Internet of Things with

Bluetooth Low Energy & iBeaconsMDS, 2014

Vivek Jain & Jigish Chawda

Bluetooth Low Energy

Bluetooth LE / BLE / Bluetooth Smart

Low cost wireless personal area network for

‘Things’

2.5 Billion Bluetooth LE Chipsets to Ship in 2014

Source ABI Research

Low Energy?

History• Research started by Nokia in 2001

• Released as Wibree in October 2006

• Integrated with Core Specification of Bluetooth 4.0 in early 2010

• iPhone 4S first to implement 4.0 specification in October 2011

• All modern phones come with Bluetooth 4.0

Applications

Terminology

ServerClient

Has DataWants DataPeripheralCentral

Terminology (contd.)• Service

• Description of a set of data

• Example: Heart Rate Service

PeripheralService

CharacteristicCharacteristic

Characteristic

ServiceCharacteristicCharacteristic

• Characteristic

• Actual reading or measurement

• Heart rate or sensor location

• Standard profiles available (not mandatory)

Locating Peripherals

Client (Phone)

Scanning

Peripheral Ad Ad Ad Ad

Advertising Interval

Advertising Packet Contents• Name

• Tx Power

• Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)

• Service UUID

• 16-bit from Bluetooth SIG

• Self assigned 128-bit

• Service Data?

• Example: Room Temperature

Max: 31 bytes

Support

• iOS 5 onwards

• iPhone 4S onwards

• iOS 6+ devices can function as peripheral

• Android 4.3 onwards

• Nexus 4 onwards

• peripheral support coming with Android L

iOS Android

Demo - RFduino

iBeacon

Works where GPS fails

Bluetooth LE device advertising presence

That’s It!!It’s just a trademark by Apple, Inc!

iBeacon Advertisement Packet

Proximity UUID: Organization level identifier

31 bytes

iBeacon Prefix (9 bytes)

Proximity UUID (16 bytes)

Major ID (2 bytes)

Minor ID (2 bytes)

TX Power (2 bytes)Major ID: Store level identifier?

Minor ID: Department level identifier?

iBeacon Functions

• Region Monitoring

• Ranging

Region Monitoring

• Track entry/exit of the iBeacon ‘region’

• Works even when phone is locked

• Notifies app to take action

• Example: Notification at specific location/entrance

Ranging• For regular updates

• App needs to be active

• Returns array of ‘all’ beacons in range

Immediate < 1m

Near ~ 1-10m

Far > 10 m

• Proximity in 3 rough categories

• Examples:

• Indoor navigation

• Relevant content based on exhibits nearby

Support• iOS 7 onwards

• iPhone/iPad can function as iBeacon

• Android support through 3rd party libraries (RadiusNetworks, Estimote etc.)

Demo - iBeacon

BLE Vs NFC

Batteries last up to 2 years No batteries required

Coverage radius varies according to signal strength (measured in feet/meters)

Coverage radius is very small (measured in centimeters)

One to Many One to One

Thank You!

vivek.jain@thoughtworks.com jigish.chawda@thoughtworks.com