Discussion: iBeacon - Bluetooth LE Plugin

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Hi,

since a few days I’m playing around with a iBeacon (a bluetooth low energy device with distance measuring)
These thing are cheap, small and their battery last very long.
They can be placed nearly everywhere to act via bluetooth if now wifi available.

For example place one in your car and when coming home the garage door will be opened
or put it on the dog’s leach / collar to check the dogs presence.

I’ve found a script (based on this one click and changed it a bit, output will now be the iBeacon ID only ibeacon_scan.sh

./ibeacon_scan.sh -b
beacon ID 3X76723-X400-0X00-FXFF-000XFFFF0005

Its based on the usage of hcitool and hcidump
For my implementation it is not needed to calculate the distance, but if anyone needs it, this could be achieved with the script too (without -b). Presence detection is what I try to achieve.

Unfortunately I’m not a programmer, working with scripts is no problem but I’m not able to write a pimatic plugin.
Right now I’m checking if the script and the output can be used with pimatic-cron and piratic-shell-execute
Don’t know, if that can help pimaitc-ble the dev did not respond to my question, how to use it.

If there is now distance calculation needed, you can use a standard bluetooth LE device for presence checks.
Nearly every bluetooth 4.x device can be queried for presence. iBeacons are a good point to start, cause the are cheap and available. Even an iOS device can be a iBeacon (for testing -> AppStore Link)

Is there someone out there how wants to help, has some time and wants to develop such a plugin?
Or am I the only one who thinks this would be a cool feature?

I can help with providing data, testing and linux (hcitool, gattool, hcidump…)

regards ben

i’m very interested in iBeacon technology but cant really help to develop a plugin because of missing skills.

I once experimented with iBeacons some time ago (Link) but didn’t find it reliable enough. This could have changed since then. Nevertheless iBeacon technology is very promising.

If i understand you right you want to use your raspberry pi to scan for beacons near it and i think you dont need a plugin for that. As you said you can handle scripts wouldnt it be enough to write a script which scans for beacons every X seconds and then calls pimatic API to set a dummy-presence device to present or absent.
The dummy-presence device then can be used inside pimatic with rules like if dummy-presence is present then open garage door.

There still is another way to use beacons: You can create an beacon with your raspberry pi (or buy some) and then use your iOS device to detect them and call the pimatic API with some apps. With this you can kind of locate your mobile phone if you have more than one beacon.

As you said “These thing are cheap, small and their battery last very long.” i am interested where you get your cheap beacons from, because i am from Germany and cant find a website where i can get beacons at low cost. Therefore i bought an BT4.0 USB-Stick and used my raspberry to create a beacon.

PS: maybe add “discussion” to the title, because atm the title is a bit misleading.

@benbeton said:

Don’t know, if that can help pimaitc-ble the dev did not respond to my question, how to use it.

I am sure Jose will reply at some point. I just glanced over the code and I think pimatic-ble is more of a base device to discover BLE devices. Have a look at pimatic-sensor and and pimatic-bluebean which use pimatic-ble to interact with specific BLE device types.

I am not sure this will work well for iBeacons as iBeacon are no devices to interact with. An iBeacon simply sends an advertisement packet and the distance calculation is done by the receiver measuring the power of the received signal. Well, having this said, it could be done as “noble”, the underlying package used by pimatic-ble provides access to the signal information. As stuff like “node-beacon” is also built on top of “noble” I can imagine one could retrofit parts of “node-beacon” (the proximity calc, basically) to a pimatic-ibeacon plugin (which uses pimatic-ble). This way you have a single ble endpoint in pimatic which can serve multiple ble device plugins.

@benbeton My adivice to you: May be you can start experimenting with node-beacon or alike to gain experience and to get a better understanding of the viable use cases. As @thymian pointed out, there a various ways of using the iBeacon technology and depending on the use case you probably need something completely different like using the smart phone to receive iBeacons throughout the house and transmit the proximity data to pimatic.

thanks for the reply and the answers.
I think I forgot to say, Rasperry Pi should be the Receiver and wait oder scan for iBeacons (BLE Devices) that enter or leaf the area. and then perform an action.

Calling the pimatic api from the script is a very good idea, my thoughts where a bit more complicated

I use these iBeacons: http://sensorberg.myshopify.com/products/sensorberg-developer-kit
On the Pi I use http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B014RH4ZIO?keywords=bluetooth usb raspberry&qid=1452952549&ref_=sr_1_4&sr=8-4

will try to figure out more

I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but since a while now i am using the app “locative”. This app is able to call pimatic’s API whenever it gets in contact with an iBeacon.

Just add this to the locative app for departure:

https://pimaticdomain/api/device/Marcel_thuis/changePresenceTo?presence=false

And this for arrival:

https://pimaticdomain/api/device/Marcel_thuis/changePresenceTo?presence=true"

@mr-smith yeah i have the same strategy. But do you have an cheap iBeacon or do you also use your raspberry and an BLE stick?
btw: code can be included with `` before and after text for multi lines use ``` before and after the lines.

locative is great, I’m using it with my iPhone. But I wan’t to use these beacons with devices, that do not have wifi or an "OS"
A beacon can be attached to nearly everything to keep track of the presence.

My idea is to create a variable or switch, and update it through the script, that is checking for the iBeacon presence.
There is not much time right now, but I hope I can achieve this soon.

@thymian i have an iMac with Quickbeacon installed, this way the mac acts as a iBeacon.
PS. thanx for the tip!

@thymian said:

As you said “These thing are cheap, small and their battery last very long.” i am interested where you get your cheap beacons from, because i am from Germany and cant find a website where i can get beacons at low cost. Therefore i bought an BT4.0 USB-Stick and used my raspberry to create a beacon.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171982620120?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
i noticed the firmware on this bluetooth module said it could aslo be an ibeacon. maybe not he best form factor, but cheap at least.

+VERSION=Firmware V3.0.6,Bluetooth V4.0 LE
********************************************************************
* Command             Description	      	       	                  *
* ---------------------------------------------------------------- *
* AT                  Check if the command terminal work normally  *
* AT+RESET            Software reboot	  	       	       	          *
* AT+VERSION          Get firmware, bluetooth, HCI and LMP version *
* AT+HELP             List all the commands	    	                  *
* AT+NAME             Get/Set local device name                    *
* AT+PIN              Get/Set pin code for pairing                 *
* AT+PASS             Get/Set pin code for pairing                 *
* AT+BAUD             Get/Set baud rate	        	                          *
* AT+LADDR            Get local bluetooth address	      	          *
* AT+ADDR             Get local bluetooth address	      	          *
* AT+DEFAULT          Restore factory default	  	       	          *
* AT+RENEW            Restore factory default	  	       	          *
* AT+STATE            Get current state	        	       	       	          *
* AT+PWRM             Get/Set power on mode(low power) 	        	          *
* AT+POWE             Get/Set RF transmit power 	       	          *
* AT+SLEEP            Sleep mode 	      	                          *
* AT+ROLE             Get/Set current role.	                       *
* AT+PARI             Get/Set UART parity bit.                     *
* AT+STOP             Get/Set UART stop bit.                       *
* AT+START            System start working.	    	       	          *
* AT+IMME             System wait for command when power on.	      *
* AT+IBEA             Switch iBeacon mode.	                        *
* AT+IBE0             Set iBeacon UUID 0.            	             *
* AT+IBE1             Set iBeacon UUID 1.            	             *
* AT+IBE2             Set iBeacon UUID 2.            	             *
* AT+IBE3             Set iBeacon UUID 3.            	             *
* AT+MARJ             Set iBeacon MARJ .            	              *
* AT+MINO             Set iBeacon MINO .            	              *
* AT+MEA              Set iBeacon MEA .            	               *
* AT+NOTI             Notify connection event .                    *
* AT+UUID             Get/Set system SERVER_UUID .            	    *
* AT+CHAR             Get/Set system CHAR_UUID .            	      *
* -----------------------------------------------------------------*

please note i have not tested the beacon feature yet. i will want to have one in each room, and let the phone try to triangulate itself. some day.

I’ve been looking for this material for some time now. Thank you!

I’m trying to come up with a way to use iBeacon as a people counter and message push solution using BT. Can you share your setup steps? I’ll try to build upon if I can but I’m not a programmer either so it will be a learning experience for me.