Which is probably why Apple has been noticeably silent about I beacons In relation to HomeKit.Īnd probably why companies like smartthings don’t have it already in their mobile apps. But it’s going to be trickier and more expensive then initial expectations. So it’s better for arrivals then it is for “present.” In fact, some people who use Geohopper end up leaving the phone at their desk when they go to the restroom so they don’t trigger the “away” condition.Īnyway, eventually I think we are going to have IBeacon based microlocation. Not so well with someone walking around the room. Geohopper works well to catch someone coming through the door or sitting at a desk. Triples the cost and quintuples the complexity. So Estimote and other companies making I beacons are mostly basing micro location for the “In the room” level on two or three IBeacons all registering at the same time. But while that’s great for a proximity switch, it doesn’t meet the use case most people are looking for with micro location.
They work best for the “immediate” range, within 2 to 4 feet, mostly because there are fewer things that can interfere in that range. They’re certainly good enough for retail store use, where I just want to try to catch someone who is near a display, and if I only catch eight out of 10 people that’s okay. Because the distance sensing is based on signal strength, anything that interferes with the signal suddenly changes the detection. It just turned out that in practice that it’s hard to get this right. The biggest problem for practical use is local interference patterns. Otherwise we would have microlocation for presence in every app that ran on a smart phone. Getting I beacons right is a lot harder than it seems at first, which is why so few apps use them now. Okay, back to the question of ibeacons and the smart things mobile app.
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