March 2017

Have you heard about beacons?  Beacon technology is based on the action of sending data between a transmitter and a smartphone or tablet with an installed app that enables receiving signals. Beacons can be compared to lighthouses, but instead of sending light they send radio waves to all applicable receivers nearby.  They are small computers charged by a coin battery, equipped with an accelerometer and a temperature sensor.  When users walk next to a beacon device, their smartphones get notifications personalized by the beacon’s owner.  This system allows sending only small data pieces and has some limits (eg. you can’t transfer music or video material).  Because beacons can recognize their proximity to nearby devices, they can adjust messages to the location of signal receiver. What opportunities do beacons give you? Beacons can be comprehensively used.  But the most popular way that people use beacons

A Beacon is a small gadget that consistently sends out radio signals to any nearby tablets and/or smartphones, containing a small amount of data using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).  The signal strength and time between each signal can be  set up to give a desired coverage.  Mobile apps can listen for the signals being broadcast and, wen they hear a relevant signal, can trigger an action on your phone.  Note that Beacons only work or communicate in one direction (they broadcast data but cannot read things from off your phone). For the majority of current Beacons, the data that they broadcast is hard coded and doesn’t change frequently (which means when configuring the Beacon it’s set only once).  Beacons rely on the device which is listening to do something intelligent with the data – this is likely to start changing in