Q&A with a customer on this topic
Q:
Hello, so i am writing this to inquire about your products, specifically the beacons (Blue Charm Beacons – Bluetooth BLE iBeacon (BC011-MultiBeacon) ). I want to integrate this product into my service application where it will act as an SOS based on button triggers. I wanted to inquire whether it can connect to bluetooth and my application can be able to register and listen to actions that the beacon performs based on the button trigger. Example, when the button is clicked 3s or 2s the phone detects it and the app listens to that and performs an operation, or do i need use you’re SDK from your side to perform this task?
A:
Yes, our BC011 can do that; the BC021 can also, but its housing is a bit tougher, so it is usually recommended for applications where the user carries the beacon.
But your description of how a beacon functions is not quite correct. Firstly, beacons don’t work via connection. Beacons broadcast and scanners/phones scan. No SDK or registration is needed.
If coding an app, you should use beacon scanning libraries, not BLE device libraries. They are very different.
Take a look at the quick start guide for our BC021 or BC011. There is a section about button triggers that explains how our button trigger works.
Follow-up Q:
All right thank you so much for the timely response I really appreciate it. For the specific model that you just mentioned the BC021, can I find a detailed description about it online or is there a document that you can send to me so that I can understand how it works so that I can try to implement it or integrated into my application?
Follow-up A:
Our iBeacons are standard protocol (not a private protocol belonging to our company) products. They follow the standard protocol for iBeacons established by Apple. They can also broadcast Eddystone, which is another standard protocol established by Google.
Because they are standard public protocols, you don’t need any special technical information from us to understand their broadcasting or how to scan for them with your app. Any standard reference material and beacon scanning code libraries will work perfectly to build your app. Just google for this information, and you will easily find it. You can probably find some simple beacon scanning app code in Github to get yourself started also.
One non-standard thing that we do offer in addition to the standard protocol is to add the button and button trigger feature. To understand that feature, take a look at our Quick Start Guide.
The basic guide for the BC021 is here.
The more detailed guide for the button trigger on the BC021 is here.
For your project, your beacon configuration will depend on whether you want the beacon to broadcast all the time (even when not triggered by the button) or whether you want it to only broadcast when the button is triggered. You also have an option to slightly change the beacon’s UUID when triggered so your scanner can see that the broadcast is a “triggered broadcast” rather than a normal broadcast.
