Is it possible to find an accurate position of a person in a room using multiple Bluetooth beacons set up around the room through proximity detection? I've done some research and it says it is difficult to detect proximity with a Bluetooth sensor but can I overcome this through using multiple Bluetooth beacons? The point is you can use multiple Bluetooth beacons to triangulate positions and we'll be developing an iOS app that dictates the user (blind or disabled) where obstacles are. I'm wondering if this idea is doable and am curious how I can achieve accurate proximity sensing with Bluetooth beacons.
Thank you.
For anyone who thinks of this idea in the future:
Bluetooth really isn't ideal but there can be other ways such as using
other types of sensors.
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I am working on app which used to detect beacons in iOS device using objective c. I have successfully done the scanning of beacons using core bluetooth and core location framework i.e did range beacons which provides an array of scanned beacons.
Case - I have to discard beacon scanned which are of distance more than 10 meters. So I have used RSSI value for that and calculated distance using formula and not considering beacons above that distance.
Problem - did range beacon is not providing the beacons distance more than 5-6 meters sometimes it provide around 8 meter beacon also.
Question - is there any specific range after that iOS discard the scanned beacons automatically?
It is not unusual for mobile devices to not be able to detect beacons beyond 8-10 meters. This has nothing to do with the operating system and is caused by the radio signal level falling below the noise floor as detected by the receiver.
The maximum distance a beacon can be detected is typically 40-50 meters in ideal clear line of sight conditions, but this also relies on the bluetooth transmitter being set to the maximum radio signal level allowed by international regulations, and the transmitter's antenna being directed generally toward the receiver.
It also relies on the receiving mobile device having it's antenna oriented toward the beacon transmitter and not blocked by a case or other radio obstruction.
Typically conditions you describe are caused by a beacon transmitting a signal far weaker than allowed by law. This may be adjusted on some models. Check the instructions from the beacon manufacturer.
Some mobile device.models have poor Bluetooth receiver antennas, although Apple devices are generally good. (Huawei Android devices are notoriously poor receivers.). If in doubt, try another device.
is there a way to show the beacon direction as an arrow point the direction to the beacon? I know it is possible to change the color according to the proximity of the beacon but what I need is a direction to find the beacon.
You can't do this just with one beacon as all you have is the received signal strength (RSSI). The Determining Location Using Bluetooth Beacons article explains more and references a paper that shows a workaround that might help when using just one beacon.
Sorry, you cannot get direction to a Bluetooth beacon. A Bluetooth receiver on a mobile phone is omni-directional. It works much like an old-fashioned AM radio. You can get some idea how far away a radio station is by how much static you hear, but there is no way to know which way the transmitter is by standing still and listening.
The paper that #Simon-Judge mentions in his answer basically suggests it could be possible to figure out roughly which way the transmitter is by spinning around in place and measuring signal. To take the AM radio analogy, this is similar to pointing the antenna in each direction in 180 degrees to see where it picks up the signal best. While this might work with some degree of success, it certainly isn't going to plot an arrow on the screen for the direction of the beacon.
I am a student,and I am developing an iOS App to track indoor position.
My idea is that from a given reference point (a known position), using inertial sensors in my iphone(such as accelerometer,Gyro,etc) track the phone when moving. And display on a indoor map（a simple indoor plan）when the user is going.
But the problem is that i have no idea how to combine these sensors to give me an actual position?
Does someone has some experience that he can share with me about indoor positioning system using inertial sensors?
Thank you so much.
One Solution is to use Bluetooth Beacons
They connect to your iPhone's Bluetooth and based on their signal strengh you can estimate the distance to each one of them, so you can estimate your indoor position.
read more: Indoor Positioning
I want to locate an object position inside a house( one floor).
The object will have a iBeacon on it.
What are the best approach.
With api, i can get distance from the iBeacon, but this doesn't reflect position.
One idea was to have 4 fixed iBeacon on the floor, but seem's i can't get the distance from the moving iBeacon to a fixed.
Any idea?
iBeacon isn't the right technology for this - at least not with a single receiver.
iBeacon only gives you an approximate distance. If you have multiple beacons in known locations then you can try and triangulate the receiver's position but you can't use this information to determine the location of another transmitter in an unknown location - only estimate its distance from the receiver.
Even using known, fixed transmitters it is difficult to locate the receiver with any accuracy due to the nature of the Bluetooth signals.
If you had multiple iBeacon receivers on the floor at known locations then it might be possible to determine the location of the transmitter.
I'm wanting to know if what I want to do is even possible and if there is a good practise that I should follow.
For my experiment I have a collection bluetooth low energy beacons laid on the ground with each projecting out their own BLE signal. Each of these signals is getting read in by a fourth device that takes the corresponding RSSI value and uses it to determine it's position within the area.
Following this I now want each of my beacons that are laid on the ground to know the distances that separate them from each other. So my questions are as follows:
Is it possible to have the beacons on the ground broadcast different signals using two different UUID values?
Can a beacons both read and broadcast a signal at the same time? By that I mean the beacons will still be sending out their initial signal being read in by my fourth device whilst also reading in the distance value from their fellow broadcasting beacons on the ground.
I'm not sure if I've done a good job at describing what it is I'm wanting so I've (terribly) drew a picture in order to show what I want do and describe what I've got so far.
Key:
Black dots are my beacons on the floor
Green dot is my reader that finds its distance from the floor beacons. On the green dot is another app that is projecting out a BLE signal which the floor beacons are reading.
Purple line is the BLE signal being sent out from my reader device.
Yellow line is the RSSI value showing the beacons distance from the BLE signal being projected
Blue line (this is the key to this post) is meant to represent the beacons projecting and reading their own BLE signal so they can find their distance from each other.
Green line is then each beacon sending its distance from the other beacons to the reader.
At this point Bluetooth Smart-only devices currently do not support simultaneous peripheral/central mode.
What I would suggest is using the nRF51922 which supports concurrent BLE/ANT.
ANT is fully capable of doing this functionality for you as it supports all kinds of topologies, and you can relay your final information over BLE, or go with an nRF51422 and stay ANT only, I believe all latest Sony and Samsung devices support ANT anyway so it might be enough for you.
You can read more about it at http://www.thisisant.com