In this article we are going to run through the introductory steps you'll probably want to follow when you first receive your Beacons and Gateways. 

1. Unpacking
2. The Kontakt.io Proximity Web Panel
3. Creating your first Venue
4. Assigning Beacons to Venues
5. Adding actions to your Beacons
6. Next steps

Unpacking

As soon as you receive your beacon package from the delivery service, you can begin using your beacons straight out of the box.  Kontakt.io beacons come with batteries installed, and will already be operating.

Note: the battery we use in our Beacons is CR2477 coin cell, which will last up to 2 years – assuming 'always on' usage with the default settings. If you need to get new batteries for your Kontakt.io beacons, they should always be available in your local decent store with electronic parts. 

The Kontakt.io Proximity Web Panel

The Web Panel allows you to configure and manage your Devices, Venues and Managers.  

Creating an account

The first time you access the Web Panel, you'll need to create an account. Please note that this is a different account from the one you created in Kontakt.io Store when purchasing beacons. If you have troubles creating an account in Web Panel please check our guide: How to create an account in Kontakt.io Proximity Web Panel for the first time.

Signing in

Once you created an account in Web Panel, you can login to your account on our Web panel sign in page.

Then you will see the startup screen.

 

Creating your first Venue

A Venue represents a physical location where you are going to setup a Beacon network e.g. any shelf, room, store, restaurant, hall, building etc.  

You can create your first venue by clicking the Venues button under the Infrastructure section.

In here, click the Add a Venue button.

Add the name for your venue, and the optional description as preferred. Then select the Create Venue button to create the venue.

Now we have a Venue created, we can start adding Beacons to it.

Assigning Beacons to your Venue

To Assign beacons to your venue either click on the 'Venue devices' tab or in the 'Assign Devices' button.

 

You'll see a list of all your Beacons and Cloud Devices that have not yet been assigned to a Venue.  This could be a long list!  You can use the  Advanced search to filter your devices by ID, Order Id, Proximity, Major, Minor, etc...

To assign your Devices to a Venue.

• Select the Devices you want to add to your Venue by clicking the checkbox for each.
• Click the "Assign" drop down menu.
• Click the "Assign to Venue"  button. This will automatically assign the selected devices to your newly created venue.

Creating Actions for your Devices 

Actions are the things that users will see when they detect a Beacon, displaying an image, an audio file, navigating to a web page, for example. Actions are associated with Beacons, but happen on users' smartphones, tablets etc, so an application that handles such actions is required.

This will open the list view for all your Devices. As before you can filter this list by clicking the dropdown lists available, or using the Advanced search feature.

Click the pencil icon link to right of the beacon you want to add the action to.

Actions are assigned individually to each beacon. Click on the Beacon you'd like to add Action for and go into the Actions section.

You'll see two available Action types:

• Content action – lets you upload a file, which then gets sent to the target mobile device once in proximity of the beacon.
• Browser action – lets you specify a browser action (e.g. open popup), and prompt the target mobile device to run that browser action once in proximity to the beacon.

If you select one of the Action types, you may upload a file using the available drag & drop option or Browse files button.

You will also see an option to set the proximity of the Action. This determines how close you have to be in order for the Action to be triggered.

There are three proximity options:

• Immediate –less than 1 meter (a little over 3 feet)
• Near – less than 5 meters (about 16½ feet)
• Far – more than 5 meters

You can add multiple actions to each of your Beacons.

Next steps

In this article we've run through just the basics of the Web Panel and configuring Beacons.  You can read more about Web panel functionality in the following articles:

• Configuring Beacons
• Managers

Of course, if you want to do anything practical with your Beacons, you'll need a smartphone armed with the right software. Check out our Showcase Android application: 

• The Kontakt.io Android Showcase application - interacting with your beacons