CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidiosbluetoothbluetooth-lowenergyibeacon
kramer65
kramer65

Reputation: 53943

Can I send a message to a single iBeacon device within a group?

I'm just reading up on iBeacon, and I might want to use it for a project I'm currently involved in. What I currently understand from it is this:

Simply put, an iBeacon device broadcasts a message to whomever is within range. This message includes the sender its mac-address, and from the intensity of its signal, the receiver can calculate the distance. iBeacon devices can either be senders, receivers, or both.

1) First of all; is this correct?

Secondly, on the wikipedia page I read that it could enable payments at the point of sale (POS). Because I understand that it is basically a very local broadcast service I'm just trying to understand how something like that would work.

2) So would in case of a payment, the store or the customer initiate the payment?

3) And how would you prevent that other nearby devices pick up the payment messages?

4) Lastly; is it possible to send an iBeacon message to only one iBeacon device identified by its mac address?

Any tips and insights are very welcome!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1146

Answers (1)

davidgyoung
davidgyoung

Reputation: 64961

Enabling mobile payments is an example of something you could build on top of iBeacon technology. But iBeacons themselves are very simple building blocks that would only be a small piece of a solution. It is a common misconception to confuse what iBeacons do themselves with what can be done with iBeacons.

In the payment use case, the only function the iBeacon would perform would be to wake up the payment app and tell it the phone is near the point of sale. (With a specific numeric identifier for the point of sale.) That's it! That is all the iBeacon does. Everything else necessary would be built with other software.

There are lots of possible answers to your other questions about payment processing, but they are not specifically related to iBeacons. Typically, a mobile payment system will require entry of a PIN to confirm payment. So an app using iBeacons could simply display an option to pay to any device with the payment app that is a few feet of the point of sale.

In the simplest implementation, the phone would query the payment server with a message like "I am near POS terminal with iBeacon identifier #12345. How much is the payment?" And the server might respond with a message like "$23.95", which would be displayed on the screen of the phone. In this implementation, the user would verify the amount on the screen and enter a PIN to confirm. This confirmation would be the security mechanism ensuring that the wrong device does not pay for the wrong order. Other more sophisticated implementations are possible, but again they are not strictly related to iBeacons.

Two other clarifications:

  1. While an iBeacon does transmit its Bluetooth Mac address, this is typically ignored. In fact, iOS blocks reading this Mac address, so it is useless on that platform. Instead, applications rely on a three part identifier specific to iBeacons: ProximityUUID, Major, Minor.

  2. There is no way to make only a single device see an iBeacon. It is an open radio transmission visible by everything in its approx. 150 ft. range.

Upvotes: 4

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