Android Estimote App - Beacon Detection

BLE Beacons
1

Why is the Estimote Android App on Samsung Galaxy S5 so erratic when detecting beacons? It sometimes gets confused and shows more beacons than that available in the vicinty?

Also, beacons jump a lot more on the Android App than the iOS App?

thanks

M

2

A diary of some serious estimote problems that have stopped out project cold.
Thanks for your help Wojtek, but I feel we have been chosen the wrong technology for our mission critical application. Reasons:

  1. The estimotes we have do not work anymore with Android 5.1

  2. Closed SDK source code that leaves use dependent on Estimote to fix problems.

  3. Was lead to believe, before purchasing the Android SDK, that the SDK exposed accelerometer events which provides movement data for a the critical gait service in our product. After reviewing some forum post about Android accelerometer support it appears that it has been promised for months.

  4. Our trial company participants are very disappointed that the project has halted after they put resources in place to help use test the application.

Wojtek Borowicz (Estimote, Inc.)
Jun 17, 10:16

Hello Wilbert,

My name is Wojtek and I’m Community Manager at Estimote.

I noticed that you’ve received your beacons. You wrote that you want to use them for an app for seniors and I want to help you get started. We have some amazing resources at our Developer’s Portal. It should get you up and running with your beacon enabled app in no time!

Let me know if there’s anything you might need and don’t hesitate to share more about what are you up to with beacons.

Have a great day!

Hello,

Thanks for your reply. What we need desperately is access to the device’s accelerometer using the Android SDK. That data is key to our solution.

Thanks

Wojtek Borowicz (Estimote, Inc.)
Jun 17, 12:43

Hi Wilbert,

Thanks for getting back to me. We’re working on updating our Android SDK, but it might still take a couple of weeks till sensor data is available. Also, keep in mind that accelerometer in beacons only tells you if the beacons is in motion or not.

Stickers, however, expose full accelerometer data and are support on Android. Lead time for new orders is still a couple of week though.

Keep in touch.

Cheers.

Wojtek Borowicz,
Community Manager,
Estimote, Inc.
community.estimote.com
@Estimote @Esti_Wojtek

Wojtek,

We have serious issue with the Estimotes. The tablets we are using in our elderly telehealth remote monitoring trial have been updated from Android version 4.4 to Android version 5.1 (Lollipop). This was done automatically by the devices as an update. We fixed the initial crash problems that resulted by updating to the latest Estimote SDK. However we are currently experiencing very slow ranging and monitoring detection response times. This problems occurs with our software application as well as with Estimote application downloaded from Google Play. We had tested our software, and the Estimote app (used as a base reference) for about 2 weeks running 8 hours per day without any response lag in ranging and monitoring. As a result, we feel confident that the issue has to do with something the Estimote SDK has not addressed when being used with Android Lollipop. As we cannot go back to Android 4.4 the Estimote devices are currently useless, and help will be much appreciated as we are about to lose our trial participants.

Wojtek Borowicz (Estimote, Inc.)
Jul 1, 16:01

Hey there,

Sorry to hear about the problems! Will report them to our engineers and get back to you after they look into it. Would be useful if you could send the names of devices you’re using. Also, more details on what do you mean by slow ranging and monitoring would be very useful for debbuging.

Also, would be great if you posted the issues on our Forums too, our Android devs lurk there often :slight_smile:https://forums.estimote.com/c/android-sdk

Keep in touch.

Cheers.

Wojtek Borowicz,
Community Manager,
Estimote, Inc.
community.estimote.com
@Estimote @Esti_Wojtek

I will get you the uuids as soon as I can login. Having the login problem described below which I sent to the support group. I will also post the problem to the forum. In regards to what I mean my slow ranging and monitor.

  1. We tested the estimotes under Android 4.4 to gage response times for ranging in detecting immediate, near, far distances in our lab. We would just place estimotes at different distance from stationery tablets and observe the visual distance adjustment (using the estimote app as a benchmark for our app), which would update in 1-2 seconds. With the same test being performed with Android 5.1 the visual distance info now takes about 10 seconds and the estimotes randomly disappear from the screen even when setting right on top of a tablet. If we watch the debugger it seems to show that the sdk is missing scans or the scan times are changing. Is the source code available for the SDK?

Thanks
wilbert jackson

cannot login to get access to the uuids for the estimotes we have. I am sure I entered the password correctly, but just in case I did not I elected to change the current password. Upon doing that I checked my email for the reset the password email. I received it, clicked the reset password button and get the message shown below. I have tried three 3 times now with the same message being sent.

wilbert jackson

Set password to your Estimote Account

This link is invalid or expired.If you feel this is incorrect please contact us at contact@estimote.com

Hey again,

Thanks for the additional details. I’ve forwarded this to our Android team, they’ll be looking into the SDK to find what’s causing the ranging delay. Unfortunately, we’re not exposing source code for the SDK.

As for the cloud: really sorry about this! We will generate a new password reset link manually and I’ll send it to you.

Keep in touch.

Cheers.

Wojtek Borowicz,
Community Manager,
Estimote, Inc.

I’m looping in Wiktor, our lead Android engineer. He’ll be able to help tourbleshoot the ranging issue.

Cheers,

Wojtek Borowicz,
Community Manager,
Estimote, Inc.
community.estimote.com
@Estimote @Esti_Wojtek

3

@Wilbert_Jackson I’m very sorry for your bad experience. Let me help you with your questions.

  1. Beacons not working on Android 5.1. I attached a modified version of our app which does more verbose logging. Can you remove one from Play Store on device and install this one. Once you did that, just open radar and can you copy logs here? (I’m mostly interested in EstimoteSDK log tag). On what device you are seeing problems? Nexus, Samsung, HTC devices work well as we put emphasis on most popular ones.

  2. Yes, SDK is closest at the moment for security reasons. We do not want to open our cloud, authentication & configuration part.

  3. As you might noticed, support for nearables took priority. Accelerometer is on the way. But it might not work as you expect. In order to use accelerometer you need to connect to beacon and observe its sensor. It is not done via beacon scanning. I want to set the expectations for current version of beacons. On the other hand nearables are broadcasting its accelerometer data so no need for connection is necessary.

  4. I understand that. Are you willing to put 1-2h in order to track down the problems with not detecting beacons on 5.1 device?

mainapp-debug.apk.zip (7.6 MB)

4

Thank you for your quick response. We will give the attached new estimote app a try. We are using Nexus 7 tablets.

wilbert jackson