

This Startup’s Cheap Sensors Could Create an OS for Everyday Life - jimiasty
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/how-a-startups-cheap-sensors-could-bring-shopping-and-mobile-computing-into-the-future/

======
jimiasty
This is Estimote (YC S13) co-founder here. The contextual micro-location based
interactions triggered by the presence of Bluetooth Beacons is something
called iBeacon and will be part of iOS7 this Fall. Since it is still under NDA
those who have an Apple Developer Account could access sample codes in the
Apple SDK. For those who would like to experiment already and check the
possibilities we have also published a blog post explaining how to turn one
iOS6 device intro a virtual beacon and use the other to experiment with micro-
location: [http://blog.estimote.com/post/57087873876/a-simple-way-to-
si...](http://blog.estimote.com/post/57087873876/a-simple-way-to-simulate-
apple-ios7-ibeacon-feature)

------
instaheat
I didn't realize Bluetooth had such a tight accuracy radius. I was looking
into NFC for another project I was working on that required the two devices be
touching each other. The digital poker chip, for casinos and the like to see
their chip flow in real time.

I do a lot of Retail & IT Consulting and this is very interesting to me. What
other use cases did you have in mind that you haven't posted on your website?

You website states it will ship this Summer, with Summer nearly over - is this
still the case?

Really looking forward to offering this to my Retail clients and working with
your team on implementations.

~~~
jimiasty
There is wide variety of applications from proximity marketing, indoor-
navigation, automatic check-in, contact-less payments till home automation,
public transportation, etc.

We are extremely focused on the retail and believe that you have to provide
users with a context and not to annoy them. Better shopping in IKEA or product
search and navigation in Walmart are the obvious solutions.

There are more specialized application - check e.g www.swirl.com they focus
mostly on fashion stores or shopkick.com focused on rewards and using audio
beacons.

If you pre-order beacons now will ship this Monday and you will have an access
to our SDK and source code of sample apps. Please note the Apple iBeacon
profile is not public yet, but our beacons have over-the-air update feature so
you will be able to update it using your phone whenever Apple or Google beacon
profile is ready.

We posted also a simple hack explaining how to turn iOS6 device into a beacon,
so you could actually start experimenting now:
[http://blog.estimote.com/post/57087873876/a-simple-way-to-
si...](http://blog.estimote.com/post/57087873876/a-simple-way-to-simulate-
apple-ios7-ibeacon-feature)

------
msabath
I'm really excited about the possibilities that devices like this will bring.
Once there is an easy and affordable way to facilitate indoor location we will
see many cool things. There are a few players in this space and retail
is/should be interested in this.

The hard thing to do as a retail operation is to use this in a way that
provides real value. The last thing that I want as a consumer is another
interaction on par with SMS messaging. But, if this allowed the retailer to
gather information on the consumers wants and needs and provided valuable
information back to the consumer that enhanced the shopping experience, it
could be amazing.

I think it is smart to start with retail, but this has applications all over
the place. I think the price point is extremely important. But once the price
comes down and consumers and businesses can afford to purchase many of these,
we will see many cool applications. If this was matched up with an easy way to
program them, like IFTTT, home adoption would take off. It could really change
the face of home automation.

In short, I'm excited and have preordered.

~~~
solistice
I personally think this thing will be misused to the hilt, but there are ways
they can add real value to a brick and mortar shopping experience.

Imagine you walked into a larger store, for example Walmart. As you walk in,
the estimote app loads the wallmart app temporarily over the instore wifi. The
app shows you a map of the store, which shows what products can be bought in
which aisle, making your shopping experience much faster. As you approach the
cash register, it acts like a concierge and tells you which register is the
fastest one (some airports do this with a dedicated person, which directs
people to different lines. It yields considerable speed ups). As you leave the
store, the walmart app is removed from your phone. Estimote now shows you the
nearest estimote enabled stores.

That's the good scenario. Now to the bad.

You go to the mall. As you approach it, you phone starts buzzing like it's
mad. You think it's a call, so you pick up your phone. Nope, its Footlocker
trying to sell you their new line of shoes at a 10% discount. Fine, but you're
not looking for shoes. As you walk through the mall, your phone goes of
wantonly, displaying ads for stores that are on the other side of the mall.
Obviously, they don't know how to configure their estimotes. You can't walk
for 5 meters without an estimote alert going off, logging itself to your
allready estimote infested task list. Completely pissed off, you turn off your
phone in order to leave the mall at peace. You're not buying stuff here. As
you get home, you get an important call, but your phone is off, and you miss
it. Resignated, you trash your iphone and get yourself a single purpose nokia.
Serves you right estimote, serves your right.

I think there's certainly potential behind these, but their "sell the dev
packs" approach to it doesn't seem to be very promising. Most small retailers
will struggle with the setup and SDK. Hell, the local supermarkets cash
registers here have SQL injection vunerabilities. One bar code that includes
;DROP TABLE * in it and they're closed for a week.

There seem to be several steps in setting these up. 1\. Buying them. 2\.
Setting them up physically. 3\. ? Linking them to a central system ? 4\.
Writing an app.

Out of these points, it seems they are only covering 1, even though there's
certainly work involved (and money to be made) in steps 2 - 4 . Dumping these
on the buyer leads to friction in the buying process which will cost them
sales. They need to sort that out.

~~~
aflinik
Vendors using Estimote beacons will use the SDK to make entirely independent
apps available in the App Store.

Only the specific apps that you choose to install will be able to communicate
with particular beacons, so if one starts to annoy you with spammy behaviour
you can easily remove it from your phone and forget about it.

~~~
solistice
Installing yet another app is friction though, and unless that app comes up
with some serious punch, I doubt it'll be worth it for a lot of people. I
think the physical browser model would work be a lot more convenient.

~~~
aflinik
Some retail companies (let's say barnes&noble) already have mobile apps. All
it takes is to add beacon-related features, and their customers won't have to
do anything.

~~~
solistice
Yeah, but individual apps on a screen is the very desktop model that we're
increasingly moving away from. You have some special purpose programs (games,
tools) on your computer, and most services have moved to the internet. Imagine
you had to download a hacker news exe, and a google exe, and a reddit exe,
etc.

By making customers download individual apps, your product becomes harder to
implement/less profitable for stores which do not have an app with broad
customer adoption. That makes you miss out on the long tail, which in this
case could be considerable.

The locationally dependent browsing over in store wifi doesn't have this
downside. It could leverage exsisting web technology, which makes the
development off these apps a lot easier. It might work like this:

1\. You walk into the beacon range. The beacon sends you the url:
int.somestore.com/locationx?val=123094&locationy?val=594952&locationz=40389
2\. It sends you the connection data for the internal wifi which serves up the
stores webapplication. 3\. The webapp is shown in the estimote app. 4\.
Profit.

~~~
jimiasty
Thanks guys for the discussion, this is Jakub, the co-founder.

When it comes to the signal/noise problem it is definately a challenge and we
believe that neither App Stores nor Estimote as beacons' infrastructure will
allow apps that annoy consumers because it will kill the technology and users
will turn off the Bluetooth.

Our vision of future interactions is more about context. We believe the cocept
of apps you have to download and place as an icon on your screen and then find
when you need is wrong.

It should work the way that you walk-in to the your home approache fridge with
smartphone or Google Glass and wanted order for eggs, you take out your phone
and there is a fridge context.

You walk-in to the restaurant and there is a context of menu and ordering
food. You ate and there is a context of payin the bill, you walk-out and in
the exit there is a conxtext of rating the restaurant.

So, in our vision future apps will be a set of conditions and actions you
write for the venue the same way you do it now for the screen and keyboard.

From technology point of view if some popular app like Foursquare integreta
with our beacons it could trigger other apps even if they not have our code
yet, but there is a context for that.

------
Matti
"from roughly 150 feet away down to just one or two inches."

Are these kind of sensors/receivers available in such commercially available
versions that they can be easily incorporated into robotic projects? It seems
like this could be used for a robot "homing in" to a position -- such as a
charging station.

~~~
jimiasty
Hi Matti,

there are several approaches to Bluetooth Low Energy beacons. Project called
Tail ([http://www.thetileapp.com/](http://www.thetileapp.com/)) is building
sensors that you attach to products and when they move or are lost your
smartphone can use the Bluetooth radio signals to detect its proximity.

Our www.estimote.com beacons are designed to be placed in a fixed location
such as retail store, museum or park. They broadcast their location to all the
phones or devices (like your robot) in the range.

The devices could pickup the signal and estimate the location very precisely,
down to inches - so it is definitely a technology that could be used to
indoor-navigation for robots, machines in the factory or doctors in a
hospital.

We at Estimote are focused on retail, but we also have an API and presale Dev
Kits, so anybody could experiment with the technology.

Shoot me an email jakub at estimote.com and will be more than happy to advice
on how to use it for robots.

~~~
Stwerp
> The devices could pickup the signal and estimate the location very
> precisely, down to inches - so it is definitely a technology that could be
> used to indoor-navigation for robots, machines in the factory or doctors in
> a hospital.

There has been a _lot_ of research in this area that I have seen and almost
everything seems to ignore multipath propagation. I think the more interesting
approach is fusing RF localization with other sensors (example paper [pdf
warning for those fearful of them]
[https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/37074/perv...](https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/37074/pervasive_computing_2010.pdf)
)

Just wanting to point out that it is much more complicated than simply picking
up the signal and homing in.

~~~
beambot
I'm first author on that Pervasive article... my PhD thesis focused on using
passive UHF RFID tags affixed to objects, people, etc to allow mobile robots
to quickly take inventory and then approach (locate) tagged objects in the
home [1].

Passive UHF RFID tags are nice for a number of reasons: super-low tag cost
(sub-$0.10 in bulk), long range (6+ meters), and lack of a battery (tags
harvest wireless power from a reader). Bluetooth solutions will have a hard
time competing with UHF RFID on these properties -- and that's key for certain
applications. However, there are definitely benefits to an alternative
solution like wireless triangulation. For example, even the best UHF tag
localization algorithms produce error bounds on the order of 0.5 meters (there
are workarounds for mobile robots). Plus, the Bluetooth solution doesn't
require the reader to be mobile -- you can take a single measurement and get a
decent pose estimate.

I still share a lot of your concerns: if this is using triangulation, you'll
need multiple base stations (ie. infrastructure costs); many similar systems
require extensive calibration; and the effects of multipath, diffusion, and
fading can be very tricky to characterize.

As for mapping... SLAM mapping using ultra-low cost laser rangefinders [2] is
nearing triviality, and even onboard visual SLAM is becoming imminently
feasible. Anyway... happy to speak more offline. My contact info is easy to
find.

[1] More details:
[http://www.travisdeyle.com/publications.html](http://www.travisdeyle.com/publications.html)

[2] [http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/12/20/ultra-low-cost-
laser-r...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/12/20/ultra-low-cost-laser-
rangefinders-actualized-neato-robotics)

~~~
darkarmani
I happened to work with one of your co-authors a handful of years ago. Did you
happen to use a ThingMagic reader? I worked on the software side of the fixed
readers (arm-linux based), not the small embedded reader modules. I also added
a lot of improvements to the python API for rapid prototyping using the
embedded module.

~~~
beambot
Indeed, I used the ThingMagic M5e. All the code for the (python) drivers [1]
and robot behaviors [2] are open sourced.

Funny story... before (and after) doing higher-level robot behaviors, I worked
on low-level reader hardware too (with our mutual colleague, I presume). Most
recently, it was building SDRs to interact with super-high datarate passive
tags with onboard sensors... to build cyborg dragonflies [3].

[1] [http://ros.org/wiki/hrl_rfid](http://ros.org/wiki/hrl_rfid)

[2] [http://www.ros.org/wiki/pr2_rfid](http://www.ros.org/wiki/pr2_rfid)

[3] [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/dragonfly-
backpack...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/dragonfly-backpack-
neuron/)

~~~
darkarmani
I forgot that the stock python drivers weren't open source. The "dragonfly
backpack" is a cool looking project.

------
danielrakh
Correct me if I'm wrong but this would require the user to have bluetooth on
correct? My concern is that most users have bluetooth off as it is notorious
for being a drain on battery power, although it has improved dramatically.

I'm also thinking about the typical user case scenario where it would require
for me to go to settings->bluetooth-> and connect. Seems like too much of a
hassle for the average person, or does iBeacon in iOS 7 solve this issue by
not having to "connect"?

~~~
jimiasty
Daniel,

I think you are confusing old Bluetooth we used for headsets or car audio and
the new Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy protocol.

It is new, completely redesigned protocol that is supported by Apple devices
from iPhone 4S and is more similar to Zigbee than Bluetooth.

Users still need to turn it on, but have measured in retail stores that most
of "normal" people (not geeks) do not turn it off. Please also note the
Bluetooth Low Energy is used and promoted by Apple in features like AirDrop or
to communicate with Apple TV.

Bluetooth Low Energy different than old Bluetooth does not require pairing and
connecting.

You just walk-in to the store, e.g. IKEA and approach sofa you like the most
and you see the picture of the sofa on your screen.

Blueooth SIG (organization behind Bluetooth standard) projects strong growth
in the number of devices that support BLE: [http://blog.bluetooth.com/os-
season-what-it-means-to-you/](http://blog.bluetooth.com/os-season-what-it-
means-to-you/)

------
KaiserPro
Ahhh this reminds me of 2002 when advertisers discovered that you could send
vCards by bluetooth. I used to get requests to pair whenever I walked through
waterloo station, so that I could receive tiny little 1bit bmps and some
contact details.

You cool kids with your "new" bluetooth.

It'd be interesting to see what the security ramifications are of having a
thirdparty broadcast content directly onto your phone. Pin lock stealer
anyone?

~~~
jimiasty
Sure, but in 2002 there was no iPhone and apps that could handle the Bluetooth
signal and trigger different actions. There was also no centralized App Store
which could protect users and ensure the the quality.

We are sure there will be lots of marketing people trying to use this
technology as a SPAM tool, but we believe that Apple with the the new iOS7 and
the feature called iBeacon solve it in an elegant way. It's still under the
NDA, but there are some publications about it:
[http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1597348](http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1597348)

------
rdl
I'm curious how "trustworthy" this is -- i.e. how hard it would be to spoof.
If I could trust that a certain configuration of ~12 estimote beacons changing
signals in a certain way as I walked through my home meant I was at home, I'd
be comfortable using 4-digit PINs instead of passwords for a lot of things.

------
fennecfoxen
Cute, but my money's still on the guys doing it with the stores' existing wi-
fi network's AP infrastructure. Economies of scope.

~~~
jimiasty
There is indeed an approach to locate phones based on the signales from Wi-Fi
routers. The challenge is its accuracy which is not better than 6-10 metres -
so it's you are in this room or in the other room.

With cheap and tiny Bluetooth Low Energy beacons the accuracy could be down to
inches. So it's about you being at the front-door, at the check-out, in front
of the mirror, next to sofa bed in the furniture store, etc.

It's much more precise, thus the context for the app on the phone could be
better and the experience almost magical.

And also Bluetooth Low Energy is fully supported by major phone companies
([http://blog.bluetooth.com/os-season-what-it-means-to-
you/](http://blog.bluetooth.com/os-season-what-it-means-to-you/)) so BLE
beacons like our motes could trigger different actions based on your location
even if your phone is in the pocket.

You can't do it with Wi-Fi and AP infrastructure and since the beacons are
wireless, cheap and easy to install there will be eventually new
infrastructure build.

