
Low-powered Bluetooth mesh with beacons - jimiasty
http://blog.estimote.com/post/153812538740/introducing-the-worlds-first-ble-mesh-networking
======
jimiasty
Hi HN, this is Jakub, founder of Estimote, Inc. (YC S13).

We just released a new firmware to support mesh networking with bluetooth
beacons - you can read more on our blog:
[http://blog.estimote.com/post/153812538740/introducing-
the-w...](http://blog.estimote.com/post/153812538740/introducing-the-worlds-
first-ble-mesh-networking)

Happy to answer any questions here! : )

~~~
baldfat
I have had 5 different ideas for projects just looking at your site. I
currently work in an education company with little one's and there are a few
ideas that would be awesome in a 3-5 year old age group. It would also be
great as a research tool to figure out where children are spending their time
in the classrooms during the day.

This is really looks like an exciting technology.

~~~
jimiasty
Thanks! Please see this list of use-cases - there is an entire section for
education: [https://community.estimote.com/hc/en-
us/articles/207295257-A...](https://community.estimote.com/hc/en-
us/articles/207295257-Apps-and-projects-with-Estimote)

~~~
tuukkah
I didn't see anything with mass transit there. We're piloting beacons at bus
stops and in the busses.

------
downwith
So... is this broadcast/observe and trickle, or true connections? From the
tree demo, it looks like trickle with a limited observe window to limit the
power consumption. If it were connection I would expect the tree to light up a
little less randomly.

~~~
jimiasty
Of course, beacons do not keep the persistent connection since that would
drain too much battery. But they are not synchronized, so you can pass data to
one edge of the mesh and it will be passed with some latency to another edge -
like on the tree video. If you watch carefully the tree video it's like a
chain reaction since more nodes are influencing other nodes in the range.

~~~
downwith
So yeah. Sounds like nothing new, and there is definitely severe limitations
in latency and power consumption in using these methods to do anything except
change some settings or toggle GPIOs. Not revolutionary, but definitely cool
that you were able to reduce power consumption to run on batteries unlike
other implementations that leave the receive on 100% of the time.

------
codys
Any one aware of the technical details of how this was accomplished?

Is listening for other BLE transmissions low power enough that it can be done
while keeping the claimed "several years" battery life, or is there something
extra going on to limit the power cost of listening?

Is the protocol between the beacons themselves actually BLE in the mesh case?
Or do they just expose that to phones?

Are the beacons establishing BLE connections for the mesh, or are they just
taking advantage of announcements (which would likely allow avoiding some
power consumption as long as the message is small)? A mix?

~~~
jimiasty
Beacons use only BLE to talk to each other; there no Zigbee or other
connectivity technology. That way both phones or other beacons/BLE devices can
inject data to mesh.

------
castratikron
Would be cool to wire these up to those nuclear batteries:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060159)

~~~
jimiasty
Wow, this is great - nuclear-energy powered beacons would be a hit. Hope they
will commercialize it soon : )

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krona
What specifically is a "world's first" here? Just curious because I know a
hardware designer who designed battery-powered Bluetooth (not necessarily BLE)
mesh networks for factory-scale alarm systems two years ago. Not sure if they
ever made it to production, but I wouldn't be surprised. That system only
required servicing once a year.

~~~
jimiasty
BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) is supported these days by all modern phones and we
haven't seen mesh implementations on top of BLE that would be low-power. There
are other non-low-power BLE implementations for example for lightbulbs, but
it's not useful for beacons since they need to be wireless due to operational
costs of deployments at scale.

------
btashton
Hasn't the CSR BLE mesh been around for far longer?

~~~
heypiotr
The thing about CSR BLE mesh is, they differentiate between "active" and
"passive" members, and the "active" members use a lot of energy. Mesh in
Estimote Beacons is the first that's truly sustainable on battery power alone.

 _Disclaimer, I 'm from Estimote (:_

