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I already checked the specification of below beacons:

AFAIK, we can not get the remaining battery of Beacon by advertising. For example, I can not check that my Estimote eddystone that use "Panasonic CR2450 battery" have 50% of battery.

Is it true? If not, how can I get this information?

Community
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Nam Vu
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3 Answers3

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While the iBeacon transmission does not include a battery level field, AltBeacon has one extra data byte in its advertisement that many manufacturers, including Radius Networks, use to store the percentage battery level on battery-powered beacons.

For Eddystone, there is an Eddystone-TLM frame that includes a voltage field that also indicates the battery level on battery-powered beacons.

davidgyoung
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  • "Estimote Beacons are certified Apple iBeacon™ compatible as well as support Eddystone™, an open beacon format from Google." That mean 1 Estimote beacon will send 2 advertisement types: one for iBeacon and another for Eddystone, right? – Nam Vu Nov 05 '15 at 03:12
  • I saw this document: https://github.com/google/eddystone/tree/master/eddystone-tlm, It has "Battery voltage is the current battery charge in millivolts, expressed as 1 mV per bit. If not supported (for example in a USB-powered beacon) the value should be zeroed." What's about the battery level? I can not find this. Thank you – Nam Vu Nov 05 '15 at 06:25
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One way is to send the battery value (obtained from adc of the BLE SOC you are using and calibrating to percentage levels ) as a data packet in the advertising data field along with the device name and other characteristics . For such modification you need to modify the source code of your beacons and reprogram it.

Based on my working experience in Nordic & Dialog BLE SOC's , it is possible to advertise the battery percent to the client .

HRG
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  • So that means, If I do not reprogram and use original beacon, It's maybe impossible, right? – Nam Vu Nov 05 '15 at 02:56
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    It depends upon the data packet format designed by the beacon manufacturers . Refer to their specification/datasheet and understand the contents of the packet frame sent while advertising . – HRG Nov 05 '15 at 06:01
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As far i know about Estimote they predict that with following settings of beacons battery will last longer for that much time there is no such parameter provided in api to check out battery level. What you can do is to monitor beacon data via your application by checking if there is no activity performed for a specific beacon then one must go and check them manually or via ESTIMIOTE app using ble.

Usman
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