iBeacon Protocol: region, blink rate, ranges

iBeacon Protocol: region, blink rate, ranges

MOCA Platform requires iBeacon protocol compliant beacons. These beacons use BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to broadcast their position (up to 100 meters). The iBeacon protocol reports four attributes (prefix, UUID, Major and Minor).

  • Prefix - Advertising prefix.
  • UUID - Unique identifier of the region the beacon is representing.
  • Major - 2 Byte number. Maximum range of 65535.
  • Minor - 2 byte number. Maximum range of 65535.

For region definitions the most important values are UUID, Major and Minor. Not every iBeacon compliant device has a different UUID: this unique identifier is really the unique identifier of the region it represents. Therefore you can have a vast amount of iBeacon compliant devices with the same UUID but different Major/Minors.

This is specially important for iOS: there is a hard limit which is 20 regions (regions being both geofences and beacons). We always establish one region as Geofence for effective beacon detection. By alternating and grouping beacons using same UUIDs you can overcome the limitations.

The blink rate (transmission frequency) is defined at an up to 10Hz. That means ten bursts per second, which affects the battery life. Many providers change this default to be more manageable (e.g. a blink every 350ms)

 

    • Related Articles

    • Beacons Introduction

      Basic concepts: Beacons are devices that broadcast a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) radio frequencies. This is detected by BLE compatible smartphones. MOCA supports two Bluetooth Beacon protocols: iBeacon and Eddystone. In this article we'll talk only ...

    • How do I receive MOCA SDK actions in my third party API?

      MOCA has a feature called Cloud-Hook. This feature enables the MOCA SDK embedded into the client mobile App to deliver location-triggered actions directly to the Third Party campaigns module and deliver segmented and personalized content to end ...

    • Best practices to test Beacons and Geofences

      Once the SDK is integrated, a testing phase starts. Been as it requires physical proximity to devices and Geofences, a good way to lower the logistic requirements of testing is to use Apps.   Geofences: Any App that allows for Location Spoofing will ...

    • Example: Analytics data via REST API

      Our REST API is a powerful tool which allows you to gather data and process it depending on your needs. We have both the documentation and an API call tester embedded here. This example will show you how to get the actions and reached users per ...