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I've got several pieces of Ibeacon signal sender from online sellers(all small business, no brand), they're quite cheap and small, and can support configuration by my IPad mini, which include the 'device name', 'Proximity UUID', 'Broadcasting interval' and etc. Now it even works in my android phone: enter image description here

My question is: Is that possible to make these Ibeacon devices to detect other BLE4.0 devices around and send out the data? because as I understood, Ibeacon itself is a full BLE4.0 support device, seems like people removed some basic functions by some purpose.

My purpose is to embedded these ibeacon devices in my ARDUINO board, by connected their serial port, it works not only a Ibeacon sender, but also can detect other BLE4.0 devices around and send their advertising data to ARDUINO board to further process.

Shawn
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2 Answers2

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Radius Networks published a tutorial and howto on how to make a Raspberry Pi iBeacon transmitter also scan for other iBeacons and report their identifiers to the system to turn a lamp on and off. While this is on a different platform, it closely matches what you describe and probably has concepts helpful for an Arduino implementation.

Full disclosure: I am Chief Engineer at Radius Networks.

Community
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davidgyoung
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  • I noticed that _Turn on a Lamp with an iBeacon_ post said we need turn off the ibeacon broadcasting in raspberry pi when doing the test, so does it means when works as 'ibeacon sensor', itself can't be in 'ibeacon sender' mode? but why not, looks a very basic functions for me. – Shawn Jun 03 '14 at 01:30
  • Bluez is more stable if you do not scan and advertise at the same time. But nothing absolutely prohibits doing them together. – davidgyoung Jun 03 '14 at 01:53
  • consulted with the sellers, they were pretty sure the BLE device can't stand in _'sensor'_ and _'broadcaster'_ mode at the same time, they said it prohibited in some place in core Bluetooth protocol. And I have to step backward for only request the support for _'sensor mode'_ in _ARDUINO_, they said they need to modify the Bluetooth module's firmware, looks very complicated. it's a mistake to choose ARDUINO?? – Shawn Jun 03 '14 at 03:06
  • Well with the Pi, you can use two BLE dongles ($13 each) to solve this problem. I do think it is ba better platform for the most general sensdoe use case because it is more easily programmed. – davidgyoung Jun 03 '14 at 13:37
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iBeacon is just a particular implementation of a BLE advertisement. Its purpose is simply to advertise the UUID, major and minor numbers.

As you say, these devices are built around BLE 4.0 chipsets and many do implement other BLE peripheral services for configuration. There is nothing stopping you from creating custom firmware for the device to communicate with something like an Arduino, but the ability to do it on any given piece of hardware will depend on what chip they are using and your ability to attach to the device to upload new firmware and access appropriate pins for communication with your Arduino using a serial port or SPI.

Paulw11
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