How small Bluetooth Beacons can make a big impact on your Business
Bluetooth Beacons have stormed the world of retail and are just starting to open new possibilities for businesses and organizations that never considered using them. Most of them don’t even know the potential bluetooth beacons offer, so in this article I would like point out the benefits and several examples of how you can use bluetooth beacons for your business.
First, what are beacons you ask? Bluetooth Beacons are low energy devices which transmit constant data and have low power consumption. They can be used for indoor localization services (where GPS usually fails), customer management or location-aware multimedia services.
Think of Bluetooth Beacons as static navigation points, where the app installed on the mobile device is the active side which gets info when in proximity of beacons.
Bluetooth Beacons are designed to use minimal power. They can work on one battery for over two years! So basically, the hardware layer of this technology is maintenance-free. It’s all about the apps you create.
Bluetooth Beacons use the same spectrum range as Classic Bluetooth technology, but a different set of channels.
For the ones interested in more data, here’s what you need to know:
Distance/Range: 50 m (160 ft)
Sleep current: 0.78 uA
Awake current: 4.5 mA
So how can I use Bluetooth Beacons?
Indoor navigation with Bluetooth Beacons
In many indoor places GPS navigation doesn’t work, and navigation which uses wifi isn’t very accurate. Bluetooth Beacons indoor navigation can be very helpful in these situations.
Potential places of use are: airports, stadiums, malls. It’s easy to improve pedestrians flow by placing Bluetooth Beacons in some spots and preparing a custom app which can provide the current place map.
Customer management with Bluetooth Beacons
Beacons can be a shopper’s best friend. To offer a better experience to customers, you will have to prepare a basic network of Bluetooth Beacons placed in strategic places. For example, when the app installed in user’s smartphone will discover Bluetooth Beacon placed in the shoes department, it can notify the user about current special sale offers.
It seems that the biggest challenge here is to encourage user to install and keep running app in future.
Location-aware multimedia applications
These kind of apps are perfect for places like museums, galleries etc. Basics are similar to the previous example. When the app discovers a bluetooth beacon in near distance for some object, it can show a multimedia presentation about it.
My experience with Bluetooth Beacons so far
In all my projects I’ve been using the Estimote Beacons for developing apps. I really like the design, support and the community growing behind it.
elBeacon iPhone application
The EL Passion iOS team developed a simple app for Bluetooth Beacons newbies during our company hackathon. The app shows how bluetooth beacons work, displays all nearby beacons and receives local notification when they are in range. Also, it’s possible to simulate the beacon transmitter on the iPhone.
Pros of Bluetooth Beacons
- Standalone, cheap device
- Low energy, (almost) no maintenance required
- Simple idea, powerful usage
Cons of Bluetooth Beacons
- Generally, users are reluctant to keep Bluetooth turned on
- Receiving many notifications can be annoying
Bluetooth Beacons are a very welcome novelty of 2014. This technology despite limitations, has a great potential. I look forward to seeing beacons become a trend this year and start using them in my local mall.
If you have any question related to development with bluetooth beacons or using them in the wild, let me know in the comments below.
