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I am trying to get the direction/position of an iBeacon with respect to the mobile device from where I am monitoring the beacon. I am using the Altbeacon SDK

I tried to surf to find if the SDK provides any API to find this out. Please can you confirm if there is no such API at the moment? I also referred to the Triangulate example for iBeacons

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Hariprasauth Ramamoorthy
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1 Answers1

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The Android Beacon Library provides a distance estimate to the beacon in the ranging callback. However there is no directional component to this estimate.

Understand that beacons advertise their presence with Bluetooth radio signals. Bluetooth receivers have no inherent sense of direction. Just like with a radio or television, a signal can come from any direction. While it is possible to get a rough distance estimate based on the strength of the signal, there is no way to know the direction to a beacon when detected by a mobile device.

Full disclosure: I am the lead developer on the project.

davidgyoung
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  • Thanks @davidgyoung for the response. Will you also be able to hint if Estimote SDK has any APIs that can help with the direction? Should I implement triagulation algorithm to check AltBeacon? – Hariprasauth Ramamoorthy Dec 10 '15 at 05:18