I want to make a IOS device act as a virtual Ibeacon and configure it to google proximaty API.
When I try to configure using google beacon tools. I get "eddystone configuration not supported by the beacon"
Can any one help me to understand on what basis Google says Ibeacon is supported for nearby notifications
Yes, you can use Google's Beacon Tools app to register a virtual iPhone iBeacon transmitter with Google's servers. The problem is that you are misunderstanding the meaning of that error message.
To clarify: The question shows a screenshot of an Android app that has scanned for an iBeacon transmission coming from an iOS device.
Provisioning shows "Eddystone configuration service not supported by this beacon" because that section is used for configuring the beacon over bluetooth using the Eddystone configuration GATT service standard. Because your iPhone doesn't support that GATT service (lots of beacons don't -- not just virtual beacons), you get that error message.
Don't worry, that section is optional.
Just skip it and go down to the next section labelled Registration.
Related
An app being used for COVID-19 exposure notifications is asking for access to location services. The developers claim that location services must be enabled for BLE to work in this context. I'm not an iOS developer, but I am having trouble finding if this is accurate or not. This app does not use the Apple API for exposure notification, but it does use the same methodology. To work, the app must be able to scan for other BLE devices at all times, and there is some older discussion I found that indicates that MIGHT be the reason for requiring location services permission.
I'm hoping to create a BLE advertisement on iOS where I can control the advertisement on a byte level.
One use case would be to mimic an iBeacon advertisement. What is the iBeacon Bluetooth Profile (I want to advertise while my app is in the background which is why I'm not using CoreLocation)
I do not see a way to do this with the Core Bluetooth API. Is this correct? Are there alternatives using private API's or jailbreaking?
As the others already pointed out, there is no API on iOS that allows you to do this.
You can advertise as an iBeacon, but only when your app is in the foreground. When in background, the advertisement is removed and therefore cannot be discovered anymore (except for other iOS devices which explicitly scan for that service UUID). Also see the documentation here: Core Bluetooth Background Processing
If you would share your use case and what you want to achieve, maybe there are other ways to realise it.
My experience with iOS is that if it is something is not exposed in the API, there is no way around, except jailbreaking. For Bluetooth low energy the API is at GAP/GATT level, and very little at the lower levels (if anything) is exposed. Advertising is a LL (link layer) feature.
To illustrate how restricted the access is: When scanning for BLE devices you will not have access to the advertiser's MAC address iOS. In Android you have it.
I do not see a way to do this with the Core Bluetooth API. Is this
correct?
Since you have to set Manufacture Specific Data in order to achieve this, if nothing has changed you will experience exactly the same issue that I did. Explained here:
The advertisement key 'Manufacturer Data' is not allowed in CoreBluetooth
It is not possible.
If beacons are only broadcasters and they can not communicate with iPhone or other devices, How come companies like Estimote, Bluecats provide configurable parameters like Advertising Interval,Broadcasting power etc reflects the change on its battery life.
In recent update they are also providing parameters like smart battery saving and basic battery saving ?
General answer followed by technical terms will be appreciated.
Bluetooth beacons typically implement broadcast-only standards like iBeacon, AltBeacon or Eddystone which use Bluetooth LE advertising with no two-way communication as you suggest.
However, there is nothing in these standards that says that a hardware device that acs as a beacon can't implement two-way communication for other purposes. And that's exactly what most manufacturers do. They implement a custom GATT service that allows read-write access to configuration parameters inside the beacon. This allows an iPhone, Android device, Mac or Windows PC to make a read-write connection to the beacon device and set parameters like advertising interval as well as the beacon identifiers.
You can see an example of such a GATT service in Google's Eddystone Configuration Service.. This is an attempt to standardize the way you configure Eddystone beacons across manufacturers. Similar non-standard GATT configuration services are used by manufacturers supporting the iBeacon format. Some manufacturers publish these GATT service APIs and some do not, keeping the APIs private only for use inside their configuration apps.
I have currently bought a Qualcomm Gimbal Beacon device. But when I added my device at Gimbal's developer site it shows that the firmware and battery level is unknown.
I don't know whether my device has been added or not and I also don't know how to detect my gimbal beacon through my iOS app.
Any help will be great. Thanks in advance.
If the beacons listed under your Gimbal Developer Account show unknown values for the firmware and battery levels that means your phone isn't communicating with the beacons. I suspect it has to do with the way the application being built has been configured with the Gimbal SDK or the sample app wasn't setup to work with your Gimbal Developer Account.
Once everything is configured correctly then when your phone comes in proximity of a Gimbal beacon it will capture everything about that beacon and then send it to Gimbal's backend service. The end result will be the correct status of the firmware and battery levels on your Gimbal Developer Account.
I suggest using the various Gimbal surveying tools available for download on their website to detect beacon signals, measuring effective ranges, etc. You will likely use them quite a bit to do proper surveying. Granted, you could always bake this functionality into your own app if desired.
Is it possible to discover Gimbal beacons using the iOS SDK? I want to use simple ranging but I don't know the UUID of the transmitter.
YES, you can use Gimbals as iBeacons. You have to re-configure it using iBeacon configuration.
Login to Gimbal website, create an account if you don't have one.
https://proximity.gimbal.com/
Open Proximity tab. Click on Manage Configuration button at the top and create new configuration, select iBeacon as beacon type, assign UUID, major and minor. You can choose any UUID you'd like.
Now register your Gimbal beacon, and select your new configuration. You must open the beacon to get to the Factory ID that is required to register.
Download Gimbal manager app for iPhone, open it, select "Configure" option. Open Gimbal and remove battery, put the batter back in, and you should see your beacon in the Gimbal Manager app, click the Update button.
That's it, now you your Gimbal is in iBeacon mode.
If anyone interested, I found this useful post on http://beekn.net/2013/12/inside-gimbal-qualcomm-beacons-tackle-bluetooth-le-challenges/:
Actually, you can’t sniff the iBeacon UUID as Gimbal use their own implementation for their beacons. They use BLE to transmit encrypted IDs that change with each broadcast, so it needs to validate with the SDK / API to confirm which beacon ID this ties up to.
update: davidyoung is right. There is some info that I skipped in Gimbal's documentation:
If your application's use case requires you to use iBeacon technology, the Gimbal Series 20 beacon can be configured to broadcast iBeacon compatible BLE packets. To learn how to configure a beacon to be iBeacon compatible please read the Proximity Quickstart Guide. The Proximity framework makes it very easy to use both iBeacons and Gimbal beacons from the SDK and lets you manage them through the Gimbal Manager Portal.
Interesting - I recently received a reply from Radius Networks that said ScanBeacon cannot identify Gimbal beacons - at least that's how I read it..
"Scanbeacon should display any device that is transmitting an ibeacon advertisement.
We have had several reports that the little blue beacons that Qualcomm has been making available are not showing up with ScanBeacon.
Our own investigation into these units is that they are not advertising the iBeacon identifiers.
There may be some configuration or other steps that need to be taken that we are not aware of.
But the out-of-the-box state of the Qualcomm beacons appears to be no iBeacon advertisement."
To use iOS, you will need to know the UUID.
There are some other options that do not require knowledge of the UUID.
If you have an Android device w/ 4.3 or later and support for BT4.0, you can use the free Locate application at the following link. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.radiusnetworks.locate
If you have a Mac w 10.9 or higher and support for BT4.0, you can use the ScanBeacon app ($9.99) available on the Mac App Store or at this link. http://www.radiusnetworks.com/scanbeacon-app.html
Good luck, and make sure you report back your findings to rest of the community!
David
Full Disclosure: My colleagues just firmly reminded me that I'm misbehaving by not noting that I work for Radius Networks, who provides the tools listed above, and am the developer of the second tool listed, ScanBeacon.