I'm having some major problems with iBeacons.
I can't figure out at all how I control the distance that triggers some sort of event (like the notification). I'm only allowed to send notification when i enter or exit region but i'd like to send notification when i'm near or immediate/
Where am I missing these things in the documentation ?
Thx !
The short answer is that you can't. Beacons enter the region as soon as the beacon is detected.
What you can do is to turn on both enter/exit notifications AND beacon ranging. Then in your app's handler for locationManager:didRangeBeacons:inRegion: you can either use the proximity property (far/near/immedate) or use the "Accuracy" reading (which is really a badly named approximate distance reading.)
You would ignore the ranging notices until you decide the user is close enough.
However, there's a big problem with this. If your app is in the background, you get a didEnterRegion notice, followed by about 5 seconds of ranging message. Then the ranging messages stop and your app goes back to sleep. After those 5 seconds you won't get any more notifications about that region until the user exits it.
Related
I am implementing the IOS application with swift 3.0 which can monitor nearby beacons. I have an issue relating didRangeBeacon function, Detail reproduces steps below:
1- Application has entered beacon region
2- beacon is turned off
3- In next 10 seconds, didRangeBeacon function is still called and response still has one beacon object.
So I can not recognize beacon is off immediately. How can I recognize beacon is off immediately?
In case of iBeacon, the area is defined by the range of one or more beacons. This allows more granularity and precision than regular geofencing—the latter being based on a mix of signals from cell towers, WiFi and GPS. Beacon geofences are also more responsive: “enter” events usually take up to a few seconds to trigger, “exit” events up to 30 seconds. (Regular geofences take “3 to 5 minutes on average”, according to the CLLocationManager’s documentation.)
Testing “enter” events involves making sure you’re “outside” the region. Enabling “flip to sleep” makes it easy to simulate going out of range. “Enter” events take up to a few seconds to trigger, while “exit” events take up to 30 seconds.
Region monitoring is pretty slow, you can use it for more general notification to let you know. You can use this signal strength to decide if you no longer see the beacon (CoreLocation tends to still "see" the beacon a few seconds after it disapears).
For a specific business case, I would like to trigger proximity-based notification (push or UILocalNotification) by leveraging the iBeacon technology.
This is aimed to work while the app is in background/lockscreen.
I have some specific constraints :
The product has to scale at a certain level so it's not possible to range 20 regions. We will range on one UUID only (maybe 2 or 3 if we develop new set of features, but we will not register a region per physical beacon)
We will use the major and minor to call webservices
Regarding this, I know I will have to use the following approach : first didEnterRegion: with no prior information on the major/minor/distance, and then didRangeBeacon: to perform more advanced actions.
I already use local storage mechanisms to timeout a beacon after he has been used considering the fast beaming rate of beacons.
* The major constraints : we have to region events regarding to the distance of the beacon (exemple, only trigger the notification if CLProximityImmediate)
Now I see a major limitation. As my app will only range in background for a few seconds after it entered in a region, if I had constraints based on the distance/proximity, it is very possible that the app will:
return to background state before the user get close enough from the physical beacon for the event to be triggered
never be triggered again because it has to enter the region to range again, which will probably not happen
Do you have any ideas / work around for such a case ?
You are absolutely correct on the limitations CoreLocation applies in this use case. If you set it up as you describe, the typical behavior will be that the app will detect the beacon in the background at an unknown distance (often the max range of around 50 meters), range in the background for about 5 secs, then the app will be suspended by iOS. That five seconds of ranging time will typically not be enough for the user to get near enough to the beacon to trigger your use case.
Unfortunately, there are no easy workarounds with standard beacons and CoreLocation. CLBeaconRegion objects do not have a distance field like CLCircularRegion does for geofences.
Two more extreme approaches you might try:
Turn off monitoring of your one region as soon as you detect the device is too far away, then re-enable it right as your app suspends itself in the applicationWillResignActive: callback. You might get a new entry event and more background ranging time.
Use nonstandard beacons that periodically stop their transmissions to trigger forced exit/entry events.
I have been working on a prototype iOS app utilizing iBeacons to provide location-relevant information to office employees depending on where in the office they are. The ideal use case is that whenever an employee enters or exits their office, a callback is fired which provides them some information in the form of a notification (it might make a server query to get information first, etc - that sort of thing). We also want to be able to do this when the app is backgrounded or terminated; fortunately, we already know that beacon region boundary crossings trigger the appropriate CoreLocation callbacks even if the app is backgrounded or suspended.
From looking around, I understand that broadly, I have two options for how to approach the beacon region monitoring:
Give each iBeacon its own CLBeaconRegion, and monitor for each of these regions independently.
Monitor for CLBeaconRegions that correspond to multiple iBeacons - for example, each iBeacon has the same UUID and only monitor for a CLBeaconRegion corresponding to that UUID - then try to determine which beacon triggered the boundary crossing using ranging.
Thus far, I had chosen option #1. The advantage of this approach is that I get didEnterRegion: and didExitRegion: calls for each individual beacon and immediately know which beacon I have entered/exited. Also, I only get one enter call and one exit call, which is exactly what I want. Unfortunately, I just realized that this approach also limits me to 20 beacons (since each beacon gets its own region).
I'm not as familiar with the exact implementation details of #2, so correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems that this approach has more drawbacks:
Apple discourages ranging when the app is in the background because the results may not be as accurate.
The ranging calls fire once every second, while I only want to have "enter/exit" callbacks.
If the beacons have region overlap, the ranging calls might continually flip which one is "closest", which would further complicate things.
Basically, I'm wondering if there is a way to utilize option #2, but still have the benefits of option #1 - a quick and easy way to immediately determine which beacon triggered the region change with only one enter or exit callback?
I hope this question is clear enough. It's not all entirely clear in my own head, especially how ranging works.
Option #2 is absolutely more complicated, but you must accept these complications in order to get around the 20 region monitoring limit.
A few points:
In the background, you only have around 5 seconds of ranging time, which does not give you as much time to average RSSI (signal strength) from each beacon to get a good distance estimate. So, yes, the estimates will be less accurate. If you understand this limitation and can live with it for your use case, there is nothing wrong with ranging in the background.
Yes, you will get multiple ranging calls per beacon after region entry, and you won't get any callbacks on region exit. You have to write extra code to take care of this. I have done this by maintaining a NSMutableArray of all the unique beacons (same uuid/major/minor) seen and update it in the ranging callback. You can then access this array in the region exit callback, so you know which beacons disappeared. Of course, it is possible that additional beacons were seen after the 5 seconds of background ranging time expires, but your app will never know about them. With this option, you must accept this limitation.
While it is true that errors on the distance estimate in ranging may incorrectly tell you which beacon is closest, you have an even worse problem when doing monitoring, because you don't get a distance estimate at all. If multiple beacons come into monitoring range around the same time, there is no guarantee that the first entered region callback you get will be for the closest beacon. So if your use case requires taking action based on the closest beacon, then you must do ranging (knowing that there may be error on the distance estimate.)
The drawback of the second approach is detecting the entry of a particular beacon will be purely based on ranging, that will not work if the application is killed. The reason is we will get didEnterRegion only once, because we are monitoring only one region with a particular UID. The next beacon with same UID will not be detected again if the application is terminated or if the background ranging stopped.
I recommend a combination of the mentioned approaches ,
Use same UID for all the beacons.
A beacon is uniquely identified using major/minor value that is collected when ranging.
As mentioned in apple doc, always keep number of monitoring regions below 20 by removing and adding beacons when the user moves from beacon to beacon (better to keep a beacon neighbour relationship graph in the server.)
Start ranging when entering the region ... and identify major/minor and calculate proximity.
Stop ranging when exiting the region.
Find the closest beacon from ranging method (need to skip unknown range beacons).
Monitor only the neighbours of the closest beacon in a given time.
When implementing both options, We should consider one fact, An iBeacon will be detected in 200feet distance. There may be multiple beacons in 200feet range.
If you use the same UUID for every beacon, you can just set the major/minor numbers to differentiate between the different beacons. This way, you are only monitoring for 1 beacon instead of > 20. Then just sort out which one is which from the other identifiers. This is how it works currently with Starbucks and other retailer apps. 1 beacon no matter where you are in the world, and different identifiers to sort things out on the back end.
I am working on an iPhone app that notifies a user when he enters in the region of an iBeacon.
I have a few question regarding the same:
From documents:
Monitoring launches app when entered in the region of iBeacon being
monitored.
But the behavior is:
It only works when phone is awakened i.e. When display is turned on.
But when app is not running and display is off nothing happens same is the case when display is on and user enters in the region of the beacon.
Is it possible to launch application when users enter/exits the region even when display is off or on not just when phone is awakened?
I checked this iBeacon Notification when the app is not running link, which shows it is possible. I am monitoring an iBeacon but not able to get the expected behavior. Am I missing something??
Any help is appreciated.
Yes, you can get notified on entering a region in the background. This will happen as long as:
The app has been opened at least once
The user did not kill the app directly (by quitting the process, not just dismissing it)
Now understanding how it behaves a a little more nuanced.
At my company we've done a fair amount of research on this. In fact a colleague of mine wrote a great blog post about the behavior: iBeacon Monitoring in the Background and Foreground.
What was unexpected was how long it can take to get a didEnterRegion in the background:
Condition Max time to detect a region change
-------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------
Phone awakened,notifyEntryStateOnDisplay=YES 1 second
Phone awakened, notifyEntryStateOnDisplay=NO NEVER
UIBackgroundModes=location ON up to 15 minutes
UIBackgroundModes=location OFF up to 15 minutes
There are a couple of properties you can set on a CLBeaconRegion to alter when your app will be notified about a change to the user's location in relation to that region:
notifyOnEntry - you will be notified via locationManager:didEnterRegion: when the user enters the region
notifyOnExit - you will be notified via locationManager:didExitRegion: when the user exits the region
notifyEntryStateOnDisplay - you will be notified via locationManager:didDetermineState:forRegion: when the user wakes their device's screen up and they are inside the region
Note that you must completely exit a region before didEnterRegion: is called again, and sometimes it can take a minute or more for the device to properly register that you have left a region. Because a beacon can broadcast up to 30 or 50 meters (or perhaps more), you either have to move a long way away from a beacon to leave a region or otherwise turn the beacons off , wait for a minute or so, and then back on to trigger a change.
This question is about when the Application is in background
I got a Application which works with 2 iBeacons (same UUID, same Major, different minor ).
The first iBeacon (minor 1) is for example for the Door. When the App is in the Background i get a Notification that i enter the region. This works fine. And now, for example, i walk in the Store and at some Point is the second iBeacon (minor 2).
If i'm in the immediate Zone of the second iBeacon, the Application should fire a notification. ("Hey you're at the cashpoint").
But i read that's not possible when the Applikation is in the Background. It only works when i hit the shoulder button or home button.
http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/11/13/ibeacon-monitoring-in-the-background-and-foreground.html
So the Question: Can anybody give me a hint how to implement this use case.
Several things:
When you create a beacon region, you can either match on just the UUID, the UUID and major value, or the UUID, major AND minor value.
If you specify just the UUID, your beacon enter/exit notices will not include major/minor value information.
Likewise, if you create a region with a UUID and major but not minor value, your beacon enter/exit messages will include the UUID of the beacon and the major, but not the minor, value.
The simplest thing to do is to create a separate region for reach unique beacon you're tracking. Then you'll get separate enter/exit notices for each beacon.
If you want multiple beacons to be part of the same region, but report different major or major/minor values, you have to turn on beacon ranging and wait for a ranging call. In the ranging call you'll get an array of beacon objects (not beacon region objects, CLBeacon objects) for all beacons that match the current region. The beacon objects will include the actual UUID, major, and minor for that beacon.
If you are in the background and have both beacon monitoring and ranging turned on, you'll get an didEnterRegion message (or maybe a changed state message) followed by several seconds of ranging information, and then your app will go back to sleep.
When your app is in the background, your only real option is to display a local notification and hope the user wakes your app again. If the user swipes that notice, the system prompts the user for unlock credentials if needed, and then takes the user back to your app.