A talk on beacons and Bluetooth Low Energy for a general audience I gave last year. I wanted to make the BLE protocol more accessible to understand while also demonstrating the potential business value of beacons.

1. BEACONS
Beacons in Context
August, 2014

2. WHO AM I?
Rex St. John
@rexstjohn
IOT Developer Evangelist @ Intel

3. OVERVIEW

4. The opportunity
The problem
The solution
Beacon basics
Bluetooth LE
Demos
Q&A

5. THE OPPORTUNITY
(for retail)

6. ‘Smartphone influenced’ retail sales exceeded
$150 billion in 2012 (5.1% of all sales)
–Deloitte

7. Shoppers with smartphones are14% more likely
to make a purchase in a store
–Deloitte

8. –Deloitte
58% of consumers who own a smartphone have
used it for in-store shopping

9. Retailers* stand to earn billions by reaching
smartphone shoppers with targeted, contextual,
in-store messages
OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
*Sports stadiums, restaurants, museums, art galleries, grocery
stores….

10. RETAIL IS THE SMALLEST
USE CASE
Home Automation, Fitness, Industrial, Shipping etc.

11. THE PROBLEM

12. Triangulating between cell-phone towers, Wi-Fi and
GPS
CONTEXT DARK AGES

13. CONTEXT DARK AGES
Won’t work indoors
High energy cost
Availability may vary
Inaccurate

14. CONTEXT DARK AGES
Closest we can get is “customer is in a store”
Offer: 20% off at Target

15. #fail

16. Retailers* have limited capability to target
smartphone shoppers in an intelligent manner
PROBLEM STATEMENT
*Sports stadiums, restaurants, museums, art galleries, grocery
stores….

17. THE SOLUTION
–Alan Kay
“Context is worth 80 IQ points.”

18. ENTER BEACONS

19. LOCKING IN
Granularity ~1-3
feet
Low energy
Low cost
Proximity based*
*Not location!

20. Closest we can get is “customer is in front of the Lucky
Charms”
Offer: 20% off Lucky Charms

21. Beacons allow retailers to offer intelligent, timely,
contextual promotions to in-store mobile phone
shoppers

22. Beacons allow retailers to analyze (and respond
to) the in-store behavior of smart phone
shoppers with intelligence

23. BEACON BASICS

24. WHAT IS A BEACON?
Small hardware device
Using Bluetooth LE
Broadcast simple id’s

25. EXAMPLE HARDWARE
Feature Description
Exterior Waterproof rubbery silicon
Backing Sticky gecko cover
Beacon radio 32-bit ARM cortex CPU
Power supply 620mAh Lithium coin-cell
Longevity
2 year battery life, 230 foot
range
It’s a tiny computer!

26. EXAMPLE HARDWARE
Feature Description
Exterior Waterproof rubbery silicon
Backing Sticky gecko cover
Beacon radio ARM M0 Cortex, BLE
Thickness 3mm
Longevity
1 year battery life, 230 foot
range
Estimote stickers e.g. “Nearables”

27. BEACON* HISTORY
300+ million compatible iOS devices, even more
counting Android 4.3 & 4.4
*iBeacon will not be the only class of beacon!

28. USES OF BEACONS
Contextual mobile experiences(!!!!)
Hands-free payments
Indoor proximity* detection
Adaptive retail experiences
In-store analytics
Targeted messaging triggers
HomeKit, HealthKit, MapKit…
Many, many, many industrial applications
*Proximity, not location!

29. PRIVACY
Permission based*
Beacons store nothing
Bluetooth LE connections are ‘anonymous’
Your mobile phone is the problem…
*Apple has made beacons “integral” to iOS 8 on the OS level

30. WHO IS USING BEACONS?
…and many more to come

31. APPLE STORE BEACONS

32. Beacons require services, SDKs and APIs in
order to be effective, driving a new wave of retail
focused startups
BEACON SERVICES

33. BLUETOOTH LE BRIEFLY

34. Bluetooth LE devices are… Which means…
Small ~Key-chain to hockey puck sized
Low-energy Last 3-24 months (button cell)
Medium range ~150 Feet (+ / -)
Cheap $1 - $25 each
Prolific Everyone has one in their pocket
Designed to be extremely prolific, low-energy and affordable

35. DUAL-MODE BLUETOOTH
The “killer feature,” an overloaded term with
several meanings.
A device can function as a “Central” and a “Peripheral”

36. DUAL-MODE
OVERLOADING
Supports LE + classic Bluetooth
Supports central + peripheral role
Android 4.4 can only be centrals (#fail)
Mesh networking incoming in 4.1

37. GFSK FOR DUMMIES
Imagine data being sent using two metronomes. You would vary the
“frequency” or “tempo” to signal 0 and 1 to a remote observer.
Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying (how data is physically broadcast)

38. ADAPTIVE FREQUENCY HOPPING
The 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum is occupied by many other protocols and
sources of interference. The signal must literally play “Frogger” to find
empty channels.

39. CRC CHECKS
CRC (cyclical redundancy check) prevents data corruption in the data
payload as it is sent over the air.

40. THE BLE BIBLE
Bluetooth Low Energy: The Developer’s Handbook

41. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
Your iPhone is a Beacon

42. BEACON SERVICES

43. SERVICES OVERVIEW
Message customers entering / leaving a
fence
Track linger times
Track exits and entrances
Retail location heat maps
Manage + track hands-free payments
An untold number of industrial applications

44. WHAT ARE GEOFENCES?
Radial and polygonal
forms
Traditionally: GPS + Wifi
GPS = expensive
Bluetooth LE = cheap

45. ESTIMOTE
DEMO
Radial Geofences

46. ESTIMOTE

47. ESTIMOTE

48. SENSOR FUSION
GEOFENCES

49. GIMBAL

50. GIMBAL

51. FUTURE STUFF

52. PROTOCOL BUBBLE
EnOcean
Ant+
Zigbee
6LowPAN
SCADA Radio
Z-Wave
BLE
BLE is one of many competing Low-Energy wireless protocols for
IoT devices though a very popular one.

53. ENTER SENSOR FUSION

54. A FEW BEACON
DASHBOARDS

55. BLUECATS

56. BLUECATS

57. NOMI

58. ROXIMITY

59. ADDITIONAL READING
• http://instadium.com/mlbs-ibeacon-rollout-can-learn-retail/
• http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/07/the-open-secret-of-ibeacon-apple-could-have-250m-
units-in-the-wild-by-2014/
• http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/12/15/why-android-devices-cant-act-as-
ibeacons.html
• https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/metrix-create-space-bluetooth-low-energy-hardware-
workshop#home
• http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-
UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/RetailDistribution/us_retail_Mobile-Influence-
Factor_062712.pdf