The following guide is suitable for this beacon only (BC061):
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 pushing the button, then you will need to push the beacon button first before using KBeaconPro to scan for it).
Turn ON the beacon
-Turn on the beacon by pressing and holding down the button on the back for 8 seconds until the LED light (on the front) flashes red once, then release the button. The LED light is located under the housing on the front side of the beacon, just to the right of the QR code sticker. The beacon is now ON and broadcasting.
-To turn OFF: Hold down the button on the back of the beacon for 5 seconds until the LED on the front of the beacon blinks. Or 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.
Here are the default settings on the beacon:
Beacon Name: BCPro_(six digit number randomly assigned during production)
Advertising Interval: 1000
Advertising Flags: Connectable
TX Power: 0 dBm
Measured Power: -59
SLOT0: KSensor temperature and humidity
Trigger Only Advertisement: No
In the large majority of usage cases, you won’t need to change the default settings. Just turn the beacon ON and let your scanner of choice scan for the broadcast or just use our KBeaconPro app main screen to see the current temp and humidity.
For anyone trying to use this beacon in coordination with any sort of home automation system, I would strongly suggest that you NOT change the beacon settings yet. Just turn it on and then work on your home automation system to capture the beacon’s broadcast data. After you have that connection working smoothly, then you can come back to the beacon to make adjustments to the configuration if you like.
How to change the default configuration settings of the beacon
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).
Here’s a video that mirrors the instructions below; this video uses the BC04P beacon for the demo (not the BC061), so a few things are slightly different but mostly they are identical.
Step 2: Open the app
Once you have installed the app, open the app on your phone. 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. On the Android version screenshot, I filtered by the MAC address of my target beacon’s MAC: DD340209C887 (you can find your beacon’s MAC printed on your beacon). On the iPhone version screenshot, I filtered by the last six digits of the name of my target beacon: 190446. 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 -52dBm. 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.
Step 3: Connect to your beacon with the KBeaconPro app and change configuration
After changing any of the settings, tap SAVE on the screen then UPLOAD. Finally, tap the left arrow button in the upper left corner to exit from the configuration process.
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.
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 BC061 or K61
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.
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 = all triggers set to Null
Changeable
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 original default settings. 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.
OK, that’s it. Most the settings should be self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, feel free to contact us. You might also take a look at the Quick Start Guide for the BC04P for some further details about some of the more obscure settings.