iBeacons - Incredibly Ambitious

[matttye]

You can get 10 NFC tags for the price of 1 LE-BT tag. Their paper thin and no battery. So a Museum with 100's of items on display that would make a massive difference to this happening or not.

Agreed - price is the main (only?) disadvantage. Hopefully it'll start to drop soon. Although any apple branded ones will of course be extortionate

 

[nheilweil]

I never heard of this -- really interesting. Thanks to OP for sharing!

 

[uhaas]

Forbes is talking

Forbes Article

Interesting take on recent acquisitions.

 

[flux73]

You can get 10 NFC tags for the price of 1 LE-BT tag. Their paper thin and no battery. So a Museum with 100's of items on display that would make a massive difference to this happening or not.

BLE beacons are still pretty cheap. And they are capable of much more than NFC. NFC requires active participation by the user. BLE can be passive. BIG difference. Whereas you can find out about sales or restaurants you're interested in if you just happen to walk by them with BLE beacons, NFC cannot do that. The automation potential of BLE beacon is a major advantage.

 

[airbelchris]

Isnt this in the non disclosure for ios7? cause i know about that framework as every time i turn off bluetooth it says that it will decrease location accuracy

 

[Joaolx]

BLE beacons are still pretty cheap. And they are capable of much more than NFC. NFC requires active participation by the user. BLE can be passive. BIG difference. Whereas you can find out about sales or restaurants you're interested in if you just happen to walk by them with BLE beacons, NFC cannot do that. The automation potential of BLE beacon is a major advantage.

Exactly, the restriction of having to touch with NFC is gone with these beacons. Not only that, but the beacons can work for precise indoor location like GPS indoors.
I would say the possibilities they offer compared to NFC may be worth it.

 

[flux73]

If anyone remembers, back in March of this year, Apple acquired a company called WiFiSLAM. Here's an article that talks about that acquisition. It's not hard to put 2 and 2 together and conclude that this is somehow related to iBeacon. I would guess that initially, the uses would be pretty simple - like having iBeacons placed in a mall so that you can use your iPhone to navigate inside, finding specific stores, or restaurants. But then you can easily have them alert people to sales or deals. Also, since the iPhone itself can function as an iBeacon, I would think it would be useful in finding other people - like when you need to meet-up with friends at a packed concert for example.

 

[Joaolx]

If anyone remembers, back in March of this year, Apple acquired a company called WiFiSLAM. Here's an article that talks about that acquisition. It's not hard to put 2 and 2 together and conclude that this is somehow related to iBeacon. I would guess that initially, the uses would be pretty simple - like having iBeacons placed in a mall so that you can use your iPhone to navigate inside, finding specific stores, or restaurants. But then you can easily have them alert people to sales or deals. Also, since the iPhone itself can function as an iBeacon, I would think it would be useful in finding other people - like when you need to meet-up with friends at a packed concert for example.

This has awesome uses for the future. Those are some cool ideas btw. And there is already a cool iBeacon that offers coupons through the Passbook app that should be available soon, not sure when.
http://buyibeacons.com

 

[flux73]

This has awesome uses for the future. Those are some cool ideas btw. And there is already a cool iBeacon that offers coupons through the Passbook app that should be available soon, not sure when.
http://buyibeacons.com

Good find! That's interesting that they say it's battery powered and will last 2 years. That's amazing. Also cool that it can provide info on foot traffic - this is the kind of info that a lot of companies pay big money for. I would imagine deploying something like this would be a no-brainer for them.

 

[nheilweil]

Isnt this in the non disclosure for ios7? cause i know about that framework as every time i turn off bluetooth it says that it will decrease location accuracy

Good catch! I always saw that when shutting off wifi but never noticed how it appears for Bluetooth as well now in iOS 7.

 

[Joaolx]

Good find! That's interesting that they say it's battery powered and will last 2 years. That's amazing. Also cool that it can provide info on foot traffic - this is the kind of info that a lot of companies pay big money for. I would imagine deploying something like this would be a no-brainer for them.

I also read in a article that a good idea for the indoor location was to use indoor maps for something like a airport.

 

[airbelchris]

yeah Xavier uni had something like that 2 years ago. it told me what room i was in based off of the unique wifi router mac address