iBeacons & Titanium

Bild: T3N

How it works?

Beacons use only the advertisement channel. As the “beacon” name suggests, they transmit packets of data in regular intervals, and this data can be then picked up by devices like smartphones. Hence iBeacons are simply a specific usage of BLE advertisements, with some additional support on the iOS side.

02 01 06 1A FF 4C 00 02 15: iBeacon prefix (fixed)
B9 40 7F 30 F5 F8 46 6E AF F9 25 55 6B 57 FE 6D: proximity UUID (here: Estimote’s fixed UUID)
00 49: major
00 0A: minor
C5: 2’s complement of measured TX power
~~~

![](http://www.warski.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/bluetooth-le-ibeacon-packet2-300x144.png)

What follows is that if you want to experiment with beacons, you don’t really need any special devices. If you have a newer phone (e.g. iPhone 4S+, SG3+) or a Bluetooth 4 laptop (e.g. Retina MacBook), you can turn any of these devices into an iBeacon transmitter and receiver. For iPhones, see for example the “Locate iB” app in AppStore. For MacOS, see here. And of course, you can use Raspberry Pi as a beacon as well.

Breaking down the iBeacon format
--------------------------------
### The proximity UUID 
(B9 ... 6D in our example), is an identifier which should be used to distinguish your beacons from others. If, for example, beacons where used to present special offers to customers in a chain of stores, all beacons belonging to the chain would have the same proximity UUID. The dedicated iPhone application for that chain would scan in the background for beacons with the given UUID.

### The major number
 (2 bytes, here: 0×0049, so 73) is used to group a related set of beacons. For example, all beacons in a store will have the same major number. That way the application will know in which specific store the customer is.

#### The minor number
 (again 2 bytes, here: 0x000A, so 10) is used to identify individual beacons. Each beacon in a store will have a different minor number, so that you know where the customer is exactly.
Devices as iBeacons:
--------------------

### iPhone/iPad:
AirLocate is a iPhoneApp to transform your iPhone into a beacon. You must follow this [HOWTO](https://github.com/AppWerft/iBeacontest/blob/master/doku/How-to-Configure-your-iPhone-as-an-iBeacon-Transmitter.pdf?raw=true) 
to build it on your machine.

![](https://github.com/AppWerft/iBeacontest/blob/master/doku/airlocate.png)
### Android:
[Stackoverflow: UPDATE: This is now possible on rooted Android 4.4.3 devices](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19602913/can-an-android-device-act-as-an-ibeacon)

### OSX:
On newer osx you can use [Maverick as an iBeacon]() to create a iBeacon. You can download and install OSX-binary [here](https://github.com/AppWerft/iBeacontest/blob/master/doku/BeaconOSX.zip). 

iBeaconScanner:
---------------
### iPhone:
AirLocate (above) or from Appstore: [Locate Beacon](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/locate-beacon/id738709014?mt=8)

![](http://a2.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Purple4/v4/f1/d4/40/f1d440cb-b252-c1e2-5691-a663df752d71/screen568x568.jpeg)

#### Android:
a lot of [apps](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=ibeacon&c=apps) ;-))

![](https://lh4.ggpht.com/Riy3wGkz6RDwrHuF_5EnQm_bcvUybzUS-l0TsQcN2BBSTbUyxsFYMKCvQixC1ob_yW2H=w100)
![](https://lh4.ggpht.com/RjEtnJqwOh-Ozg6kgQQaljmWM6tb4jYglOqmAIXb5jfPw2GM7xgltbZlLnAXLQOGfPE=w100)
![](https://lh6.ggpht.com/AageLj4Ae12yYrjUb-E7EsH2SmHXDFEWDc8rsDD36Z3K111kigTaZot-rDaF125jpSI=w100)
![](https://lh5.ggpht.com/EuhbJUeNah_dJFV_PBRo2YQQE7G6vWBlvUsLjp0Mc-JZzOn7cprJnoMt6nZ73drKSn4=w100)
Configuration of manifest/plist
-------------------------------
~~~
<ios>
        <plist>
            <dict>
                <key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
                <array>
                    <string>location</string>
                    <string>bluetooth-central</string>
                </array>
            </dict>
        </plist>
    </ios>
    <iphone>
        <orientations device="iphone">
            <orientation>Ti.UI.PORTRAIT</orientation>
        </orientations>
        <orientations device="ipad">
            <orientation>Ti.UI.PORTRAIT</orientation>
            <orientation>Ti.UI.UPSIDE_PORTRAIT</orientation>
            <orientation>Ti.UI.LANDSCAPE_LEFT</orientation>
            <orientation>Ti.UI.LANDSCAPE_RIGHT</orientation>
        </orientations>
    </iphone>
~~~
and for Android:
~~~
<android xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
	<manifest package="de.appwerft.ibeacontest">
            <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="10" android:targetSdkVersion="19"/>
            <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH"/>
            <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH_ADMIN"/>
            <application>
                <service android:enabled="true" android:exported="true"
                    android:isolatedProcess="false"
                    android:label="iBeacon" android:name="com.radiusnetworks.ibeacon.service.IBeaconService"/>
                <service android:enabled="true" android:name="com.radiusnetworks.ibeacon.IBeaconIntentProcessor">
                    <meta-data android:name="background" android:value="true"/>
                    <intent-filter android:priority="1">
                        <action android:name="de.appwerft.ibeacontest.DID_RANGING"/>
                        <action android:name="de.appwerft.ibeacontest.DID_MONITORING"/>
                    </intent-filter>
                </service>
            </application>
        </manifest>
</android>
~~~