

iBeacon Pioneers Estimote (YC S13) Raise $3.1M Seed Round - ljdk
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/10/ibeacon-pioneers-estimote-raise-3-1m-seed-round/

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cmollis
Estimotes are nice for production, but we built testing beacons out of
Raspberry Pi's

[http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/10/09/how-to-
make-a...](http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/10/09/how-to-make-an-
ibeacon-out-of-a-raspberry-pi.html)

Here's a link the source for an app that we wrote for a Party that we threw
recently..

[https://github.com/backofthecup/HolidayParty](https://github.com/backofthecup/HolidayParty)

We built a few D3 visualizations of where users were at the party, and how
fast they found hidden iBeacons... kind of like a treasure hunt game to demo
the technology.

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post_break
Can you explain how the device works? What does my phone do when it picks up
this iBeacon?

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cmollis
If you've implemented the location callbacks for a specific region (defined by
a UUID), then you'll receive messages with that detail how far you are from
the device (within about 70m, depending on your device). Depending on the
device, the power settings, etc, this can be very accurate.. to < 1m. The IOS
api's also support background processing so the app doesn't necessarily need
to be in the foreground to process. You will get called back when you enter
and exit regions.

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pclark
Congrats Estimotes! I have their beacons sitting on my desk. I can't speak for
the capabilities yet – but the design is _gorgeous_

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alexatkeplar
They're sitting on my desk too! :-)
[https://twitter.com/SnowPlowData/status/409999490192396289](https://twitter.com/SnowPlowData/status/409999490192396289)

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hustlechris
Nice! Coded anything yet?

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xauronx
I'm excited to see where this goes. I was recently on a team for the
Salesforce Hackathon that created a pretty cool rewards and consumer
statistics platform. Earn points for visiting, get a push notification when
you receive a reward, etc. Awesome for the consumer. The business owner gets
statistics based on foot traffic, peak hours, most visited beacons, etc.

We didn't have any iBeacons handy (only 5 days between idea and completion),
so we were using an iPad to broadcast an "iBeacon". It was pretty neat. I'd
like to get my hands on some of Estimotes beacons.

~~~
ljdk
Hey, I'm Lukasz, CTO at Estimote, I'd love to take a look—please drop us a
line!

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xauronx
Email sent!

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mandeepj
I was reading about how iBeacon will revolutionize contact less payments but
when I read about square wallet, I thought this is already done without any
need of iBeacon.

Thoughts? Am I missing anything here?

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kloncks
Have you used Square Wallet yet?

Experience is awful. It is thought that BLE might be better tech that leads to
a better experience.

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lambda
Based on this paper, I'm not sure I'd want to rely on something like BLE for
payments:
[http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f...](http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f.r43.cf2.rackcdn.com/12053-woot13-ryan.pdf)

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ljdk
Also, here's a short video showing what's possible:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrsHBjzt2E8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrsHBjzt2E8)

~~~
hustlechris
Nice! Should be in the article BTW.

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maffydub
Congratulations to the Estimote guys! I've borrowed one of these to test out
their signal strength/consistency.

(At a recent AngelHack, I built an indoor-positioning system based on
triangulation of signal strength. I tested with a StickNFind BLE device and a
couple of homemade BLE(-ish) devices based on nRF24L01 RF modules. I'm hoping
the signal strength from the Estimote is going to be more consistent than
these.)

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andrewtbham
I got some estimotes and my experience is that the signal strength doesn't
change consistently based on the distance. I was planning to do a program
using trilateration... but I don't think it would work.

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maffydub
My experience was that the RSSI does change reasonably consistently, but that
there's quite a lot of noise (so you need to smooth it appropriately). I also
get the impression that it's affected by orientation of the phone relative to
the beacon, and also by anything blocking line-of-sight (including humans).
Mounting the beacons high up could reduce the effect of this last point.

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anuraj
Congrats Estimote - We recently got the developer pack and implemented an
Android SDK for the same, and the motes are handy. The calibration is a bit
off for each mote, and thus location accuracy is a bit compromised. Hope the
production version will be better calibrated.

We also have a similar SDK that works over indoor WiFi, though the accuracy is
definitely better for the BLE beacon.

~~~
ljdk
Thanks! You may try increasing the broadcasting power of each beacon to get
better accuracy. Also, we're working on our Android SDK so please stay tuned.

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mortenjorck
The potential applications are fascinating, but I'm getting a new picture of
the thought behind Apple's addition of Control Center in iOS 7: The Bluetooth
toggle isn't just there for a modicum of battery conservation. Sometimes
you'll welcome iBeacons; other times you'll want to keep them at arm's length.

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applecore
With fine-grained control over an individual app's behavior, do we need an
all-or-nothing Bluetooth setting to control how they use iBeacons?

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hustlechris
Yeah, super curious as to what Apple is cooking in that department, I'm sure
they are thinking about it a lot. For now their policy is just to OPT-IN by
downloading relevant app and giving it permissions, you will not get spammed
by beacons for which you didn't download relevant app.

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dexone
The recent iBeacon update to the Apple Store iOS app may hint at how Apple
wants apps to behave. Basically, it's strictly opt-in, with copious
information about the benefits, and obviously, possibility to turn the in-
store notification off. I suppose in the future, as the customers get
acquainted with the technology, there won't be the need to spell out the
benefits, but the opt-in and strict user control are here to stay.

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mojuba
Placed an order 2 months ago, still waiting...

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eunoia
Same here

