Developing a BLE beacon
A BLE beacon is a device that transmits its unique identifier as a BLE advertisement so that a mobile application reacts when the phone detects the beacon. This technique is especially useful when proximity sensing is required, for example, tracking applications or in museums to show more information about an object.
One implementation of this technique is iBeacon, which is developed by Apple. An iBeacon frame in a BLE advertisement contains three data fields related to the application:
- 16 bytes of UUID: The globally unique identifier of the application. All devices share this UUID.
- Major (2 bytes): The application-specific major identifier to group iBeacon devices into regions.
- Minor (2 bytes): The application-specific minor identifier to group iBeacon devices into locations in a given region.
For more information about how iBeacon works, you can refer to this document:
An iBeacon frame also contains the TX power value of the device...
