Can stickers work as asset tracking inside location application?

Hi,
I am working on a project to put stickers on the object and using location beacons to build the indoor map for tracking the object position. I read some previous questions it seems it can work but since it was long ago can someone tell me if it works for the newest Android indoor SDK? If yes, what should I do? If no can stickers work with proximity SDK? The new Fleet-management SDK said I should use this with proximity together is it possible in one application? I mean both of them use bluetooth scan if I use the same phone I need to set different components to deal with stickers and beacons are they compatible? I am new to Android and estimote so I said something wrong please tell me also advice are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The easiest setup for asset tracking these days is stickers/beacons on assets and LTE Beacons as “gateways”/scanners. Put the LTE Beacon(s) wherever you want to detect your assets, and program it to detect beacons and send “found asset” and “lost asset” events to Estimote Cloud, where you can process and forward them further.

Does that sound like something that would work for you? Maybe you can share a little bit more about what kind of assets you want to track, in what environment, etc. etc. The more we know, the better we can advise (:

Piotr, thanks for your answer, I would like to use LTE beacons but I already got some location beacons so I should use them for my application. I want to use stickers and location beacons for asset tracking. For now I have 2 direction. If I can use the indoor location sdk I am happy cause I can give the rough of the object and person. But if it dosen’t work I would like use proximity with beacon and nearable with stickers but since they are seperated in 2 sdk I don’t know if it is a good idea. I will use Android phone and tablet to do it.

With the Indoor SDK, I’d try something like this:

  • integrate the Indoor SDK into your Android app as usual

    https://developer.estimote.com/indoor/android-tutorial/

  • use our Android “scanning-plugin” to also detect Stickers

    we have some documentation on how to use the scanning-plugin to detect Estimote Telemetry packets, you can adapt it to detect Estimote Nearable packets (which Stickers broadcast), just replace estimoteTelemetryFrameAScan with estimoteNearableScan

    https://developer.estimote.com/sensors/estimote-telemetry/#android

  • code your app so that when it detects a sticker, it’ll take the last-known (x,y) coordinates from the Indoor APIs, and bundle that together and send to your backend (“sticker XYZ detected around (x,y)”)


Alternatively, if the Android smartphone/tablet is in a fixed, known position, you could skip the indoor positioning and just run detecting Nearable packets, and when you detect a sticker, send an event to your backend “sticker XYZ detected around tablet ABC”.

Thanks a lot I will try to apply it in these days. I am working on proximity now so I am wondering how can I merge location beacons and stickers under this scenario?

Similar idea as above:

  • integrate Proximity SDK into your app, instead of (x,y) you will know what Proximity Zones you’re in (e.g, “lobby”, “hall A”, etc.)

  • do Nearable scan, and if you detect a Sticker this way, you will know that “Sticker XYZ was detected in the lobby” etc.

As the official document I need the Fleet-Management SDK with the proximity SDK together isn’t it right?I suppose both of them using the bluetooth scan and if I use them in one application will they compatible? It seems in the old Estimote SDK these two can be managed in one SDK so is it a good idea to use the old one?

On Android, I’d recommend the scanning-plugin over the Fleet Management SDK for detecting nearables, like I mentioned above:

But yes, both should work, and using both Fleet Management and Proximity SDKs in one app is perfectly fine.

Thank you very much for your help. It helps a lot.

Last week I followed the advice of your colleague to decrease the advertising interval of still and motion and change motion only advertising to on to save the battery. This is the new stickers I got last month 8 of them I can change but I can’t detect 1 sticker and can’t change another one. It appears that the Advertising interval became -2500ms(still) and -1250ms(motion) I can’t connect to them by your application.Later when I try to use them I found both of them had the negative interval and can’t be changed I also tried to change them on Cloud but still can’t work. Could you please give me some advice for this? Thanks

This sounds more like some visual bug, the firmware in Stickers definitely wouldn’t accept negative interval.

So you can still detect the two stickers in the Estimote app, but you can’t change their settings? What exactly happens?

1 In Estimote app I always lost one sticker and another one can’t be connected.
2 Before I changed the setting the rest 8 working normally.
2 After that the rest 8 giving the negative interval number and when I shake them I get the notification change between"please nudge the nearable to enable adjustments " and “connecting”.

hi Piotr my stickers still can’t work properly could you please check it a bit and give me some advice?
this is the problem
1 In Estimote app I always lost one sticker and another one can’t be connected.
2 Before I changed the setting the rest 8 working normally.
2 After that the rest 8 giving the negative interval number and when I shake them I get the notification change between"please nudge the nearable to enable adjustments " and “connecting”.

I tried my own sticker and the Estimote iOS app, and I couldn’t reproduce your problems. I tried changing all the possible settings.

Are you using the iOS app or Android? What iPhone/Android device? Can you try another smartphone? Maybe also try reinstalling the app, or rebooting the smartphone?

When it connecting, try to nudge/move the sticker every few seconds. Stickers are in connectable state when in motion, and for 10 seconds after the motion stops. If you nudge it and the connection takes more than 10 seconds, it’ll fail.

Maybe also try editing your stickers’ settings in Estimote Cloud, and after that connecting to them in the app.

I tried again now I can find 9 stickers and they work well but the blue one can’t work. I think it’s not the phone problem maybe this one is broken? I send you my account and the identifier of it if you need to check

If it’s not detectable while the other 9 are, then yea, that sounds like it’s broken.

The problem is this is a new set I got last month. So what can I do?

Maybe try gently pressing on top of the sticker, just in case the problem is that the battery is not making contact with the board.

If that doesn’t help … I’m not sure what else you could try. I guess it could be some mechanical/electrical damage. Even it was, e.g., a depleted battery, for some reason, there’s no way to replace the battery in stickers without a high risk of damaging them (further).

I found the reason on the cloud it appears the battery is unavailable and I haven’t used it since I got it last month I contacted with your service team hope to find a solution. Apart from that for the stickers I noticed that when I test my application on the phone I can’t see any stickers after the first launch even I moved the stickers and it works when I restart the installed application again. I am quiet confused bout this. If you have any suggestion it will be helpful. PS I changed the setting of interval time and turn off the move only advertising.

I found the reason on the cloud it appears the battery is unavailable and I haven’t used it since I got it last month I contacted with your service team hope to find a solution. Apart from that for the stickers I noticed that when I test my application on the phone I can’t see any stickers after the first launch even I moved the stickers and it works when I restart the installed application again. I am quiet confused bout this. If you have any suggestion it will be helpful. PS I changed the setting of interval time and turn off the move only advertising.