beacons in context

BEACONS

Beacons in ContextAugust, 2014

Rex St John

Little Bluetooth LE devices that sit in stores, museums, art galleries or outdoors and can send data pings

WHO AM I?

Rex St. John@rexstjohn

IOT Developer Evangelist @ Intel

OVERVIEW

Rex St John

Hello Beacons!

The opportunityThe problemThe solutionBeacon basicsBluetooth LEDemosQ&A

Rex St John

Goal:Full slide deck overviewHelp people understand how we will proceedGive a basic sentence or two about each of these areas

THE OPPORTUNITY(for retail)

Rex St John

Hello Beacons!

‘Smartphone influenced’ retail sales exceeded $150 billion in 2012 (5.1% of all

sales)–Deloitte

Shoppers with smartphones are14% more likely to make a purchase in a store

–Deloitte

–Deloitte

58% of consumers who own a smartphone have used it for in-store shopping

Retailers* stand to earn billions by reaching smartphone shoppers with

targeted, contextual, in-store messages

OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT

*Sports stadiums, restaurants, museums, art galleries, grocery stores….

RETAIL IS THE SMALLEST USE CASE

Home Automation, Fitness, Industrial, Shipping etc.

THE PROBLEM

Rex St John

Hello Beacons!

Triangulating between cell-phone towers, Wi-Fi and GPS

CONTEXT DARK AGES

Rex St John

we have an ok guess about where our user is in relation to the pork truck. Are they at the pork truck or are they 50 feet away? Close enough, right?

CONTEXT DARK AGES

Won’t work indoorsHigh energy costAvailability may varyInaccurate

Rex St John

with GPS and wifi triangulation we are still taking swings in the darkonce and awhile, I might be offering a vegetarian a delicious pork sandwich because I can’t tell if they are at the BBQ restaurant or the tofu joint next doorFourSquare has done a fantastic job of detecting locations based on GPS and other locational dataNo matter the accuracy, it is difficult to get even more granular than thatwe can get the data more accurately but we dont trust that it is useful

CONTEXT DARK AGES

Closest we can get is “customer is in a store”

Offer: 20% off at Target

Retailers* have limited capability to target smartphone shoppers in an intelligent

manner

PROBLEM STATEMENT

*Sports stadiums, restaurants, museums, art galleries, grocery stores….

THE SOLUTION

–Alan Kay

“Context is worth 80 IQ points.”

Rex St John

Hello Beacons!

ENTER BEACONS

Rex St John

Gimbal, Swirl, ShopKick, Estimote, Nomi (upper right)low energy, cheap, affordable, mass market devices which, when paired with services and mobile devices, allow us to control our context to a very fine degree. Beacons allow us to gain very fine grained control over our physical contextIntroduced by apple with the release of iOS 7, strong potential to

LOCKING IN

Granularity ~1-3 feetLow energyLow costProximity based*

*Not location!

Closest we can get is “customer is in front of the Lucky Charms”

Offer: 20% off Lucky Charms

Beacons allow retailers to offer intelligent, timely, contextual promotions to in-store

mobile phone shoppers

Beacons allow retailers to analyze (and respond to) the in-store behavior of smart

phone shoppers with intelligence

BEACON BASICS

Rex St John

we are going to talk about the events leading up to this moment which have caused us to even start talking about beacons

WHAT IS A BEACON?

Small hardware deviceUsing Bluetooth LEBroadcast simple id’s

Rex St John

there are other possible technologies beacons can be built on (Ant + etc)beacons don’t provide the context data, they just tell you where to get it

EXAMPLE HARDWARE

Feature DescriptionExterior Waterproof rubbery siliconBacking Sticky gecko cover

Beacon radio 32-bit ARM cortex CPUPower supply 620mAh Lithium coin-cell

Longevity 2 year battery life, 230 foot range

It’s a tiny computer!

EXAMPLE HARDWARE

Feature DescriptionExterior Waterproof rubbery silicon

Backing Sticky gecko cover

Beacon radio ARM M0 Cortex, BLEThickness 3mmLongevity 1 year battery life, 230 foot

rangeEstimote stickers e.g. “Nearables”

BEACON* HISTORY

300+ million compatible iOS devices, even more counting Android 4.3 & 4.4

*iBeacon will not be the only class of beacon!

Rex St John

the unveiling of iOS 7 in the summer of 2013 was the start as iOS 7 included integrations with iBeacon, apples own custom beacon specificationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon

USES OF BEACONSContextual mobile experiences(!!!!)Hands-free paymentsIndoor proximity* detectionAdaptive retail experiencesIn-store analyticsTargeted messaging triggersHomeKit, HealthKit, MapKit…Many, many, many industrial applications

*Proximity, not location!

PRIVACY

Permission based*Beacons store nothingBluetooth LE connections are ‘anonymous’Your mobile phone is the problem…

*Apple has made beacons “integral” to iOS 8 on the OS level

WHO IS USING BEACONS?

…and many more to come

APPLE STORE BEACONS

Beacons require services, SDKs and APIs in order to be effective, driving a new wave

of retail focused startups

BEACON SERVICES

BLUETOOTH LE BRIEFLY

Rex St John


Bluetooth LE devices are… Which means…

Small ~Key-chain to hockey puck sized

Low-energy Last 3-24 months (button cell)

Medium range ~150 Feet (+ / -)Cheap $1 - $25 each

Prolific Everyone has one in their pocketDesigned to be extremely prolific, low-energy and affordable

Rex St John

Connecting various sensors and other behaviors can greatly cut down on the battery power

DUAL-MODE BLUETOOTH

The “killer feature,” an overloaded term with several meanings.

A device can function as a “Central” and a “Peripheral”

Rex St John

this is the killer featuremobile phones are easily upgraded to include dual mode chipsmass market proliferation soon followedeasy to product mesh networksdefinition of dual mode has changed…old: dual-mode meant classic + LEnew: dual mode means, device can act as central and peripheral

DUAL-MODE OVERLOADING

Supports LE + classic BluetoothSupports central + peripheral roleAndroid 4.4 can only be centrals (#fail)Mesh networking incoming in 4.1

GFSK FOR DUMMIES

Imagine data being sent using two metronomes. You would vary the “frequency” or “tempo” to signal 0 and 1 to a

remote observer.

Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying (how data is physically broadcast)

ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY HOPPINGThe 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum is occupied by many other protocols

and sources of interference. The signal must literally play “Frogger” to find empty channels.

CRC CHECKS

CRC (cyclical redundancy check) prevents data corruption in the data payload as it is sent over the air.

THE BLE BIBLE

Bluetooth Low Energy: The Developer’s Handbook

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

Your iPhone is a Beacon

BEACON SERVICES

SERVICES OVERVIEWMessage customers entering / leaving a fenceTrack linger timesTrack exits and entrancesRetail location heat mapsManage + track hands-free paymentsAn untold number of industrial applications

WHAT ARE GEOFENCES?

Radial and polygonal formsTraditionally: GPS + WifiGPS = expensiveBluetooth LE = cheap

ESTIMOTE DEMO

Radial Geofences

Rex St John

I am using estimote because their API and SDK are extremely straightforward and easy

ESTIMOTE

SENSOR FUSION GEOFENCES

GIMBAL

FUTURE STUFF

Rex St John


PROTOCOL BUBBLEEnOcean

Ant+Zigbee

6LowPANSCADA Radio

Z-WaveBLE

BLE is one of many competing Low-Energy wireless protocols for IoT devices though a very popular one.

ENTER SENSOR FUSION

A FEW BEACON DASHBOARDS

BLUECATS

ROXIMITY

ADDITIONAL READING

• http://instadium.com/mlbs-ibeacon-rollout-can-learn-retail/

• http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/07/the-open-secret-of-ibeacon-apple-could

-have-250m-units-in-the-wild-by-2014/

• http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/12/15/why-android-devices-ca

nt-act-as-ibeacons.html

• https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/metrix-create-space-bluetooth-low-en

ergy-hardware-workshop#home

• http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Docu

ments/RetailDistribution/us_retail_Mobile-Influence-Factor_062712.pdf

http://instadium.com/mlbs-ibeacon-rollout-can-learn-retail/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/07/the-open-secret-of-ibeacon-apple-could-have-250m-units-in-the-wild-by-2014/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/07/the-open-secret-of-ibeacon-apple-could-have-250m-units-in-the-wild-by-2014/

http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/12/15/why-android-devices-cant-act-as-ibeacons.html

http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/12/15/why-android-devices-cant-act-as-ibeacons.html

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/metrix-create-space-bluetooth-low-energy-hardware-workshop%23home

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/metrix-create-space-bluetooth-low-energy-hardware-workshop%23home

http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/RetailDistribution/us_retail_Mobile-Influence-Factor_062712.pdf

http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/RetailDistribution/us_retail_Mobile-Influence-Factor_062712.pdf

beacons in context

Devices & Hardware