Can an Estimote Beacon emit Eddystone and iBeacon signals at the same time or do we have to choose which format a beacon supports?
I think that Eddystone is going to be inferior on iOS compared to iBeacon just because the lack of support from Apple. So as an app developer it could be that the best option for iOS would be iBeacons and the best option for Android would be Eddystone. Based on that assumption, there would be the need for a hardware beacon that can support both at the same time.
At this time, it’s either/or I’m afraid.
Agreed on pretty much everything you said. I too strongly believe that on iOS, iBeacon will probably remain the best-supported standard, with great background detection capabilities. And on Android, the same will be true about Eddystone.
Being able to broadcast multiple packets definitely makes a ton of sense, and it’s something we’re looking into. Hopefully by the time Eddystone gains some traction, Google release the Nearby API, maybe adds support for Eddystone-URL and Physical Web to Android or Chrome etc., we’ll have something to show. For now, feel free to experiment with Eddystone in its current form and let us know what you think (:
I believe this is due to Apple iBeacon policies. They don’t allow other frames. However, Eddystone UID and URL frames can not also co-exists. Is this a Google Policy? Technically they can all can co-exist with time based switching broadcasting.
At this time, policy-wise, there’s nothing stopping beacon devices from broadcasting multiple packets at the same time. It’s as simple as, no beacon vendor has yet implemented that.
Google even provided examples where it suggests it might be beneficial to broadcast both UID and URL packets simultaneously. If the user already has an app installed, it reads the UID packet and takes some action. If not, URL packet and Physical Web kick in and direct the user straight to the download page.
Well, it seems according to Radius Networks documentation, their beacon should be able to broadcast different frames at the same time or you can select some of those four frame types.
http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2015/07/14/introducing-eddystone.html
I really hope estimote can include this basic feature in the next firmware version. Come on, we all need ibeacon frame to trigger the app the use other frames for more advanced usage.
We are developing an Android app supporting estimote beacons. What you suggest, we should go ahead with Eddystone support Estimote Android & iOS SDKs or iBeacon support Estimote iOS & Android SDKs?
Eddystone is still in its early stages, so at this point, personally, I’d recommend iBeacon for production apps—it’s battle tested!