I want to develop a mobile app that listens for broadcasts by a BLE device. My idea generally is patterned on the game "I spy".
In a room full of objects, there should be a numerous Bluetooth beacons. The beacons will have a button and when the button is pressed, it would send a broadcast. One person goes in the room to solve the puzzle so there won't be the need to consider if the broadcast reaches multiple phones.
When the button is pressed, the app should check the clue given and read the corresponding beacon's ID and then alert the user whether they're correct or not.
I would like this to happen without having the user's phone pair with all BLE beacons.
For the beacon, i'm thinking to use something along the lines of an Adafruit LE Friend or flora wearable. This would be soldered to a CR 2025 or similar battery. Do I also need an Arduino or can this be standalone?
I'm thinking that it could be standalone but I have no experience here
For your use case, the flora wearable is the more suitable choice because you can just solder a battery to it and get it to work (the Adafruit LE Friend requires a PC as it is a USB dongle). You will need to do some reading on basic Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) concepts, and I recommend that you focus on the following:-
Advertising/Broadcasting: This is what your BLE peripherals such as the flora will be doing. These devices will be sending adverts when a button is pressed or a command is sent.
Scanning/Observing: This is what the app developed on mobile phones will do. Your apps will be continuously scanning for those LE adverts and display relevant information to users when those adverts are read.
Luckily these are relatively easy BLE concepts and there are already many examples for both advertising and scanning.
For more resources, I recommend having a look at the following:-
Bluetooth Low Energy: A Primer
Getting Started with Bluetooth Low Energy
Introduction to BLE
I hope this helps.
Related
I am trying to find informations about IBeacons, plus bluetooth Dash Buttons and google delivers contradictory results.
Is there a IBeacon's with an button to click. And an interface on the connected device to react on the click event?
I need if possible to have the proximity and click event.
Is this even possible with IBeacons/BLE specifications?
All kind of informations are welcome.
Thanks
IoT buttons like Amazon Dash and Bluetooth LE beacons like iBeacon have fundamental differences:
Amazon Dash connects to the internet over WiFi to make a web service call on button press, and requires configuration with your WiFi network. Other IoT buttons work similarly, although some connect to the internet via a nearby mobile device using Bluetooth. You must write some code and deploy it to a cloud server to do something whenever somebody taps the button.
Bluetooth LE beacons like iBeacon are transmit only Bluetooth LE devices that do not connect to the internet, but simply sent out a bluetooth packet with a unique identifier. These devices are much simpler, and rely on another bluetooth-enabled computer within 40 meters to be listening (typically a mobile phone). You must write an app on the mobile phone then does something when it detects the beacon transmission is detected.
Most Bluetooth LE beacons are always transmitting, although it is possible to buy ones that are click-on click-off like the RadBeacon Dot. This could provide similar functionality to a Amazon Dash if a mobile app is running nearby that can forward the detection to a similar cloud sever as used for an Amazon Dash solution.
I am developing a solution where, Fixed BLE beacon detects a moving BLE device and sends the relevant data to the server using wifi/ethernet/etc. All the examples I have found have BLE beacons talking to the mobile phone which in my case isnt true. AFIK an embedded systems engineer can configure the fixed beacon to send data to server. BUT is there any ready to use solution that lets the beacon connect to backend? Thanks.
You mention having a "[f]ixed BLE beacon [detect] a moving BLE device". Understand that this is very different from the way an Apple-style BLE iBeacon works, which is a transmit only device. (I mention this because the question is tagged with ibeacon.)
What you are describing is probably better described as either a beacon scanner or a BLE scanner. My company has a Raspberry Pi-based product that can scan for beacons and take programmatic action based on detections. We have a blog post about how to make a beacon turn on a lamp using this device, but you could just as easily make it contact a server when a BLE device is detected.
I'm having the hardest time to get the solution of the following problem.
Main issue:
Several smartphones(up to 30) must communicate with a MCU at the same time.
System overview:
There are many rooms(each room is a cabinet that 30 people can go into), and every cabinet will have one MCU for the smartphone users.
MCU will control some device of the cabinet.
The scenario of this system is as follows:
1. The users go into the cabinet.
2. Smartphone app will recognize the MCU(or MCU will recognize the smartphone) and the MCU will send some data to the smartphone and this data will be noticed to the user.
3. User inputs some data at the smartphone app and this data will be sent to the MCU to control the cabinet device.
4. Up to 30 people can go into the cabinet at the same time and the system should handle all the users simultaneously.
I'm going to develop smartphone application and MCU firmware for this system.
My thought:
I'm thinking to use Arduino/RFduino/Raspberry Pi as MCU and I'm thinking to use Bluetooth LE/Wifi/3G as communication material.
I've tried the following solutions
1. Using bluetooth low energy on Arduino/RFduino/Raspberry Pi.
MCU will be BLE peripheral and my smartphone app will be BLE central.
But I found that a BLE peripheral can only be connected to a BLE central at the same time so I can't use this method.
2. Using wifi on Raspberry Pi
I think that Raspberry Pi can run web service and my smartphone app can communicate with the server through http.
But every time the smartphone user go into the Raspberry Pi based wifi-zone, the user should select the wifi-hotspot at the network setting if he registered this wifi already, and the user should register the wifi-hotspot if this is the first time at the wifi-zone(cabinet).
This is very inconvenient for the users so can't be used for me.
3. Using 3G network on Raspberry Pi
Unfortunately, there's no 3G signal in the cabinet so I can't use this method.
I'm looking forward your kind answer.
Any hints or comments will be welcome.
Thanks for your attention.
Thanks for your answer in advance.
Toltori Kim
Well... I'd go with wifi. And QR codes.
I'd make either a single wifi network for all the cabinets (so only one set of credentials, or even an open one - without security) and then the app can connect to the raspberries using a sort of authentication (where the credentials are written in a QR code inside the cabinet) or a wifi network for each cabinet and its credentials are written in a QR code.
I'd use the first one, maybe without security. So the user has just to go in the cabinet, connect to the common wifi, make a photo at the qr code and then can use the RPi
I am making an android application that requires me to detect the user's motion.
My application also requires me to use an external sensor, which is a Bluetooth smart sensor, for some other purposes.
Now I have two options:
to use the accelerometer and gyrometer of the android phone
fetch motion information from the bluetooth smart sensor.
I understand that Bluetooth Smart (ble) is more energy efficient than Bluetooth sensors.
However, I am confused as to which of the above options will provide me a more energy efficient solution on the Android device. EDIT: I am presently not concerned with the energy efficiency of the bluetooth device.
Also, please see that I want this comparison only because I don't want to detect accurate user motion, otherwise an external device(bluetooth low energy device) would have been better hands down.
The accelerometer and gyrometer will take roughly the same amount of power whether it's on the phone or the external device. The difference is the external device has to transmit that information over a radio signal to the phone. It makes more sense to just use the Phone's existing information if that's sufficient because it won't require any radio transmissions and will require less power. Also, the phone will have a much larger battery.
The sensors on the phone have nothing to do with Bluetooth... they're incorporated right into the hardware.
EDIT: The difference between Bluetooth and BLE is that BLE uses the radio much more sparingly. Radio transmissions take a good chunk of power. So, using on-board sensors is going to (most likely) take far less power than using a radio to communicate with an external sensor. Also, I have a feeling that the accelerometers are always on on the cellphone so getting readings from those is going to take no more power than is already being used, too.
So what is the easiest way to get started? There are so many options available it's hard to decide, from a beginner's standpoint, which is the best.
What is the best option for simple wireless communication? That is, communication from a controller to move a robot, or from an arduino to relay information back to a computer for processing.
Drawing from your experiences, what's the 'best' option in your opinion?
Bluetooth would be the most flexible, however I believe xbee to be the easiest. Software wise xbee is exactly the same as serial an even allows for wireless reprogramming and the higher end ones have some serious range.
Bluetooth can be easy if you have a Bluetooth device you're trying to talk to (e.g. Mac-book or Smartphone). The problem is that Bluetooth radios for the the Arduino are still (in 2013) expensive. A Bluetooth radio usually costs more than an Arduino! Low Power Bluetooth may be an option as well. Essentially, Bluetooth is a simple serial transfer of data so you have to create your own protocol on both sides.
Bluetooth Low Energy BLEis an emerging technology and is available on some new devices (recent iPads, macbooks etc: Supoorted Devices ), this may or may not meet your requirements.