Going Mesh: Beacons Taken to the Next Level

Let’s talk talking beacons

Beacon Boom in the Beacon Valley

Southern Poland is sometimes referred to as the Beacon Valley. Why is that?
A couple of years ago, the market saw a true beacon boom and was dominated by Polish companies. Many beacon manufacturers began to emerge: Estimote, Kontakt.io, Infinity, Comarch… And then yet another player entered the beacon game: us, Netizens. Regardless of the fierce competition, we started to develop our EON Beacons. It was back in 2014. Since then, our devices have undergone a huge change, mostly hardware-wise.

A lot has changed: 2014 (left) vs. 2017 (right)

Now the battery life lasts 5 times longer than it used to (which means our beacons can function up to 5 years!).

We included an accelerometer in our devices (which means we can detect motion: has your beacon fallen off the wall? has someone moved it?).

What’s more, our beacons now support GPIO and offer the possibility
to install external sensors, like pressure or magnetic field sensors.

Here they are now: pretty on the outside, powerful on the inside

And now, finally, our pride and joy, our icing on the cake: the talking beacons mentioned at the beginning. In other words: mesh beacons!

One to rule them all

So, yes, beacons can talk to each other. At least our beacons can. How come? Thanks to mesh networking.

A mesh network is a two-way network typology in which each node (device) “talks” to other nodes (devices). In other words, every mesh node passes on data to other nodes. As a result, messages just dynamically flow between the interconnected devices.

A real-life illustration of mesh networking? The Hong Kong protests, where people used a mesh network to communicate. Right now in Poland thousands of citizens are protesting against the government’s plan to reorganize courts. Many of them are experiencing troubles getting online on their phones. Imagine a crowd creating a mesh network to communicate, using just proximity and Bluetooth, with no need for an external Internet connection.

Protesting in Warsaw — a perfect place for mesh networking!

Ok, now back to technology: what does mesh networking got to do with beacons? Why mesh beacons? How did it all start here at Netizens? Read on.

Well, remember the beacon boom? We wanted to stand out in the beacon crowd. We had a brainstorming session: what can be done to surpass other beacon companies? Mesh beacons! We were the first beacon manufacturer in Poland to come up with this idea.

But why is mesh networking so great for beacons?

First of all, since beacons can form a mesh network and communicate,
it’s possible to manage an entire group of devices by changing settings
in just one of them! Change settings in beacon 1 and it will “tell” beacon 2
to do something, beacon 2 will “tell” beacon 3, beacon 3 will “tell” beacon 4,
and so on… One to rule them all! No need to walk up to each and every one of your beacons (like in the pre-mesh era), change the parameters, walk up to another device, change the settings, walk up to yet another beacon, change the settings again… Even reading about it is exhausting, right? It was painstaking, time-consuming and very inefficient. We hated that too. Our goal was to optimize remote management and maintenance in order to save time and money, and get ready for large-scale, industrial deployments.

Now: how can this optimization be achieved, apart from using mesh networking? How did other beacon companies handle this? For example,
one of our competitors, Estimote, parasitically used their users’ app to manage beacons remotely. But we never wanted to rely on the user. We wanted full independence in management and maintenance. Which means we wanted
a mesh network.

Our goal was to control all of our beacons at once, from anywhere.
We wanted to be able to put all of our beacons to sleep mode at once,
to monitor their battery life… With mesh networking, we are now able
to configure hundreds of beacons at once, with just one click. All done sitting behind our desks.

So, the first great thing about mesh beacons is remote management of entire groups of devices. Another great feature? Mesh networking makes it possible to gather data from beacons, not just send it to them.
It’s a two-way communication. Under the right circumstances, a beacon that’s thousands of kilometers away can “tell” us that something is wrong,
for example that the temperature in the room is too high.

Now, the idea of mesh beacons seems great, given all the advantages.
But, hm, guess what. Mesh networks are — surprise, surprise! — not that easy to build.

Little did we know…

Building our mesh network was more difficult than we had initially thought.

Mesh network in progress: some serious math :)

At Netizens, we have a great R&D team and awesome, experienced, creative engineers. A moment of honesty here though: despite that, building
a mesh network has proven tricky. And it took a year and
a half. Other companies that offer mesh beacons would probably claim they managed
to build their mesh networks overnight. We beg to differ
here at Netizens. Creating mesh beacons takes time. At least when done properly.

But the bottom line is: we did it! Now we can proudly say: yes, we do have our very own mesh network for EON Beacons.

So, it’s done, but how did we do it? A little warning: slightly geeky stuff ahead! :)

To build a mesh network, we need at least one gateway—or a bridge, as we call it sometimes, since the gateway functions as a bridge between the cloud and the beacons. Our gateways are connected to the EON Beacon app that serves to communicate with the cloud. They have also a beacon overlay:
they are practically beacons and can function as such.

Piotrek, our Embedded Software Engineer, working on the mesh network

To configure our mesh network, we need to establish a map
of the neighboring devices
of every beacon in the network. This is why the interconnected devices can’t be too far away: they have to “hear” each other. Based on the map, the gateway creates then a routing table. Thanks to this, we can come
up with the optimal paths for sending data in our mesh network: we know which beacon send the message to in order
to configure the network to meet the customer’s need. In case something
is wrong with one of the beacons in the network, the gateway can search
for alternative paths, bypassing the broken device.

How is data transferred in a mesh network? Estimote’s mesh network sends data to all devices, acting like a snow ball. Every node propagates
the message, which consumes a lot of energy.

Our mesh network is much more sophisticated: the message reaches just the beacon it needs to, directly. As a result, we can use less power and our devices are still low-energy ones. Our mesh network is much more efficient.

Ok, let’s leave theory behind now. It was time to give our mesh beacons
a test run. We set up 2 gateways and 40 nodes (40 beacons). We covered
2 floors and around 20 rooms. We did outdoor testing too, in harsh weather conditions.

Let’s play a game now: spot all the mesh nodes in our office! :) They were all over the place (yep, even in the bathroom).

Yes, mesh testing in progress looks a bit messy. But you know what?
It worked, at the first attempt! It worked like a charm :)

We knew we did a good job. Our mesh network was fully functional. It was time to give it a proper test run, this time for real.

We can’t disclose the names of the companies we are working with to implement our mesh beacons (NDA reasons). But we can give you a general idea of the possible use cases for mesh beacons.

1. One of the companies we are working with sells smart teddy bears making soothing sounds to help babies fall asleep. Our mesh beacons expand the bear’s sound range home-wide. Plus, once the mesh network is installed
   in the house, it can be connected to any already existing smart home solutions, like smart lighting.
2. Another company we are currently working with offers wooden houses on wheels. Our solution for them is a set of mesh beacon sensors for entire housing developments. The beacons can detect for example flooding and let the owners know right away.
3. Another example is an exclusive door manufacturer. A mesh beacon hidden in every door frame communicates with either an app or a beacon wristband and opens the door 2 meters in advance! No need
   to push the door, it just opens up automatically. Another thing is beacon-based indoor navigation that will tell you which rooms are currently closed. This solution can be also used at events. Have you ever stood
   in a mile-long line to use the portable toilets at a concert, just to find out one of them was free all the time, but everybody assumed it was occupied? Mesh beacons to the rescue, informing you which toilets are free! :)

Those are just sample applications of our mesh beacons. We see a lot of opportunities regarding mesh networking. The guys from “Silicon Valley” seem to have an idea too :)(SPOILER ALERT!) In one of the episodes, Gilfoyle hacks a smart fridge and accidentally propagates the data to… 30,000 other fridges. Just because the devices talk to each other. Rings a bell? :)

Speaking of startups, we are looking for innovative companies who would like to build value using our mesh beacons. Our Power EON program is what BizSpark is for early stage startups with traction, a gateway to an interesting and useful technology, but at no barrier of entry and option to scale fast with us. So far, we’ve been working with success with for example InPay, Beeem, ShopTrotter, or Totem Interactive. Test the power of mesh beacons with us! :)

What does the beacon future hold for us?

It was a long read, we know. To wrap this all up, here’s our vision of the future: our main focus right now, obviously apart from constantly improving our mesh network, is ION Beacon, EON Beacon’s big brother. Our goal is to remotely control other devices using our beacons and to equip our beacons with external sensors (for example for monitoring soil or weather conditions).

Although our mesh network is a fully original solution and was developed before the introduction of the Bluetooth mesh networking technology,
the new standard could be a great asset in improving our mesh network
in the future.

With Bluetooth 5.0 gaining in popularity, the upcoming years are looking very promising for beacons in general and for mesh beacons in particular. And we are looking forward to it! A lot is coming up. Follow our beacon and mesh adventures here on Medium. Next time it will be shorter, we promise! :)