Beacons build on Bluetooth ubiquity

Today’s beacons are a little subtler than the huge fires of the past. But while these compact wireless transmitters are more likely to inform about the latest discounts than warn about marauding invaders, their impact could be just as spectacular as the ancient technology. One of the best descriptions of what beacons promise comes from Steve Cheney, Co-Founder and Senior VP of Business, Estimote, one of the leading beacon technology providers. Cheney explains that if a person were to close their eyes while walking down a busy street, they’d only proceed a few steps before lack of sensory cues forced a halt. He notes that similar ‘blindness’ afflicts smartphones but that the veil could be lifted using information broadcast by beacons.

A network of unobtrusive, inexpensive wireless transmitters could give smartphones the ability to recognise their immediate surroundings and so enable a whole class of apps leveraging contextual data. By knowing where the user is in a supermarket, for example, a smartphone app could display information about a discount on a product on the shelf in front of them. Or the mobile could automatically pay the bill when it knows the user has walked out of the restaurant. The beacon itself transmits very little information; it’s the mobile device’s app that provides the contextual information displayed on the screen.

Bluetooth Smart (the name for the low energy element of the latest Bluetooth specification (v4.1)) is ideally suited for compact wireless beacons because it offers tens of metres of range, a high degree of interference immunity and extended life from tiny batteries. Some other wireless technologies offer these capabilities too, but none can match Bluetooth wireless’ penetration into smartphones and other mobile devices. In large part, it’s this ubiquity that has encouraged handset makers and beacon vendors alike to aggressively promote the technology.

The smartphone makers’ widespread adoption of Bluetooth Smart Ready (the part of Bluetooth v4.1 that’s similar to ‘classic’ Bluetooth but allows handsets to seamlessly communicate with Bluetooth Smart devices) means that most of the latest generation of mobile devices are fitted with necessary hardware with the mobile payment, indoor navigation and display of location-specific information capabilities necessary to make the most of beacons. It’s a factor recognised by Jack Hassan, Chief Brand Officer at Kontakt.io (another beacon pioneer). Hassan says the burgeoning beacon sector ‘is being driven by the advent of Bluetooth Smart wireless technology and its ubiquity in modern smartphones and computing devices’. The software is in place too. For example, from version 7 forward, Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS, includes iBeacon, which the company describes as ‘an extension of location services for iOS’. iBeacons are now an integral part of the customer experience in all 254 Apple stores in the U.S. and will likely be arriving at an outlet near you soon.

Because Bluetooth technology is an open standard, designers have a choice of Bluetooth Smart chips from several major silicon vendors on which to base their beacon designs. Better still, those vendors supply development kits and reference designs that make beacon hardware and software development as straightforward as possible. The introduction of a low energy variant of Bluetooth technology, Bluetooth Smart, has dramatically extended already widespread adoption. The ability of peripheral products to link seamlessly with an app on a consumer’s smartphone, leveraging the device’s powerful processor, software and large colour screen has spawned thousands of new applications; perhaps beacons will prove to be the killer one.