BLE operates on a very crowded frequency. WiFi, Bluetooth, etc are all on the same frequency and spamming out thousands of packets constantly.
We had to triple our broadcast frequency and period in order to reliably detect a beacon within 5 seconds of a phone being in range.
We settled on 200ms frequency and broadcast for 15ms.
Our decide had a 10 year battery life on a couple coin batteries…
https://www.qorvo.com/innovation/ultra-wideband/products/uwb...
I always hated closing my tabs at the end of the night at bars since it could frequently take a little while for only a few seconds of work.
So I built an app that detected once you entered a beacon's area, and opened a bar tab for you with your name on it. You'd just go up to the bar and order as if you had a tab open already, and when you were done, you'd leave. If your phone didn't detect the beacon for 15 minutes, it closed the tab with your preferred credit card and tip (which you could edit).
We had a demo going for employees at Local Edition on Market street. It was really cool and worked really well. The issues came that exact position was not very exact at that time and I didn't think it was a feasible product to build and market since the installation of beacons at bars vs gaining users would be difficult.
But for a brief period, I never had to hand my credit card to a stranger or worry about getting stuck 20 minutes trying to close my tab.
If you like the idea, take it and run with it. I'm not going to do it but I feel like people would love it.
JKCalhoun•9h ago
Is there something like war-driving for BLE Beacons?
ciferkey•9h ago
> Is there something like war-driving for BLE Beacons?
Yup, that essentially what Neostumbler is! If you have an Android device go check it out.
My hope for the project is to make a little embedded device I can use, so I don't have to drain my phones battery. Also because it's fun to learn about a new topic.
JKCalhoun•8h ago
shibapuppie•4h ago