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I am trying to determine whether IBeacon technology would be useful in tracking equipment in an office building.

Everything I've read required a beacon, a smart phone (i phone, i pad, etc), and the app that is running. If I understand correctly, a person would walk around with a smart phone "searching" for beacon signal. When in range of a signal, it would then register on the phone. This involves walking around and searching for the signal.

What I am wanting to do is have stationary receivers located around the building. Each receiver would a specific ID number. A beacon would attached to the piece of equipment. As the equipment moves around, it's signal would be picked up by the individual receivers. The equipment's location could then tied to a specific receiver.

Some of the problems would be:

1) I would like to use bluetooth technology so that I do not have to be tied into an existing wireless network. This eliminates network and configuration problems.

2) When a signal is identified by a receiver it needs to be "relayed" between multiple receivers until the data is received by the computer that runs the tracking database software. The original beacon ID and location needs to be transmitted.

3) The receivers/transmitter signals must go through floors and walls.

4) All this needs to be done a a relatively low cost per beacon and per receiver.

I think that this can be done with I Beacon technology,it's just finding the right setup.

Any thoughts would be extremely help.

Djakubik
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  • You could do this reasonably easily. Something like a Raspberry Pi could act as the receiver, but as David pointed out I wouldn't mesh the receivers. It is much simpler to have them all connected to Ethernet or WiFi and update the server directly – Paulw11 Apr 07 '15 at 03:58
  • There is an article about using a RaspberryPi to detect iBeacons: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21733228/can-raspberrypi-with-ble-dongle-detect-ibeacons – Ryan Nov 12 '15 at 00:47

1 Answers1

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You can do this with iBeacon technology (I have built similar systems) but there are some difficulties:

  1. The stationary receivers must be constantly powered, so they must be near outlets. If sonebody unplugs them (think the cleaning crew to use a vacuum) they go offline until you detect the system isn't functioning and plug them back in. You need tools to monitor this.

  2. The stationary receivers won't be super cheap. You can make them out of a raspberry pi and a bluetooth dongle (~$40 including power supply) an Android mini computer (similar cost) or an iPod touch ($200). Whatever your choice, it is a fair amount of software to write. These detectors need monitoring software to make sure they stay up 24-7.

  3. The Bluetooth info relay to the database adds the biggest level of complexity. You are building your own mesh network, which is possible, but nontrivial. Using WiFi to a web service would be much easier.

This is all possible, but it is a big job. Don't underestimate it.

davidgyoung
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