What is a beacon?

Check out our great infographic for a quick overview.

A beacon is a small, electronic device based on Bluetooth Low Energy® which broadcasts radio signals called advertising packets.

These signals can be received by any device which is in range and equipped with Bluetooth 4.0 e.g. smartphones such as Apple iPhones or Android phones but also other compatible Bluetooth readers. Devices do not need to 'pair' with beacons to be able to receive advertising packets.

When a mobile device receives an advertising packet, dedicated application can calculate distance and relative location from the beacon without the need for other systems such as GPS. This ability creates many opportunities to use beacons, for example, content can be loaded from the Internet to smartphone with a proprietary app, when it gets close to a given beacon.

Our beacons are equipped with different models of coin batteries (e.g. CR2477, CR2450, and few others) which, thanks to the beacon's low power consumption, can run 15 months up to 7 years (depending on model and broadcasting interval).  

The maximum range of the broadcast signal depends on the transmission power setting, as well as the environment devices are in as the signal can be diffracted or absorbed.

By default, transmission power is set to -12 dBm, and the default advertising interval is 350ms. These two values and other parameters can be set when ordering beacons or later by the user.

Users can set different parameters for their beacons, such as the Advertising interval and Tx Power, among others. It is also possible to update firmware over the air or restore beacons to their default settings.  

Key features

• Broadcast advertising packets based on Bluetooth LE® (4.0 and higher)
• Compatibility with all Bluetooth 4.x and 5.x devices
• Compatibility with both Apple iBeacon™ standard and Google Eddystone™ standard
• Configurable parameters protected by a password.
  • Proximity UUID, Major, and Minor values 
  • NamespaceID and InstanceID  
  • Device name    
  • Transmission power level
  • Advertising interval
  • and many others

• Over-the-air firmware upgrade
• Low power consumption
• Weather-proof hardware casing allowing for outdoor usage (check each product specification for details)

Come and visit our store to learn more about our different products.