Inspectorate has already thrown over them. And marketers are planning to use them for the purest science fiction scenarios:
The pants you looked at the online store, while you sat unsuspecting fireplace at home, can appear on a giant screen just as you pass the same shop at Storo center the next day.
The shop may in fact have installed a tiny radio beacon, and recognize that the same, interested customers now passing storefront.
Or what stores that provide free parking, but only if you go with that they monitor that you actually constantly find yourself nd in their store?
But marketing and tracking of people is just one of the uses for this technology. An application that many of us will probably make contact with quite quickly, are small tracking devices that make it possible to find keys, bicycles, cars, computers and whatever it may be.
The first copies are now at checkout country electronics chain. Prices are low, even before techno price fall has begun: You get them for ten bucks and up.
Let’s call them mobilfyr
In English called this new technology for a beacon or ibeacon. The English beacon means beacon signal. In reality it is about tiny radio beacon, let’s call them mobilfyr in Norwegian.
They contain a radio transmitter and a small computer which is so small that it can fit in a sticker that is only 3 millimeters thick, but as nevertheless may be self-powered from a mains battery in a year. Mobilfyr which is only slightly larger, can have battery that lasts for several years without having to touch them.
Such mobilfyr may sound violently advanced, but has really limited functionality. It contains no GPS, it would have taken too much power.
Therefore, the lighthouse not place themselves on a map. However it sends a unique identification code (there are several unique codes than grit in the Sahara, so you do not go out of addresses with the first). The range is around 20-30 meters in open air. The signal lighthouse emits belong standard Bluetooth Smart, also called Bluetooth 4.0.
Bluetooth Smart is only partly the same as usual bluetooth. There are Bluetooth Smart in most new phones with bluetooth, but not in all.
Read more here: Now comes a faster Bluetooth
Requires extremely little Power
The special feature of this standard is that it requires extremely little power, so a mobilfyr can be self-powered in months and years. Mobilfyr can also connect to your mobile without you actively need to pair with each of them.
You must admittedly approve that a given mobile app will track you (You must answer yes when the phone asks “Will you let app x use location services?”), But then the app take advantage of their knowledge of the position of the mobile guys and find out quite exactly where you are, even indoors.
When your mobile and a mobilfyr connects together, recorded the four “events” that the app can use, for example, to guide you. The first happens when you come within range and makes contact with the lighthouse (20-30 m away).
The second occurs when you come any closer, and the third when you get right up mobile lighthouse (typically within a few meters). In addition, the app know when you move away from the lighthouse.
Not just for marketers
Also, many Android manufacturers have recently begun to enter Bluetooth; Smart in their phones. Therefore, there are now apps for both iOS and Android that uses mobilfyr. Ibeacon Apple’s brand, but one and the same mobilfyr still works for both Android and Apple phones.
Many will be skeptical to let themselves trace closely by marketers. But you are just as wary to track down your own keyring? A long series of small manufacturers launching products based on that a mobilfyr is small enough to be placed in a key ring, during a bike seat, a dog collar and many, many other places. These you can accept and use if you want, even if you refuse to participate in all marketing efforts.
We have tested for a week
We have tested a little guy from the French manufacturer Gablys in a week’s time. The most obvious was to hang it on your key ring. We can confirm that it works quite well – with a few important limitations.
When you track down mobile lighthouse, it is not quite as simple as you have an arrow on screen that directs you straight on. The phone registers how strongly the identification signal, “the Lighthouse” is.
Therefore you through a kind letelek with “warmer, warmer, colder, colder” until you find it ( watch the video at the top of the article ). When completely close, you can get micro lighthouse to emit a small beep. This makes it easy to find out exactly under which paper you forgot your keys.
Rows only 20-30 meters
Have you posted from you valuables more than 20-30 feet away, get Do not contact the mobile lighthouse. Then it is theoretically lost, until you come within range. But in practice no hope there.
Your telephone stores namely constantly where the last “saw” the lighthouse. If you forgot it again in the bag with a friend or at work, you will get a map that shows where the keys last was seen. Do you go there, you will be able to establish contact and find it completely accurate place.
If anyone has meanwhile grown to move mobile lighthouse / keys to another place, you are sadly equidistant. Then, the only possibility to get help from a kind of voluntary project, which several manufacturers betting on. Gablys giving namely reward to all other Gablys users who had to pass a mobilfyr that are reported lost.
These are not told that they pass your keys, nor who owns the mobile lighthouse they pass. Yet the reward and are thus motivated to let the automatic search go. It does not require much power the phone. Our mobile specify that it uses only 1 percent of the battery capacity to seek continuously mobilfyr.
Read also: Now, advertisers can see you as you enter the mall
You join voluntarily – without noticing it
mobiles for other users passing a lost set of keys will send a message to Gablys server where mobile lighthouse now resides. If you are lucky, it is thus possible to track key ring anywhere in the world. But until users have been many, you should have a reasonable amount of luck that this strike.
Through our testing, we have discovered a seemingly pretty nasty bug in the latest release of Apple’s operating system, IOS8. According Gablys it has a “bug” that makes you sometimes fail to reconnect with a mikrofyr when you want to track it. To establish a connection, you must then turn Bluetooth on and off. This takes no more than five seconds.
Ugly error creates problems
But for those who are not aware of the problem, this is a devastating mistake. Worse, you may sometimes need to restart the entire phone to get connection. We’ve asked Apple about this will be fixed, but has not received a reply.
Gablys also has a feature that allows you to press a small button on the mobile lighthouse / keychain and get phone to give a little beep, in case there is the phone you have misplaced.
Mobilfyr as Gablys (they now come from several manufacturers, which iHere3, Stick Find and Estimote) can also get an alarm to go off on your mobile for example, if a thief from getting away with your purse. In practice this leads to so many false alarms (sometimes maybe you even lift your purse?) That you should be pretty paranoid to have feature screwed until something actually stolen.
This can be huge
You can also get an alarm if the mobile lighthouse disappears more than 20-30 feet away from you. In practice, this also to more false alarms than you can bear to get, and we ended up turning feature off.
If the error in IOS8 and other childhood illnesses addressed quickly, there are indications that these products can be very popular. Not least because the price is already minimal. Who has not needed to find their valuables?
I’ll certainly to let my mikrofyr hang on your key ring, and can not wait to have one worry less next time I put it on a little too good place.
Fact: Microscopic radio beacon
- A ibeacon or mobilfyr sends several times seconds into a radio signal with a unique ID.
- A mobile phone can example check this ID against a register online and find out where it is located.
- Mobilfyr is very cheap and requires extremely low – almost like a wristwatch.
- For you to be able to use it, your phone must be equipped with Bluetooth Smart.
Read also: Now, advertisers can see you as you enter Storo Center
No comments:
Post a Comment