Problems with kontakt.io Beacons

Question

we just received a 10 pcs. set of Beacons coming from kontakt.io (Poland).

Somehow, they seem not to work properly, or we did not recover how they shall be operated correctly. Before we kick them away, can anybody tell me if this behavior is the the common behavior of Beacons (iOS)?

• We do receive constant range notifications, but these do not contain the Beacons in range, neither in our own test app, nor in Apple's AirLocate sample or in the official kontakt.io App. We always need to switch off and on Bluetooth to see anything, and than, AirLocate shows some, but with insufficient information (proximinity always "Unknown"), our own test app only receive information of one and not all 10 Beacons although they are inside range, and the kontakt.io App does not show or trigger antyhing.
• When we are able to see Beacons in range within AirLocate example, the list fills itself (after toggle Bluetooth state), but than looses all Beacons within a few seconds.

Is this a misconfiguration and hence our fault, did we obtain broken Beacons, or is this the common behavior ...?

Any help appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Small batch of our iBeacons shipped late January may be affected by firmware error.

iBeacons you received are very likely to have the firmware error that reveals as the Beacons appear unstable or dead (on iOS). We found this error yesterday and this affects a late January batch you most likely received. But don't worry, we got it covered.

Kontakt iBeacons have implemented over-the-air firmware update mechanism that can be used to upgrade your Beacons easily (no need to send them back). You will receive an e-mail with a firmware upgrade app for your iPhone or iPad along with a short instruction of the process. It will take less than 5 min for a 10 iBeacon set.

We are really sorry about the situation, but we promise to make it as painless as possible.

Please bear with us.

Answer 2

The proximity always showing as"unknown" usually indicates that the transmitter power calibration value has not been set properly on the beacons. You need to find out if kontact.io beacons let you set this value, which is supposed to be sent with each iBeacon advertisement.

If you have a way of setting it, you first run a calibration, which can be done with AirLocate or my Locate for iBeacon app by holding the iOS device 1 meter away from each beacon during calibration. If successful, you should get a number between -1 and -100 which represents the beacon's RSSI transmitter power. This is the value that needs to be configured into each beacon.

If you get an error during calibration, Locate for iBeacon might give additional info in this case. Also, if you have access to an Android 4.3 device, the Locate app for that platform may provide more info still, as might the ScanBeacon app for Mac, because these programs bypass the iOS Core Location library which is probably getting confused.

I have never seen the other symptoms you report, but I suspect they are related, so try to fix the calibration value first.

EDIT: According to this page, the app needed to configure kontact.io beacons has not yet been released.