How we wanted to do something with iBeacons

Not so long ago, the project was completed, which began quite ambitiously, but disappeared without appearing. The main reason is the reassessment of the capabilities of iBeacon technology. We wanted to do what is impossible. We'll see a little more about what we dreamed of, and what has destroyed the project.

Start

After the announcement of iBeacon by Apple, many have come to unhealthy inspiration. The technology, as it seemed, perfectly solved a multitude of problems that soar in the air. From those that we discussed a couple of years ago:

• Museums , including virtual. Marks of tourist places.
• Games where you need to "walk with your feet." Labyrinths, role-playing games, the search for lighthouses in the forest, in the city ...
• Of course, indoor navigation. Navigator for office buildings, shopping centers.

There were other thoughts. One of these is the creation of a service for high-tech companies that would be comfortable with a complete solution for:

• Checkpoint company. The employee comes to the office, to the checkpoint, the checkpoint opens (the employee must have iBeacon for this).
• Navigation inside the office. The same navigator, which "turn three feet to the left."
• No need to ask where this or that employee, just look. States like “office 239, meeting in progress” or “out of place” are very useful.
• Minor amenities like an employee’s automatic computer lock when an employee leaves the office.

Sounded great project, is not it? We actually created the project on enthusiasm (and small investments of friends and acquaintances), planned to test all the ideas and find an investor, but, alas, it did not happen. Why?

Something went wrong?

First, we could not find smart enough beacons to solve our problems (we wanted a little more functionality than just “I'm here”, this would allow us to implement some clever ideas). It was necessary to order their creation, invent, test ... I had to use the usual ones. For testing, we ordered several Estimote .

Secondly, navigation. Only later when we talked to bealex , we understood how this feature could be made to work. We ourselves tried a naive approach, and even something like fingerprinting, described by Shurik in the article. But the direct approach did not work, there was too much variation in the values ​​that the beacons gave out, and we “did not press fingerprinting”. We tried to try other beacons, consult with friends, but we were convinced, like many other teams, that high-quality and accurate (meter accuracy) navigation is an extremely difficult topic, most likely impossible without access to hardware devices.
')
The next problem was the battery. Beacons - devices are active, require batteries. What to do if the employee in the bicone has ended? How can he enter the building? It was necessary to invent (implement, not implement, but come up) a whole set of procedures for replacing beacons in this case.

Next, the readers. In each room where it was supposed to track the location of employees, it was necessary to install a reader. At first we thought about Android smartphones, and they even worked well, but with a number of employees greater than 10–12 or larger rooms, one device was not enough, several devices are needed, additional code for processing information from all these devices, and so Further. We also tried to find specialized beacon scanners, but it turned out to be more difficult to work with them (connect them, interact with their custom software, or write our own for access using different protocols).

Difficulties also arose with the admin panel. Here we simply underestimated the scale of the task. What turned out turned out to be too difficult for the implementation “on enthusiasm”:

• server with rights distribution by users
• separate reception units
• tracking modules where employees are located
• code for computers to automatically unlock
• employee reporting

Enthusiasm was blown away somewhere in the module area to track employees.

findings

iBeacon (or google eddystone ) is a great technology. But, unlike Ruby on Rails or any other framework, you can’t just take them, put them, “tweak a bit and work.” The implementation of projects with beacons requires tremendous work, overcoming a wild amount of difficulties and, accordingly, decent money. “Quickly” only advertising solutions are made, but they are not interesting.

I really hope that there will be a person or a company who has enough resources to make a system similar to the one we’ve come up with. Maybe even be able to participate in this.

Questions? Ask in the comments or email: evgeny.nasinov@yandex.ru .