Introduction

This advantageous indoor positioning system for the location of people and short-range objects is suitable for many industrial applications such as the safety of isolated workers, vehicle access control or the location of logistics equipment in a warehouse.

Beacons should be placed with the minimum signal disrupt, this will higher the chance to get information from them. They need to be configured with the application “device manager mobile“ When you are getting beacons, they are always being OFF till you enable it. Other valuable configuration set is with which protocol it should work (Beacon or Eddystone) because on basic configuration on beacons is setup Id, from which device won‘t get any information. We would recommend to make higher signal strength. Max is 4dB.

Device is getting a signal from the beacon in every scan and all data which was found and used for beacon will be shown in data packet or configurator.

It would be better if when you are making a setup you would place it where you will get less signal corruption by obstacles.

Obstacles could be different but BLE should work about 50 meters maximum in the case we have a lot of interference.

To optimize communication, in configuration mainly should be enabled CODEC 8 Extended and we would recommend to use maximum signal strength of BT from device side too. In beacon list you can use filter for them. Then only those beacons which is filtrated will be found in that building.

Operation

Beacons (BLE ID TAGS) transmit signal which devices is catching them and getting information:
First half byte – current data part
Second half byte – total number of data parts
Bitwise parameter, specify BLE beacon type and parameters
(signifies if specific data is present for certain beacon)

• Bit 0 – signal strength 0/1

• Bit 1 – Battery Voltage 0/1

• Bit 2 – Temperature 0/1

• Bit 3 – Reserved

• Bit 4 – Reserved

• Bit 5 – BLE beacon type 0/1
  Bit 6 – Reserved

• Bit 7 – Reserved (eddystone/ibeacon)

iBeacon – 20B (UUDI, major, minor)
Eddystone – 16B
(Namespace, Instance ID)

For the configuration of the gps-tracker-beacon and the configuration on the server to obtain information in real time, all information from beacons comes via AVL ID385. On the link below, you can find all necessary information about how to parse this data.

To manage and configure beacon via applications, the phone must have an NFC and BT reader.

Teltonika vehicle tracker supports up to 100 beacons at a time.

https://teltonika-gps.com/downloads/en/blue-coin-id/Sensor-and-Beacon-testing-instructions-v1.2.pdf

NB: The blue beacons we currently have support only unidirectional communication. Beacons send information but cannot receive because they work with Bluetooth 4.0 technology.
These beacons cannot therefore form a mesh network because to do so, the beacon needs to operate in two-way communication.

Beacon record: The beacon record is always created after the scan, and it sends to the server an additional record with the information found in this BLE scan. If there are no beacons found, then it will send an empty package with GPS data.

References

• https://elainnovation.com/

• https://elainnovation.com/bluetooth-low-energy.html

Comparison Table

You can have more information on:
https://teltonika-gps.com/products/accessories/

FAQ

Q: From which firmware can blue coin accessories be used?

A: From base 03.25.13.rev.00

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Q: Is the beacon compatible with all FMBXXX devices?

A: Beacon/BLE sensors Firmware versions is compatable for all FMBXXX devices (expect FMB630 and FMB640) for FM3001, FMT100.

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Q: How many sensors/beacons can we connect at the same time with fleet management?

A: Up to 4 Sensors at once, Up to 100 Beacons at once.