To beacon, or not to beacon?
That is my question…
A few years ago, iBeacons and devices such as this became the focus of technology. And the same was true for our team.
We implemented a supplier focused iBeacon attendance solution. This had mixed results, and the beacon implementation was unreliable, and so other systems had to be put in place.
But does this mean that beacons, on the whole, are unreliable?
Why do beacon projects fail?
I began to look into other examples of projects with the focus being beacons.
- “60% of users disable location services and push notifications for an app”
- It’s done because it’s the ‘new’ thing
- Isolated experience and a lack of integration
- You’re asking people to go out of their way to integrate with a service
- Security and privacy compliance — So many companies don’t bother because it’s a legal nightmare
- The technology is incredibly unreliable
Beacon projects that succeed
In all honesty, it was difficult to find examples of beacon projects that have succeeded, but one that I found incredibly interesting was the tracking of bicycles at the Johnson Space Centre, NASA.
This implemented live tracking of public bikes around their campus. Each bike was fitted with a beacon, and each building had a Pi. This was built around Firebase.
One of the main differences, in terms of the set up of our system compared to this, was the placement of the beacons/readers and the technology stack used.
We were somewhat limited by the native integration functions of our supplier, and the readers (phones) in our instance were the moving objects. Whereas with the bikes, it was the readers that were stationary, and the beacons which were the moving parts.
To beacon, or not to beacon?
I think it all comes down to implementation one way or another. Implementation and scale.
Although we still use beacons to monitor attendance, we do this alongside other ways of locating a phone when the students press a button, this could never be the only way of monitoring attendance across a campus as large as ours.
So, if you wish to use beacons, go ahead! But plan ahead, don’t put all your beacons in one basket, and, like with any innovation, be prepared to fail fast.
