung Galaxy S3, S4, S5, S4 Mini Samsung Galaxy Note 2/3HTC One, Google/LG Nexus 7 (2013 version), Nexus 4, Nexus 5HTC Butterfly (aka Droid DNA) Moto G


5

Do beacons drain my battery?

We know what you are thinking: geo-location and Bluetooth combined are batteries drainers. With beacons this is no longer a problem. It used to be named Bluetooth Low Energy before it was changed to BluetoothSmart and it really is very battery friendly.

Do I need to be connected to the internet to receive beacon noti�cations?

No, Users do not need an internet connection to receive a notification from a beacon. But there might be content 'behind' the notification that will need an internet connection.


6

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What is a UUID?

A beacon identifies itself using three customizable values: Proximity UUID, Major and Minor; there is also an additional Internal Identifier for your own reference. Therefore you have three levels to identify a micro-location: only Proximity UUID, Proximity UUID and Major, or Proximity UUID and Major and Minor.

For example, Proximity UUID identifies your entire retail company, Major identifies a specific store and Minor specify individual shelves or different points inside each store.

Another example: Proximity UUID identifies your museum, Major identifies a specific gallery within the museum and Minor identifies an exhibit within that gallery.

EXAMPLE ESTIMOTE UUID

How do I integrate beacons into my app?

With a few simple lines of code, you're good to go. Let Fosbury worry about all the back-end stuff while you create the best beacon experience for your customers!


7

How far does a beacon signal reach?

The reach at which beacon signal will trigger a phone alert is dependent on both hardware of the beacon - its antenna design and power of the signal in particular - and, in some cases, its settings. That’s because some vendors, including Estimote, allow users to adjust broadcasting power, which directly affects the range.

Most beacons technically have a range of about 70 meters (230ft), although in real world conditions, after taking all environmental effects (eg. wireless interference, signal absorption) into consideration, you should expect about 40-50 meters reach. Some systems also allow control of how close to a beacon the phone must be to recognize the signal. This can be controlled from within the Fosbury iBeacon platform to give you a high level of control to target customers.


8

Apple’s Core Location framework uses 4 predefined ‘proximity zones’ to determine how far a user is from the beacon.

Additionally, a beacon broadcast has the ability to approximate when a user has entered, exited, or lingered in region. Depending on a customer's proximity to a beacon, they are able to receive different levels of interaction at each of these three ranges.

The maximum range of a beacon transmission will depend on the location and placement, obstructions in the environment and where the device is being stored (e.g. in a leather handbag or with a thick case). However, the

What are the proximity zones for an iBeacon?

ImmediateWithin a few centimeters

NearWithin a couple of meters

FarGreater than 10 meters away

UnknownOut of range


size of the zone is always the same. Therefore, if you reduce your beacon’s range to only a couple of meters, triggering any interactions based on the ‘Far’ zone will be impossible.

How precise should the indoor location be?

It very much depends on your intended use and the immediate surroundings, but you could detect the presence of beacons as far away as 50-70 meters or as little as 10 inches, so it could be very accurate. It’s super important to consider your specific use case. For example: if you’re placing beacons in a museum, you probably don’t want users to be pinged with notifications until they’re really close to a particular painting, sculpture, or an installation. In a restaurant, however, you’d most likely prefer to reach all your customers in the room.

9

This depends on a number of factors and can vary greatly, from a couple of months to more than two years. The most important thing is power source. Some beacons are plugged directly into the socket, others use USB and majority of devices are powered by batteries of all shapes and sizes. In case of Estimote, current beacons use 1000mAh capacity Panasonic® CR2477 battery. Additionally, settings for broadcasting power (signal power) and advertising interval (signal frequency) play a huge role in finding the right balance between performance and energy efficiency.

One last thing to keep in mind is that some manufacturers may offer additional battery-saving features. Quite recently Estimote became the first iBeacon vendor to provide power modes - smart algorithms optimizing energy consumption based on how the beacons are actually used.


How long does the battery last?

This depends on a number of factors and can vary greatly, from a couple of months to more than two years.

How do I install the beacons in the venue?

Beacons are generally very small. Therefore, it’s really easy to install them discretely. However, it’s extremely important to place them properly. Keep in mind that they emit 2.4 GHz radio waves, which are easily absorbed by water particles and therefore by human bodies as well. So it’s wise to put them in higher positions, to avoid signal blocking. You can also try installing them on the ceiling - some users report that it works really well for them.

In case of Estimote, each beacon has an adhesive nanomaterial back surface. You can just stick the beacon to any flat surface like a glass window, a wooden door or a painted wall. You can unplug it anytime and it won't leave any residue or markings on the surface. If the material becomes less sticky, just clean it under warm water and it's ready to use again.

10

Will beacons work for indoor navigation?

Technically, the beacons were designed with providing apps and mobile devices with contextual information. However, you can also take advantage of this technology to buid indoor navigation solutions. To do that, though, you need to be aware of a few important aspects of iBeacon standard and Bluetooth technology in general.

Calculating proximity to a beacon is based solely on the radio waves it’s broadcasting. It means encountering factors like multipath propagation, wave diffraction, absorption or interference, which makes such measurements extremely difficult. For that reason, instead of trying to provide exact distance, iBeacon standard uses a value called RSSI (received signal strength indicator), which allows to estimate the proximity based on signal power. For calibration purposes, there’s also included a metric called Measured Power - but it’s nothing more than just RSSI measured 1 meter away from the Beacon. Even calibrated, RSSI might fluctuate heavily, due to the factors mentioned above.

The nearer you are to a beacon the more accurate the reported distance, likewise the farther away the beacon to a mobile device, the less accurate. This is due to the emitted signal being strongest or most pronounced at close proximity and weakest at the edge of the signal. However, there are numerous ways for increasing signal’s reliability. They vary from very simple and straightforward ones, like increasing the broadcasting power and advertising interval of a beacon, to implementing complex and sophisticated noise reduction algorithms and iterating a lot with proper beacon placement and the right quantity of installed devices.


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12

How can I do, what these big brands are doing?

You can build your own beacon hardware, or buy from a great vendor like Estimote.

Next you need to write your own software, or use a plug and play software tool like Fosbury.

[email protected]

[email protected] us at (512) 270-1512

Date post:	15-Jan-2015
Category:	Marketing
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iBeacon™ FAQ White Paper

Marketing