Hello,
I am wondering if it is possible for Estimote beacons to be sensitive to directional movement? For example, let’s say I had a beacon in my hand and I did a circular motion with the beacon. Would it be possible to track movement like that?
That might be doable. We expose accelerometer readings in our Telemetry packet, so with some processing, you could figure out that the beacon is moving in a circle. (beacon accelerates left, then down, then right, then up, etc.)
One thing that could go wrong: max frequency you can set for Telemetry is 10 packets a second. However, there are no guarantees that the iOS/Android will detect every single packet, so in practice, you might be getting e.g., only 2–3 readings per second. This might or might not be enough, depending on how quickly the beacon moves.
What are you building, some kind of a “control things with hand gestures” app? (:
Thanks for the reply! Dang so it sounds like the accelerometer is more suited for “macro” speed reading. Like going on a car trip or something. I was thinking of doing shape recognition software between a circle, square, and triangle for starters. However, that doesn’t seem possible with the beacons because I would def need more reference points.
Is there any addon I could have to make the stickers update to as close as 100 ms as possible? Updates every 500 ms in practice would not work. I am working on an app the would be able to tell if your hand motions do a circle, triangle, or square. Each of these three gestures would take about 1 second to complete. 2 data points of reference wouldn’t be enough but 10 might be possible. If Estimote doesn’t have this capability at all, would you mind recommending me a different BLE accelerometer that has faster in-practice updates? Thanks again!
You should be able to set the advertising interval on stickers to 100 ms, with the Estimote iOS or Android app. Just keep in mind this will drain the battery in a few weeks.