By Heather Downing

1. Building Location-Aware
Mobile Apps
with iBeacons
Heather Downing

2. About Me
I’m passionate about building great products that make people’s lives easier. I
have experience developing full stack projects for small startups to Fortune 500
companies.
I grew up in California, am an avid horse archer, and completely obsessed with
Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and guacamole.

3. Skills & expertise
ASP.NET
Mobile
Development
SQL
HTML,
CSS,JS

4. What is iBeacon?

5. iBeacon is a communication
protocol developed by Apple on top of
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology.
It allows developers to create mobile
apps aware of location context provided
by beacons.

10. What devices can
see iBeacon
broadcasts?
Apple devices running iOS 8+
Bluetooth 4.0 devices that
support dual mode, which
includes Android and Windows
devices.

11. How have beacons been used?

12. Guided Museum Tour

13. Sports Complex Information

14. Monitoring People

15. Shopping Rewards Experience

19. What is the anatomy of
a beacon?

20. iBeacon identifier
Every iBeacon ID is 20 bytes long
and is divided into three sections:
● UUID (16 bytes)
● Major number (2 bytes)
● Minor number (2 bytes)

21. Region
monitoring

22. Region
monitoring
Actions triggered on
entering/exiting region’s range
Works no matter whether the
app is running, suspended, or
killed
If the app is not running when
an enter/exit even comes,
iOS will launch it into the
background for a few seconds
to handle the event

24. Region
monitoring
Limitations
iOS limits the number of regions an app
can be monitoring at once to 20
It only recognizes enter/exit events, and
provides no information about which exact
beacon triggered the event
It's not as responsive as ranging. Whereas
ranging reports changes in beacons
detected in range within seconds,
monitoring's responsiveness varies as a
result of using low-power scanning.
Exit event is always delayed at least 30
seconds, to avoid false positives

25. Ranging

26. Ranging
Actions triggered based on
proximity to a beacon
Works only when the app is
running (e.g., it's displayed on
screen, or running in the
background in response to a
monitoring event, etc.)
It returns a list of beacons in
range, together with an estimated
proximity to each of them.

28. Ranging
Limitations
Power consumption is high and could have
performance implications
iOS only allows background ranging for
short periods of time (3 minutes)
If you’re planning to use the "location"
background mode to do long-term ranging
without a major user benefit (for example
just to track user’s movements for your
analytics—i.e., you're the beneficiary, not
the user), you will most certainly have your
app rejected by Apple for the App Store.

29. How precise are beacons?

30. What are the characteristics of beacon's signal?
There’s a handful of terms that will help you better understand how beacons work.
Most of them describe signal characteristics and the way beacons communicate
with mobile devices:
● Proximity Zones
● Broadcasting Power
● Advertising Interval
● RSSI
● Measured Power

31. Proximity zones
iBeacon defines four proximity zones for estimating distance to a beacon:
● Immediate (very close to the beacon)
● Near (about 1-3 m from the beacon)
● Far (further away or the signal is fluctuating too much to make an estimate)
● Unknown
Keep in mind that the zones are fixed.
You cannot adjust their size or sensitivity.

33. Broadcasting Power (Loudness)
This directly impacts signal range. The more power, the longer the range. The
value ranges depend on the manufacturer, but roughly this what you expect:
Whisper: -23 dBm
Mutter: -20 dBm
Talk: -17 dBm
Shout: -10 dBm
Scream: 0 dBm

34. Advertising Interval
Beacons do not broadcast constantly. They ‘blink’ instead. Advertising Interval
describes the time between each blink.
The value ranges between 100 ms and 2000 ms.
Keep in mind that adjusting Advertising Interval will impact battery life in a big
way.
The shorter the interval, the more stable the signal.

35. RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator)
The strength of the beacon's signal as seen on the receiving device, such as a
smartphone.
The further away the device is from the beacon, the more unstable the RSSI
becomes.
Due to external factors influencing radio waves—such as absorption, interference,
or diffraction—RSSI tends to fluctuate.

36. Measured Power
Measured Power is a factory-calibrated, read-only constant which indicates what's
the expected RSSI at a distance of 1 meter to the beacon.
Combined with RSSI, it allows to estimate the distance between the device and the
beacon.

37. Does iBeacon work on Android?

38. YES!
*Android version 4.3+
*Android device must have a Bluetooth LE chipset
*Need a third party library bundled with your app or you need to roll your own code
to decode Bluetooth LE advertisements to read beacon identifiers

39. DEMO

40. Best Practices

41. Use them for what
they do best

42. Use them for what
they do best
Good at proximity gating

43. Use them for what
they do best
Good at proximity gating
Don’t be overly ambitious about
accuracy

44. Use them for what
they do best
Good at proximity gating
Don’t be overly ambitious about
accuracy
Best for signal strength under 25ft

45. Use brands that
provide cloud
management

46. Use brands that
provide cloud
management
Monitor battery life

47. Use brands that
provide cloud
management
Monitor battery life
Plan on the ability to swap out battery
power at any time

48. Use brands that
provide cloud
management
Monitor battery life
Plan on the ability to swap out battery
power at any time
Adjust signal strength remotely

49. Keep things simple to
produce consistency

50. Keep things simple to
produce consistency
Focus on a flow that makes sense
and can be reliable and repeatable

51. Keep things simple to
produce consistency
Focus on a flow that makes sense
and can be reliable and repeatable
Consider environmental factors that
can disrupt line of sight

52. Keep things simple to
produce consistency
Focus on a flow that makes sense
and can be reliable and repeatable
Consider environmental factors that
can disrupt line of sight
Test in a room full of people

53. Questions?

54. Stay curious.
Heather Downing
@quorralyne
quorralyne@gmail.com
www.quorralyne.com
DigitalLightCycle.blogspot.com