The following guide is suitable for this beacon only (BC-S1):
Thanks for ordering one of our products, and welcome to the fascinating world of iBeacons!
Note: If you have any questions about any of the following instructions, please feel free to CONTACT us any time. We are here to answer your questions or help in any way. Almost all emails are answered by senior support staff within hours. If you don’t receive an answer, check your spam folder.
99.3% of the problems that beginners have with beacons are just a simple misunderstanding of one of the concepts. Admittedly, the world of beacons is a bit confusing with all of the TX, interval, broadcast, UUID…technical words. In other words, don’t feel bad at all if you are a little confused at first. We tried to make it as clear as possible in the instructions below, but that requires lots of words, which sometimes can be a bit boring to read when you are excited about a new beacon you just received!
Another note: Before we do anything, it should be noted that you can use your beacon straight out of the box just by turning it on (see “turn ON the beacon” below). There is no absolute requirement to change the configuration settings.
This is very good advice for HomeAssistant users too. For your first beacon setup, just turn the beacon on. That’s it. Don’t try to adjust any settings until you have HA or the ESP working properly. If it’s not working, make adjustments on the HA or ESP first to try to solve the problem. The beacon is very rarely the source of the problem.
If you ever want to confirm that your beacon is working, use our KBeaconPro app to scan for it. If you see it on the scan screen, it’s working. (If you have set it to only broadcast after separating the two pieces, then you will need to separate them first before using KBeaconPro to scan for it).
Turn ON the beacon
-Turn on the beacon by pressing and holding down the button for 3 seconds until the LED light flashes blue once, then release the button. The LED light is located on the front of the housing just above the QR code (that little tiny hole in the picture). The beacon is now ON and broadcasting.
-To turn OFF: By default, the BC-S1 beacon is set to “Power Always On”. This means that the button can be used to turn the beacon on, BUT once it is on, the beacon can not be turned off using the button. This is done to prevent random people from maliciously turning the beacon off. If you want to turn it off , use the KBeaconPro app to connect to the button beacon, then select “Power Off” from the general settings page, then click OK on the warning pop-up. The beacon will then be OFF.
-But let’s assume you have still left it ON, and it is broadcasting now.
A quick intro to the beacon parts:
The BC-S1 beach has two parts, the main body and the magnetic sensor.
The main body of the beacon has a small anti-tamper pop-up button on the underside:
The magnetic sensor should be aligned side by side with the main body, close together with the little lines closely aligned when the beacon is in the “closed” position. Like this:
Or even like this (this shows a garage door in the closed position):
So we have two different ways to “trigger” this beacon:
1. Normal “open” position: Pull the two pieces apart, such as when a window or door are opened and the two pieces move apart (assuming the body is mounted on the door frame and the sensor on the door itself, for example).
2. Tamper alert: When the beacon is installed using double back tape on a flat surface, the anti-tamper button will be pressed in. In this position, the beacon is “all ok, nobody has pulled me off the wall”. When the beacon is pulled off the wall, the tamper alert button will pop out and the beacon will behave as if the door/window has been opened.
OK, let’s get started testing the beacon:
Firstly, let’s trick the beacon into thinking it is already installed on the wall. To do so, press and hold in the tamper button on the back. You can do this by using some tape to hold the button in.
Secondly, place the two housing pieces together as shown in the image above.
Once these two steps are completed, the beacon enters the state of “door is closed, and nobody has tampered with this beacon”.
The BC-S1 button beacon is now performing according to its default settings which will do the following:
-As long as the anti-tamper button is pressed in and the two housing pieces are placed together, the beacon by default will do nothing. No broadcast at all, and it will not appear on the scan screen of the app.
-Once either the anti-tamper button pops out or the two housing pieces are pulled apart, the beacon will broadcast an iBeacon UUID once every 1022.5 milliseconds (1.0225 seconds). The iBeacon UUID which will be broadcast is 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E73. (I will explain later why I highlighted that last digit in red)
-The beacon will continue to broadcast as long as the pieces are apart (or the anti-tamper button is popped out…hey, let’s stop mentioning this anti-tamper feature for now. You get the point, right?)
-Once you bring the two pieces together again, the beacon will stop broadcasting.
That’s all you need to do if that’s how you want to use this beacon. No broadcast when “closed”, iBeacon UUID 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E73 broadcasting constantly when open. Congrats!
But let’s assume you are curious about the beacon features, or maybe you need to change one of the settings. For example, if you are using multiple beacons; you need to change the UUID just a little in order to make each beacon’s ID unique from the others in your collection. To do that, you need to download the configuration app.
Step 1: Download the configuration app.
Scan the appropriate QR code below or search for KBeaconPro in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Be sure to search for KBeaconPro, NOT our other app which is called KBeacon. This is very important!
Android users should be sure to give the app Location permission AND also be sure that your Android smartphone’s Location Services are enabled. You can find these settings in your phone’s Settings menu, and typically in the Location sub menu (but of course, every brand of Android can be slightly different, so dig around in Settings until you find it).
Step 2: Open the app
Once you have installed the app, open the app on your phone. Separate the two housing pieces. Then tap the SCAN button in the upper right hand corner to begin scanning for beacons:
Two things to remember on this step:
-The scan will last for a certain period of time and then stop after that time has elapsed. The beacons on the screen will not change after that. New beacons will not appear on the screen after that. The restart the scan, press the SCAN button again in the upper right corner of the screen.
-Once the screen has a list of nearby beacons, it may or may not update that list depending on the type of smartphone. To avoid this trap, swipe down on the app screen to refresh the results. If time has already elapsed, you will also need to tap SCAN again. Wait a few moments for the results to be shown.
Summary: Be sure to tap SCAN to restart the scan, and be sure to swipe down the screen to refresh the results. These two reminders will solve 92.3% of your problems if you can not seem to find the beacon on your screen results.
Quick tip: As you can see in the screenshots above, I have used the results filter function. Otherwise, if you have lots of BLE things around you (oddly enough, I do!), your beacon may appear far down the list and be easy to overlook. You can filter by the MAC address of your target beacon (you can find your beacon’s MAC printed on your beacon). Or you can filter by the last six digits of the name of your target beacon: In the Android example above, I filtered for my beacon with digits 193101. You can use either method. Your particular beacon’s MAC and name are printed on the sticker attached to the beacon.
RSSI figures: A quick word about RSSI figures: On the scan screen of the KBeaconPro app, you can see the live RSSI signal strength measurement of the beacon as measured by the smartphone. For example, in the iOS screenshot above, the RSSI is measured as -44dBm. A distant beacon will show on the app screen with a “low” (weak) RSSI. Since RSSI figures are all negative numbers, a low RSSI would be -90, for example. A higher RSSI figure would be -27, for example. The further away from zero, in the negative direction, indicates that the signal is weaker, and thus we can infer that the beacon is further away from your phone.
iPhones don’t show UUID: Sharp-eyed readers might notice that the above screenshots have a difference on iPhone vs Android. iPhone’s don’t like to display the UUID for some strange reason. They can “see” it and react to it, but they don’t like to show it on an app scan screen. iPhones will gladly show the Major and Minor, so we can see those two numbers on the iPhone screenshot above (3838 and 4949). The Android screenshot, on the other hand, shows the UUID of the beacon as well as the major and minor. This gets a bit annoying when you have set the button beacon to broadcast all the time (normal UUID) but to slightly change the uuid after the correct button press has been executed. If you are using an iPhone, you won’t be able to see this UUID change on the scan screen of our app or any other iBeacon app. Sorry, this is an Apple restriction that we can not override.
Step 3: Connect to your beacon with the KBeaconPro app and change configuration
Tap on your beacon on the beacon scan screen in order to temporarily connect to it to change the configuration. Here’s what you will see next:
What you see above is the General Information page of the KBeaconPro app.
As a first learning example, let’s imagine we have two beacons, so we need to change the UUID of one of them in order for them to have unique ID numbers (i.e. different from each other).
-Tap on the info page where is shows SLOT0 iBeacon (on top or bottom, depending on Android or iPhone). This will open up the following Beacon Detail sub-menu:
Now tap on the UUID. This will bring up the UUID sub-menu showing the default UUID 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E73.
OK, so you could theoretically put a totally new number here, but let’s be lazy and just change the last two digits from 73 to 74.
-Once you have made that change, tap on the SAVE button in the upper right corner.
-This saves the changed UUID to the memory of the app, but it has not yet been uploaded to the beacon. This allows you to make multiple changes and then upload them all at one time. I don’t recommend you doing that until you are very familiar with your beacon, as it can get a bit confusing for new users to change multiple settings at one time.
-So now we have saved this new UUID in the app, let’s tap the UPLOAD button on the beacon detail page to upload this saved change to the beacon.
-OK, we are done now. But don’t forget to disconnect from the beacon, otherwise it won’t broadcast. You can disconnect by tapping the left pointing arrow in the upper left corner on the general info page of the app. You will then jump back to the main scan screen of the app.
-If you have an Android, you will see the beacon on that page, but perhaps the UUID will still show the old …73 version. If so, swipe your finger down the screen to refresh the scan. Then you will see the newly changed …74 version of the UUID.
–If you are using an iPhone, you will only see “N/A” next to the UUID on the scan screen. That’s a security restriction of iPhones, but don’t worry; the UUID has been changed. If you want to double check, just connect to the beacon again, and go down the sub-menus to see the UUID. Don’t forget to tap the left pointing arrow when you are done to disconnect from the beacon.
Don’t forget to disconnect: Always be sure to disconnect from your beacon after making any changes to the configuration. As explained above, to disconnect, just tap the left pointing arrow in the upper left corner to be taken back to the main scan screen of the app. I can tell you from experience that quite a few users have skipped this step, remained connected to the beacon, and then got frustrated when the beacon was not broadcasting or triggering automations. The beacon must NOT be connected to your phone in order to broadcast properly.
OK, that’s it! You’ve successfully changed the UUID of your second beacon from the default …73 to a new …74 version. From a beacon scanner’s point of view, these ID numbers (though very similar to you and I) are totally different, and the scanner will consider them as two different beacons.
Anything Else?
Next, if you are really interested in digging deeper, further down the page, we will cover the configuration settings and options one by one. Also we will show how to set up a popular configuration whereby the beacon always broadcasts even when closed, but then broadcasts a slightly different UUID when open (or tampered with). This configuration is useful for when you want to know for sure the door is closed and also know when it is open, i.e. differentiate between these two states rather than just assume closed when the beacon is not broadcasting.
Unless you are trying to do something specific and customized like this, you probably don’t need to read any further. Go forth and start using your beacon!
Before we get into the special OPEN/CLOSED custom configuration I just mentioned, maybe you just want to see a quick overview of how to change various things. So here’s a video showing how to change various settings. It shows how to reconfigure another one of our beacons (BC04P), so it doesn’t show the actual defaults settings of your BC-S1 button beacon, but you get the idea.
Default settings for the General Information app page items:
System Info (these fields is not changeable by the user)
System ID is the unique MAC address of each beacon (it’s also printed on the sticker on the outside of the beacon)
Model is the model number BC-S1
Hardware version
Firmware version
Beacon Name
Default is BCPro_(six digit number randomly assigned during production)
Name must be 17 ASCII characters or less
Measured Power (Calibrated RSSI when beacon is 1 meter away from scanner)
Default: -59 (automatically changes when the TX level is adjusted)
Changeable: Advanced users only. We recommend that you do NOT make any adjustments to this number.
Power On Always
Default: No
When this is changed to “Yes”, the beacon’s button can no longer be used to turn the beacon off.
Modify Password
Default: 0000000000000000
Changeable: any password ranging from 8-16 ASCII characters
NOTE 1: It is NOT recommended for users to change the password. If you do change the password and forget what you changed it to, there is nothing we can do to help you. The beacon can NOT be reset to factory settings in order to get back to the default password. We don’t have any sort of secret backdoor password to get back into the beacon; that would be fake security, right? So if you try to change this default password, be sure to type very carefully and write down the new password.
NOTE 2: If you still want to change the password, please note that the password is stored in the beacon AND in the app. So when you use the app to connect to another beacon with a different password, you may initially see a “code 2” or “error 2” message indicating an incorrect password. If you do experience this problem, please use the app to change the password on your second beacon to the same password as your first beacon. In other words, if all the passwords are the same, it will be much easier. That said, we still recommend that you do NOT change the password. If you are concerned about security, change the Advertising Flag setting to unconnectable.
Trigger List
Default: Trigger0 = cutoff; all other triggers set to Null
Changeable: See trigger detailed instructions at the link below
Firmware Update
Click to check if an update is available. “Network error” means no update is available.
Power Off
Turns the beacon off without having to physically touch or access the beacon.
Reset Configuration
Resets the beacon back to its factory default settings, which are a little different than the defaults described above. Nevertheless, this comes in handy when you have made a number of changes to the configuration which result in the beacon not working as you expected.
Note that after you reset the configuration back to default settings, the beacon will automatically turn off. Be sure to turn it back on again before scanning for it.
Custom Configuration to Differentiate OPEN/CLOSED
Now we are going to modify the configuration so that the beacon broadcasts the regular UUID all the time, then broadcasts a slightly different UUID when the beacon is OPEN or tampered with.
Step 1: Connect to the beacon
Step 2: Click on Trigger List, then Trigger0
Step 3: On the Trigger0 detail page, you will see this:
Step 4: Change Advertisement Change to YES. This then means that the beacon UUID will change when the beacon has bern triggered by opening or tampering. Tap UPLOAD then left arrow to go back to the beacon detail page. Then left arrow again to disconnect from the beacon.
Step 5: Select the SLOT0 menu and change Trigger Only Adv from default YES to NO. The default setting means the beacon will only advertise when it has been triggered. Changing it to YES means it will always advertise the regular UUID even when not triggered, then when triggered, it will advertise the modified UUID (modified since we selected Advertisement Change: YES earlier on the trigger page settings).
That’s it!
Back on the app’s scan screen, tap SCAN, and swipe down the screen to refresh. If the beacon is closed (two parts pushed together) and the anti-tamper button is pressed in, the beacon should now be broadcasting the regular UUID all the time: 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E73.
Once you separate the two parts (simulating the door or window has been opened), the beacon will broadcast a modified UUID for two seconds. The modified UUID is the regular UUID plus 7 hex. For example, our default UUID plus 7 would be 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E7A. If you happened to follow along our earlier demo to change the default UUID to 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E74, then the modified UUID (when beacon is OPEN) would be 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E74 plus 7 hex, which is 426C7565-4368-6172-6D42-6561636F6E7B. You can use an online hex calculator to figure this out for other UUIDs.