IoT Couchbase Beacon Project

This IoT project will scan for portable bluetooth iBeacons and save their information to a Couchbase NoSQL database.

Possible use cases (not limited to):

• Maybe airliners attach iBeacons to luggage that has been checked-in for transport and IoT scanners are dispersed at airports. Luggage location could be tracked and less will become lost.

• Maybe amusement parks keep IoT scanners running at various locations around their parks. iBeacon bracelets or fabs could be given to small children so if they become lost in the park, they could easily be found.

To be more specific about the technical details, this project will run on an IoT device such as an Intel IoT Gateway and continuously scan for bluetooth signals that match the iBeacon specification. Scanning uses the hcitool and hcidump tools found on Yocto and other Linux distribution flavors. To make bluetooth parsing simple, this project will use the iBeacon Scan script by Radius Networks to parse the hcidump data. Once parsed, the data will be piped into the Java application that will save the data into Couchbase Server via Couchbase Lite for Java and the Couchbase Sync Gateway.

Each iBeacon transaction will be stored as a single document. This means that one document will exist per every time any iBeacon has been discovered. All status information such as timestamps and power will be stored within the same document. For example:

{
    "beacon": "74278BDA-B644-4520-8F0C-720EAF059935::1::0",
    "power": -45,
    "gateway": "raspberrypi::127.0.0.1",
    "timestamp": 1460150563819
}

This setup has been tested using an Intel IoT Gateway.

Requirements

There are a few requirements to use this application.

• Couchbase Sync Gateway
• Gradle
• JDK 1.7 (version dependent on IoT JRE)
• An IoT device with BLE (Intel IoT Gateway and Intel Edison recommended)

Configuration

The Java project contains hardcoded information in regards to the location of the Couchbase Sync Gateway. Open src/main/java/com/nraboy/App.java and change the URL to match that of your own.

Installation

This project must be built via a workstation before transferring to the IoT device. To build the Java project, execute the following via a Command Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac and Linux):

gradle jar

Transfer the JAR file that contains dependencies found in the build/libs directory, to the IoT device. The scanning script expects the JAR file to be named iot-couchbase-project.jar. Also transfer the ibeacon_scan script to the IoT device and place it in the same directory as iot-couchbase-project.jar.

Scanning for iBeacons and saving them to Couchbase can be started by executing the following:

./ibeacon_scan

The script will run until manually stopped.

Troubleshooting

If you experience the following error when trying to run via your IoT device:

Library not found: /native/linux/i386/libsqlite3.so

You will have to do some hacking when it comes to your JAR file. By default, only amd64, x86, and x86_64 directories exist for the SQLite libraries. We must create an i386 directory.

Extract the compiled JAR file using the following command:

jar xvf <filename>.jar

Navigate into native/linux directory of the extracted jar and rename x86 to i386. Recompile the JAR by executing the following:

jar cvfm iot-couchbase-project.jar META-INF/MANIFEST.MF .

The application should work now.

Resources

Couchbase - http://developer.couchbase.com

Intel IoT Gateway - https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/service-gateway/service-gateway-overview.html

Gimbal - http://www.gimbal.com/