Could Someone Give me Advise on Troubleshooting Issue with Proximity Beacon Accuracy?

BLE Beacons
1

Hello there,

I have been using these beacons for a retail project where we want to provide location based notifications and content to customers as they move around the store. While the overall setup process was straightforward; I have encountered a problem with the accuracy and reliability of the beacons proximity detection.

I have three Estimote Proximity Beacons placed around a 1000 square foot area.
The beacons are configured with the default settings; and I am using the Estimote SDK for iOS to develop the app.
Each beacon is set to broadcast at the default 100ms interval.

The problem is that the proximity notifications are inconsistent. Sometimes the app triggers a notification when a user is well within range of a beacon; but at other times; the same notification fails to trigger even when the user is right next to the beacon.

Adjusting the broadcasting power and advertising interval settings; but it did not make a noticeable difference.
Ensuring that there are no major physical obstructions or sources of interference near the beacons.
Updating the firmware on all beacons and making sure the Estimote SDK is up to date.

Also; I have gone through this post: https://forums.estimote.com/t/define-multi-beacons-in-latest-version-of-android-proximity-sdk-minitab/ which definitely helped me out a lot.

Despite these efforts; the issue persists. Has anyone else experienced similar problems with proximity detection accuracy? Are there any specific settings or best practices that might help improve reliability?

Thanks in advance for your help and assistance. :innocent:

3

Liza,

it seems you are using Bluetooth (BLE) beacons potentially configured to broadcast iBeacon, Eddystone or Estimote Monitoring packets.

These packets are broadcasted in a very consistent and deterministic way.
In your case it seems it is every 100ms, what is 10 times per second.

So in theory a nearby phone registers 10 BLE packets every second.

Unfortunately phones are not processing these packets in a deterministic way.
It depends how busy the CPU is, if you scan in the background or foreground, how many and when these packets were seen before.

This is all driven by:

  • Core Bluetooth or Core Location rules on iOS rules
  • Bluetooth Adapter API rules

Rules are also different for different Android/iOS version and act differently on different phones.

For example on iOS if BLE packets triggered “ENTER event” you might not be able to get it again for some time unless you do “ENTER event” to a different zone/beacon.

Can you maybe share what is the Android version and phone model you are testing with?