I've been trying to use the sample app in the flutter_beacon library to detect beacons nearby and have bought an "Avvel" iBeacon that I have set up and can detect using the "BLE Scanner" app from the google play store. I made sure to allow location tracking within the sample app, as well as having a constant wifi connection and having my Bluetooth on. It just doesn't pick it up and by that, I mean that I have a spinning circle in the middle of the screen, and in my console in "Android Studio" I get the message
I/flutter (15631): {"region":{"identifier":"Cubeacon","proximityUUID":"cb10023f-a318-3394-4199-a8730c7c1aec"},"beacons":[]}
every half second or so.
The repo for the sample app is the master branch here: https://github.com/alann-maulana/flutter_beacon.
The phone is an original Pixel but as I said, I can detect the beacon using another beacon detection app so I doubt its a hardware issue.
Below is the image of the screen. (Taken from the android emulator in android studio for ease of screenshotting rather than the actual phone).
image
Any suggestions or solutions would be greatly appreciated. If you need anything else from me then I would be more than happy to oblige.
The problem is that the beacon region defined in the sample app has Proximity UUID cb10023f-a318-3394-4199-a8730c7c1aec, and the beacon used for testing has Proximity UUID EBEFD083-70A2-47C8-9837-E7B5634DF524. These must be the same. To get the program to work, change the region definition in the Flutter sample to match your beacon's UUID: EBEFD083-70A2-47C8-9837-E7B5634DF524.
Related
This is a general query that I have because I have seen contrasting posts about the ways people have implemented it.
My use case is that I want my Android device to connect to iBeacon whenever it is in range, and start a particular app.
How do I go about it? I am not looking for code, in particular, a general direction of how to go about it would be good.
Here's what you can do:
You can program an app to auto-launch itself when a beacon is detected. If this app is already installed on an Android device, it can send a notification or simply appear when the beacon is seen. The free and open source Android Beacon Library has tools that let you do this. See here
Here's what you cannot do:
If you do not have a custom app installed on a phone, then you can not make the phone do anything to respond to a beacon. Once upon a time, it was possible on many phones with Google Play Services to make a beacon detection prompt a user to install your app. Google, however, discontinued this feature of their Nearby service in December 2018.
I am using petermetz/cordova-plugin-ibeacon in my hybrid application, plan to deploy it on Android devices only.
I have seen application that detect beacons placed nearby, and i want to achieve same functionality but using cordova plugin in my hybrid app.
Can some one help in detecting ibeacons present nearby with their details like their UUID as the sample given doesn't explains much about scanning.
Thanks,
Rohit
Simply follow the example on the README of the page linked in the question for "Start ranging a single iBeacon", and replace the major and minor field values with null. This will scan for all beacons with the UUID specified.
It is not possible to use the plugin to scan for all beacons regardless of UUID because iOS does not allow this.
I have used Demo to detect ibeacons near android phone.
But in didRangeBeaconsInRegion() callback never get 2 iBeacons detected. Even one is deactivated and other is activited it gives uuid of previous one.
Let me brief it with an example. One ibeacon is on with uuid(a unique no given to ble chip) 123. Lib is detecting it perfectly fine. Now deactivate 123 and keep on ibecon with uuid 890. But lib is still detecting 123 not 890.
I want to detect all ibeacons near my phone.
I have used other lib named AltBeacon. It solved my problem. Now multiple ibeacons get detected .They have given solution for ranging Ibeacon.
If anyone using eclipse than can get lib from here as altbeacon github repository is for gradle build system.
I'm working on a BLE proximity sensing feature based on Android and need some information.
Currently I see there are no BLE beacons manufacturers for android. I found 2 so far for iPhone.
1) http://www.estimote.com
2) http://www.gimbal.com
Estimote claims that their devices are generic but mainly they are publicized for iBeacons. So I'm not sure whether I should order them for a feature on Android.
Secondly gimbal explicitly mentions that their devices won't be enabled for android for proximity sensing.
So if any of you know where can I order BLE beacons compatible with Android please let me know.
Another thing, for prototype testing I was wondering whether I could use a Android BLE capable tablet or smartphone as a beacon to emit BLE signals?
Till now the documentation for android only suggests how to detect a beacon, But I'm not sure whether an Android device can be used as a beacon.
Any insights?
There is a BLE Beacon manufacturer for Android: Radius Networks
You can detect any standard iBeacon on Android using our Android iBeacon Library.
You can try it out yourself with our free iBeacon Locate app, which is based on this library. My company also sells both software and hardware iBeacons that I guarantee work with Android. But again, any standard iBeacon will work, too. Don't take my word for it -- just download our free app and use it to see one of our iBeacons. (We even have a free virtual machine you can use!)
It is currently not possible to make an iBeacon out of a stock Android device because the Bluetooth LE APIs, introduced in Android 4.3, do not support the peripheral mode needed to transmit advertisements like an iBeacon.
EDIT: It is now possible to make rooted Android 4.4.3 devices transmit as an iBeacon. See here.
I tried simple BLE scan app on Android, but the callback for LeDevices always returned null for UUID[]. Also, finding based on know UUID didnot work.
To add to David's reply. I have tried Radius Networks SDK, pretty clean. I like it.
Also, Estimotes has released their Android SDK today(1/7), which is good. The sample App shows notification, Distance, Major-Minor. I tested with 3 Estimotes & also with iPhone's app (making the iPhone as iBeacon). It works well, give it a try.
Note that you have to modify the code
change the ESTIMOTE_PROXIMITY_UUID value to the UUID that you are watching for.
Hope it helps.
I'm looking for a way to detect iBeacon (iOS 7.0 feature) from an Android device. I read the Android documentation, where it seem that the iBeacon is some kind of GATT server which sends its position. While the Android documentation says that I should not poll that data, but for the detection this would be nessesary.
I google a lot but this topic is quite new (I even created a new tag ibeacon) so I would be happy if I get some links to ressources from the iOS world which descripes the implementation. Also if there are some Android libs which I did not find yet would be nice.
EDIT: The library below has been moved here:
https://github.com/AltBeacon/android-beacon-library
I have ported the iOS7 iBeacon SDKs to Android, and was able to see standard iBeacons and estimate their range. The code is available here:
https://github.com/RadiusNetworks/android-ibeacon-service
For this to work, you need Android 4.3 which introduced the Low Energy Bluetooth APIs. You also need a device with a low energy bluetooth chipset.
If you don't want to use the full library above, you can roll your own. iBeacons simply transmit a BLE advertisement once per second that start with a known sequence of bytes. You simply have to tell Android to do a BLE scan, get each advertisement, and look for one that starts with the known iBeacon byte sequence. You can then parse out the iBeacon fields. Here is the code the shows how this is done:
https://github.com/RadiusNetworks/android-ibeacon-service/blob/master/src/com/radiusnetworks/ibeacon/IBeacon.java#L177-L231
The only catch here is to detect beacon even the app is not running. Unlike iOS7, it is not natively support. In iOS7, when you on your BT, it will automatically notify you when you enter the region of registered iBeacon.
I had implemented iBeacon in Android 4.3 API using IntentService plus AlarmManager. To do a scan every 30 sec( to save your battery power, it shall be longer). It works well for user. Only when the matching uuid/major/minor is found, then it will trigger notifications. Otherwise, it will sleep and wake up for scanning again.
i think this is the solution for your question.
I didn't quite get what you mean, could you provide links to the documentation which said that you should not poll the data?
But it seems to me that the iBeacon is working as a server, which is kind of funny to me. Isn't it meant to find other devices, not the phone itself?
https://developer.bluetooth.org/gatt/characteristics/Pages/CharacteristicViewer.aspx?u=org.bluetooth.characteristic.position_quality.xml
This is the characteristics it uses though. To me it sounds like that the devices you are looking for are the "beacons" and the phone itself is just a listener. So you would not poll the EHPE and EVPE data but you should actually listen to it's changes or "broadcasts".
I'm kind of new to this myself also and couldn't find any really specific documentation.
Though, be advised, in the link I provided there is download link in the top corner which will provide you the full documentation in PDF format. There you will probably find more answers.