What is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)?

Bluetooth Low Energy is a wireless personal area network technology designed by the bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG).

Bluetooth low energy (formerly known as Bluetooth Smart) is a universal low-power wireless standard that makes it easy to connect any product to a smartphone or tablet.

The most common use case of bluetooth low energy is transferring small amount of data between nearby device.

Support for bluetooth low energy is available on most major platforms as of the versions listed below

• iOS5+ (iOS7+ preferred)
• Android 4.3+ (numerous bug fixes in 4.4+)
• Apple OS X 10.6+
• Windows 8 (XP, Vista and 7 only support Bluetooth 2.1)
• GNU/Linux Vanilla BlueZ 4.93+

BLE is used for making application type of connected watches, tracking tags, sports and fitness sensors, healthcare sensors and remote controls. It is also seen in Smart Home applications such as connected door locks and lightings.

Advantages of BLE are :

• Low cost
• Ease of development and use
• Enhance range
• Average idle mode power consumption

The device called “Beacon” works on a BLE which is charged by Battery or USB transmits the signal to our device.

It is important to understand that BLE and Bluetooth both are completely different technologies. Bluetooth transmits more data with more range, whereas on other hand BLE share small amount of data with shorter range.

Each BLE Beacon consists a Unique identifier known as a UUID.

Beacon also give data like distance from beacon, major and minor proximities of beacon.

As compared to GPS which is also used to get user’s location where he/she exactly are located, GPS consume more power and might not work in some indoor location in other hand. Beacon are better option to get Proximity (Immediate,Near,Far) location and distance in indoor locations too.

Now Beacons can be used in many ways. Retailers have already started using it in such a way like,

• Give welcome message to such customers who are visiting regularly to shop.
• Give offer notifications to customer when they are near by that section.
• Give reminder to customer to visit your shop while passing the shop.

As a Android mobile application developer (Android Developer) we should look into some practical part too. So, basically there are four things which we need to understand.

• Beacon Regions
• Beacon Monitoring
• Beacon Ranging
• Beacon Transmitting

1. Beacon Region- Regions are specific area defined by the beacon with its UUID.

2. Beacon Monitoring- It is a technique to find a beacon when user enters in the Region of the beacon or exits from the region.

3. Beacon Ranging- It is a technique to get list of beacons which are in the region and can get beacons proximity, distance, UUID, Major and Minor.

4. Beacon Transmitting- It is a technique to use Mobile Device as a Beacon device, a device which is compatible to transmit the beacon.

There are so many SDK’s and Libraries available in the market to achieve this thing simply and from that some are paid and some are free. Choose the best library available in the market as per your requirement.

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