Eddystone Beacon The Thin Device

The Apps Factory Beacons just arrived and I am so excited to introduce them here. These beacons are world class and are equipped with the most advanced hardware and firmware which include Nordic's nRF51822 microchip which is equipped with proprietary power management circuit that should make our Beacons' power consumption more efficient enabling batteries to discharge slower by as much as 100% slower than its competitors.

In terms of form factor and appearance, the beacons are so thin and light and the white plastic casing has smooth surface ideal for display in any location whether at the counter or gallery where every object should appear and be seen as a work of art. Changing the color or adding more designs to the surface of the casing is not issue because it can be easily accomplished by using silkscreen printing or creating design on stickers.

The beacons broadcast temperature, its battery charge level and of course the eddystone and ibeacon data packets.  The eddystone data packets consists of 3 frames(UID, TLM and URL) which makes it really high tech because the beacons can be customized to add external hardware like arduino and its famous peripherals. To achieve this, one needs expertise in reprogramming the firmaware of the beacons through the exposed serial or jtag port of the beacon as shown in the picture below.

Just like its older version, the apps that was used to calibrate and configure the ibeacons is still useable(check my blog post in my other blog Ibeacon with thin form factor and that really works!). To configure the eddystone, the lighblue app for IOS or the nRF Master Control Panel app for Android is used.

The new beacons were also designed to comply with Google's Security guidelines which means the device must have configuration mode which can be activated just after turning the device on. And it resumes into broadcast-only mode after a few seconds of inactivity. During the broadcast-only mode, no other device can connect and modify the eddystone and ibeacon configuration.