Building Context-Aware Apps with Beacons

Transcript

1. Building Context-Aware Apps with Beacons Greg Shackles Senior Software Engineer,

   Olo greg@gregshackles.com @gshackles

2. nycmobiledev.net @nycmobiledev nyalt.net @nyaltnet

3. If context is king… …apps are the keys to the

   kingdom

4. Right Here and Now

5. Geofencing ✤ Uses GPS, WiFi, Mobile Network ✤ Accuracy varies

   wildly based on methods used ✤ Can be within a few meters or few thousand meters ✤ Indoors? Good luck ✤ Battery intensive

6. Geofencing

7. Ditch the map, let’s talk proximity

8. It’s All About Context

9. Case Study: Retail estimote.com/retail

10. Case Study: MLB Stadiums

11. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Specification Bluetooth Bluetooth LE Distance/Range 100m

    (330ft) > 100m (> 300ft) Throughput 0.7-2.1 Mbps 0.27 Mbps Voice Capable Yes No Power Consumption 1W 0.01 - 0.5W Latency 100ms 6ms

12. Bluetooth LE is Already Everywhere

13. So What Are Beacons? ✤ No pairing necessary ✤ Advertisement

    broadcast contains everything ✤ Key advertisement pieces: ✤ UUID: 128-bit, defines a group of beacons ✤ Major: 16-bit unsigned integer, create subset of UUID ✤ Minor: 16-bit unsigned integer, create subset of Major

14. Beacon Ranges 1m 10m 100m Immediate Near Far Approximated, never

    rely on actual beacon distances NFC only works here

15. Software Beacons ✤ iOS 7 devices, starting with iPhone 4S,

    iPad 3 ✤ Mac OS X, requires external adapter on Yosemite ✤ Android L devices

16. Hardware Beacons

17. What Can Talk to Beacons? ✤ iOS 7+ devices ✤

    Android 4.3+ devices ✤ Windows Phone 8.1: not supported (womp womp) ✤ maybe in Windows Phone 10…

18. Interacting with Beacons ✤ Proximity ✤ Immediate ✤ Near ✤

    Far ✤ Works in foreground ✤ Notified on entry/exit ✤ Works in background Region Monitoring Ranging

19. AltBeacon ✤ iBeacon specification is private (shocking, right?) ✤ Proposed

    open proximity beacon specification ✤ Authored by Radius Networks altbeacon.org

20. Estimote Stickers (Nearables) ✤ Beacons for physical objects ✤ ~3mm

    thin ✤ Rich broadcast data, including: ✤ Motion ✤ Temperature ✤ Orientation ✤ Temperature

21. The Physical Web ✤ Experiment from Google ✤ Aims to

    remove dependency on beacon-specific apps ✤ Beacons embrace the web by advertising URIs ✤ urn:uuid:f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6 ✤ https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2141.txt google.github.io/physical-web

22. By the way… These technologies aren’t mutually exclusive

23. Let’s Code!