When iBeacon was launched, it had a robust API with just three predefined proximity zones: immediate, near, and far. It's a very pragmatic design, dictated by the physics of the 2.4 GHz radio waves.
In 2014, we set out to build a more powerful location API, one that gives you the (x,y) position of the user. We applied complex algorithms to signals from built-in sensors and nearby beacons, the placement of which we know from an automatically-generated floor plan. That's how Estimote Indoor Location for iOS was born—one of the very first pieces of our operating system for the physical world.
The best way to build a complex piece of software such as an OS is to do it brick-by-brick. And today, we're adding a new one: Estimote Indoor Location for Android.
Upgrade your Android app from Proximity to Location
Estimote Proximity SDK for Android has been available almost since the beginning. It offers an API with simple "did enter/exit beacon's range" events, basic proximity zones, and distance estimations.
Upgrading to Indoor Location API means the canvas for developing apps for the physical world gets much richer. You operate within 1 m "blue-dot" accuracy, instead of just a few proximity zones. You can "paint" indoor geofences of any shape and size, and "re-paint" them entirely in software without the need to physically move beacons. It's like jumping from writing apps for an 80-character-wide terminal to writing for a 4K screen.
How to get started
You can find the Android Indoor Location SDK on Estimote's GitHub. It comes bundled with an example app, so you can just clone the repo and try it right away.
You can use the floor plans you already have in Estimote Cloud. Otherwise, get a kit of Location Beacons with UWB, and let them automatically create a floor plan for you. Small caveat: the mapping app is currently iOS-only, so dust your iPhone off or borrow one from a friend. Automapping takes just a few minutes—your Android-wielding colleagues won't have time to notice you're holding a forbidden device in your hands.
Feedback wanted!
Contrary to iOS, the Android ecosystem is extremely diverse. In fact, that's exactly why we first rolled Indoor Location out for iOS only. We were just getting started, and it was much easier for us to ensure quality with just a few iPhone models to optimize for.
Fast forward to today—we've learned a lot, and over time, our Android Proximity SDK has already accumulated a ton of workarounds for quirks we discovered in various Android devices. Much of that happened with the help of our developer community: your emails, your bug reports, and your forum posts.
Android Indoor Location SDK is out now, and all we ask is: try it, and keep the feedback coming! You can find our Indoor Location engineers on Estimote forums, or email us at [email protected].
SpaceTimeOS - Operating System for the physical world
If you want to run a digital business the steps are simple:
you get a computer,
that computer obviously has an operating system,
you download the apps you need or even code your own apps if you know how,
and at the end, if you have traction, you scale your business, mostly using software to deliver the same experience to many users at once.
For years we wondered why we couldn't apply the same process for business rooted in the physical world. Real-world ventures create value by both "moving bits" and also "moving atoms", e.g. by producing or shipping physical goods or rendering services.
Here is how it should work in real life:
you get a physical space for your business,
you quickly install an Operating System for your physical world,
you immediately download or create your own real-world apps
finally, you run these apps in many locations delivering the same physical-digital experience
INTRODUCING SPACETIMEOS
That's exactly why we created and are proudly launching SpaceTimeOS - the world’s first and only operating system for the physical world.
This new OS is extremely easy to install. Simply place our shiny new sensors in the corners of any room. They will talk to each other and within minutes they will build in the cloud a digital replica of your space with the exact dimensions and shape.
REAL-TIME LOCATION SYSTEM (RTLS)
All the assets that have UWB tags or compatible devices with built-in UWB will immediately appear on the map and their real-time and inch-precise position will be visible. Business owners are then able to browse and download many apps that can run on their spaces: way-finding, asset tracking, office occupancy, contact tracing and more.
PROGRAM YOUR WORLD IN JAVASCRIPT
Developers can use SpaceTimeOS to quickly build new apps in JavaScript. Apps designed for one location can easily run on multiple. After review by Estimote, developers can also publish their apps to the Marketplace, allowing any customer who has mapped out their spaces the ability to download them and benefit from their features.
HOW SPACETIMEOS WAS CREATED
When Estimote, Inc. was founded 10 years ago, both of our founders - Jakub and Lukasz - had a strong vision to create, what they call, an Operating System for the physical world. They envisioned a future where software apps could be run directly on physical spaces. Assets moving inside buildings or interactions between objects would produce digital events. These would be captured and turned into magical and contextual experiences.
After graduating from YCombinator in 2013, this vision began to materialize with Estimote’s first product: the iconic Bluetooth beacons that looked like colorful gems. The entire world was inspired by the possibilities that came with better indoor navigation and contextual messages from small wireless sensors.
In 2016, our company raised its Series A funding to transition into a mature software business. The goal was to create a true location intelligence platform. Since then, Estimote has been invested in developing indoor location algorithms, automapping with UWB, cellular connectivity, and cloud-based fleet management.
The direct result of these investments was a fully programmable LTE Beacon which allowed developers to program devices by writing micro-apps using JavaScript. These were compiled by the Estimote IoT Platform into low-level binaries run by beacons and sensors.
The true test of this powerful software platform came in 2020, when the COVID pandemic shocked the world. Using its technology stack, Estimote created a full contact tracing solution in just 2 weeks. It was remotely sent to their LTE/UWB wearables and helped tens of thousands of front-line workers keep a safe distance and reduced their risk of contracting the virus.
After almost 10 years of research and development, Estimote is proud to reveal the latest version of its IoT platform.
SpaceTimeOS is the final materialization of the original vision to create a digital layer on top of the physical world. It is a canvas that will allow innovators to create next-gen software apps that run on spaces and items.
SpaceTimeOS is a new paradigm in contextual computing and location software. It will accelerate the emerging development of intelligent buildings and smart cities.
And now, anyone can easily get started with this technology. We are offering a Trial Access pack to try out SpaceTimeOS. It includes professional tech support over Slack, developer documentation, enough devices to get started, as well as full access to the Marketplace with app samples. It is ideal for prototyping and running small pilots.
Apple U1 API is finally open and our new UWB Beacons are compatible
Finally, smartphones can be really smart. The little computer in our pockets could connect to a server on the other side of the world, but it didn't really know much about our surroundings or the context we were in...
That reality changed in 2013 when Apple released iOS7 and opened up the Core Location API. This allowed iPhones to detect the presence of low power Bluetooth beacons. Developers using APIs from Apple could estimate their signal strength and approximate proximity with an accuracy of 1 - 3m. It worked great indoors where GPS signals weren't available.
Estimote was the first company to release iBeacon-compatible devices back in 2013. Our iconic Bluetooth beacons and SDKs allowed thousands of developers to enhance their mobile apps with micro-location features.
Now, in August 2021, Apple released their new mobile operating system – iOS15 – and opened the Nearby Interactions API.
It allows iPhones to talk to nearby UWB beacons and compute distance with inch-level precision. In addition to distance, this API can also tell the direction/angle where the beacon is installed relative to the phone. This is a superior upgrade to location technologies embedded into modern phones and will create another wave of innovation.
UWB BEACONS & IOS SDK
And here we are again. We are the first company on the market to release UWB beacons by updating our iconic Proximity Beacons with a state-of-the-art UWB radio that is compatible with the Ultra Wideband U1-chip installed in Apple devices.
We are shipping them alongside an iOS Demo Application and an iOS SDK available on GitHub.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Our new UWB Proximity Beacons, in addition to BLE radio, are equipped with a UWB chip and antenna. They run firmware compatible with the specification from FiRa Consortium. It's the same UWB communication standard Apple implemented in their U1-enabled devices to make them interoperable with other UWB devices. The protocol uses a combination of Bluetooth and UWB to provide precise location/angle. When a mobile app using our SDK or a native Nearby Interactions API wants to get distance estimation, it first uses Bluetooth to detect nearby devices. Once Bluetooth communication is established, both the beacon’s UWB radio and the smartphone’s UWB modules wake up. The devices send radio signals to each other and compute very precise distance estimation. As there are multiple UWB antennas embedded into the phone, software can also determine which angle the UWB signals are coming from.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UWB AND BLE?
Both these wireless communication technologies are low-power and short-range and both are supported by modern smartphones. The main difference when it comes to location technology is the technique used to estimate the distance between the beacon and the phone.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
With Bluetooth, the longer the distance from the beacon, the weaker the signal received by 2.4GHz radio (RSSI) is. Based on that signal strength received by the phone, the mobile SDK can compute approximate distance with 1-5m precision, depending on the venue.
Ultra Wideband (UWB)
With UWB, the distance estimation technique is based on time of flight measurements. UWB Beacon and the phone talk to each other sending 3-6 GHz radio signals back and forth. Both the beacon and the phone measure precise time duration of that back-and-forth communication. Multiplying it by the speed of light (also the speed of radio waves), the SDK can very precisely compute distance estimations with an average accuracy of 10 cm (4 inches).
WHAT ARE THE APPLICATIONS?
One obvious application is the ability for a phone to search for lost items that are in range, but which location we don't precisely know. Apple showcased this use-case with their FindMy app and AirTags launched in early 2021.
Another application is related to the superior security UWB communication provides. The only way to ensure that you are in front of your own car or apartment is to really be there physically. Because of the time of flight physics, it's not possible to fake that signal and pretend you are in the car. This prevents “relay attacks” possible with other radio technologies. This "proof-of-presence" technology is already used for keyless car applications.
GET YOUR UWB DEV KIT TODAY
Other use-cases depend on you – developers with lots of great ideas about how to make your mobile apps more spatially aware, delivering magical experiences.
Start contributing to the contextual computing era and buy your UWB Dev Kit with 3 UWB Proximity Beacons for $99 + shipping directly on our website. Dev Kits are already shipping.
In 2018, we launched the Estimote LTE Beacon, the first beacon continuously connected to the cloud and fully programmable in JavaScript. It was designed to scan for assets tagged with BLE beacons and report their presence in the cloud. Some creative customers even adapted it to be a panic button for workplace safety solutions in a slightly modified form-factor of a pebble-shaped wearable.
Then, in 2019, we added UWB features and ML-based IMU technology - both exposed through JavaScript APIs. This updated product became known as an AI beacon.
Nobody could have predicted what would happen next…
At the end of 2019, our Chinese partners began informing us about a new, exponentially spreading virus. A few weeks later, our European customers alerted us that outbreaks occurred in their regions. Then, it finally arrived in the US. Our entire company swiftly moved to remote work and we shifted all our brainpower to work on creatively using IoT technology to fight Covid and its consequences. It was our mission and our duty.
Because the virus was so contagious, anyone who had close contact with an infected person contracted it almost immediately. Instead of Covid-testing everyone on the same floor, we thought a UWB wearable with inch-precise distance measurements could register who the actual potentially infected people were and only they needed to be quarantined. We even added support for vibration and a buzzer to warn employees against congregating at a close distance as defined by the CDC.
That is how the Estimote Wearable was born. It took us 2 weeks to write JavaScript code for social distancing/contact tracing and push it remotely to existing wearables over the LTE. This was the power of a programmable IoT platform. Working directly with customers and following CDC guidelines, we also put together a cloud-based dashboard for contact tracers.
Our customers loved it, and soon we were shipping tens of thousands of wearables to enterprises across the world to help their front-line workers with social distancing and contact tracing in a pre-vaccine pandemic.
The new form-factor was convenient for a wearable use-case. Since it had USB-C, this JavaScript programmable device could also serve as a gateway scanner registering the presence of other BLE or UWB Beacons.
This is why we have decided to sunset the AI Beacon form-factor and replace it with our Programmable Wearable as a platform for all our customers.
Here is the full specification which is onboard and supported by JavaScript API:
UWB radio with two-way ranging and TDoA
Bluetooth Low Energy advertising and scanning
LTE-M/NB-IoT with MQTT support
IMU (6 axis accelerometer/gyroscope) with Machine Learning
8MB Flash Memory with storage API
Programmable LEDs and button
Vibration motor and buzzer
USB-C for charging
If you want to use our Programmable Wearable beyond workplace safety and contact tracing applications please contact our sales team.
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This blogpost and the story was updated in January 2022.
Estimote launches wearables for workplace-level contact tracing for COVID-19 – TechCrunch
Bluetooth location beacon startup Estimote has adapted its technological expertise to develop a new product designed specifically at curbing the spread of COVID-19. The company created a new range of wearable devicesthat co-founder Steve Cheney believes can enhance workplace safety for those who have to be colocated at a physical workplace even while social distancing and physical isolation…
Estimote launches wearables for workplace-level contact tracing for COVID-19 – smarthometec
New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/estimote-launches-wearables-for-workplace-level-contact-tracing-for-covid-19-smarthometec.html
Estimote launches wearables for workplace-level contact tracing for COVID-19 – smarthometec
The Bluetooth Location Beacon Estimote startup has adapted its technological know-how to develop a new product specifically designed to curb the proliferation of COVID-19. The company has developed a new range of portable devices that co-founder Steve Cheney believes can improve workplace safety for those who need to be placed in a physical place of work, even when social distance and isolation measures are in place.
The devices, simply referred to as "proof of health" wearables, aim to enable contact tracking – in other words, monitoring the potential spread of the coronavirus from person to person – at the level of a local workplace facility. The aim is to give employers the opportunity to hopefully give impulses for a possible transfer between their employees and to give them the opportunity to hopefully curb local distribution before it becomes an excessive risk.
The hardware contains passive GPS Location tracking and proximity sensors with Bluetooth and ultra-broadband radio connection, a rechargeable battery and integrated LTE. It also includes manual controls to change a wearer's health status and to record conditions such as certified health, symptomatic and verified infections. When a user updates their status to indicate a potential or verified infection, other users they have had contact with are updated based on the proximity and history of the location data. This information is also stored in an integrity dashboard that provides detailed logs of potential contacts for central administration. This is designed for internal use within an organization, but Cheney tells me that he is now working to see if there is a way to work with WHO or other outside health organizations to potentially use the information for company tracing and to use population groups.
These are said to exist in various form factors: The existing pebble-like version that can be attached to a lanyard for carrying and displaying around a person's neck. a wrist-worn version with an integrated adjustable strap; and a card format that is more compact to carry and can work with conventional security badges that are often used for access control of facilities. The pebble-like design is already in production and 2,000 are now being used. In the near future, production with the company's manufacturing resources located in Poland is to be increased by up to 10,000 more.
Estimote has been building programmable business sensor technology for nearly a decade and has worked with major global companies like Apple and Amazon . Cheney told me that he quickly realized the need to apply this technology to the pandemic's unique problems, but Estimote had been 18 months in development for other applications, including the hotel industry for employee safety / panic button use.
"This batch has been in full production for 18 months," he said in a message. “We can program all wearables remotely (they are LTE connected). Suppose a factory provides this – we are writing an app for the wearable remotely. This is programmable IoT.
"Anyone who knew the virus would require proof of health over site diagnostic technology," he added.
Many have proposed technology-based contact tracking solutions, including using existing data collected from smartphones and consumer applications to map the transmission. However, these efforts also have a significant impact on data protection and require the use of a smartphone – something that Cheney says is not really useful for closely tracking the workplace in high-traffic environments. According to Cheney, Estimote can help employers by creating a special wearable to avoid doing something “invasive” with their workforce, since it is instead tied to a convenient device whose data is shared only with their employers, all in one Form factor that they can remove and have some control over. Mobile devices cannot do nearly as fine-grained tracking indoors as dedicated hardware, he says.
And contact tracking at this hyperlocal level doesn't necessarily give employers early warning signs to stop spreading earlier and more thoroughly than usual. In fact, greater contact tracking powered by sensor data could reveal new and improved strategies for the COVID-19 response.
"Typically, contact tracking is based on people's memories or some general assumptions (for example, the shift someone has worked on," "said Brianna Vechhio-Pagán of the Applied Physics Lab at John Hopkins University in a statement. “New technologies can now track interactions within a transmittable area or a range of ~ 6 feet, reducing the error caused by other methods. By combining very dense contact tracking data from Bluetooth and UWB signals with information about the infection status and symptoms, we can discover new and improved ways to ensure the safety of patients and staff. "
Given the final duration of measures such as physical distance essentially in the air and some predictions suggesting that they will continue for many months, even if they differ in severity, solutions like Estimote's could be more essential to maintaining Services and solutions are critical companies that are doing their utmost to protect the health and safety of workers who take these risks. More extensive measures may also be needed, including general, publicly available contact tracking programs, and efforts such as these should help influence the design and development of these programs.
Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 2: Meet Meta, Lob, Amulyte, Weilos And More
Y Combinator Summer 2013 Demo Day, Batch 2: Meet Meta, Lob, Amulyte, Weilos And More
Just as the wheels of moment continue to turn, the 49 brand-new startups out of Y Combinator continue to churn.
Batch One is now behind us, and a brand-new group of startups are taking the level. As per usual, TechCrunch is here to bring you finish coverage of each of these companies, ranging from a “hearing aid 2.0” to a “Netflix for fashion” to “credit cards for old people.” [Update: For our…
Bluetooth Beacons Market Is Anticipated to Attain Around USD 58.7 Billion By 2025:Key Participant Estimote, Inc., Kontakt.io
Bluetooth Beacons Market Is Anticipated to Attain Around USD 58.7 Billion By 2025:Key Participant Estimote, Inc., Kontakt.io
San Francisco, 02 January 2019, Bluetooth Beacons Market Analysis By Technology (iBeacon, Eddystone), By End-use (Retail, Travel & Tourism, Healthcare, Financial Institutions), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2018 – 2025
The global bluetooth beacon market size is expected to reach USD 58.7 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The introduction of…
