Estimote ranging on some Android devices return rssi=0 or -1 for all nearby beacons

BLE Beacons
1

Hi,

We are building solution that use locations beacons to recognise certain parking spot based on rssi strength.
During test we find out that on some devices (Samsung J7 (android 7.0) , Samsung A5 (android 7.0) the same code return rssi=0 or rssi = -1 for all devices e.g.:

[{“uuid”: “b9407f30-f5f8-466e-aff9-25556b57fe6d”,“minor”: 65170,“major”: 52924,“rssi”: 0}, {“uuid”: “b9407f30-f5f8-466e-aff9-25556b57fe6d”,“minor”: 3718,“major”: 58720,“rssi”: -1}, {“uuid”: “b9407f30-f5f8-466e-aff9-25556b57fe6d”,“minor”: 22406,“major”: 64204,“rssi”: -1}]

While using another devices in the same environment we got proper result with various rssi values. eg.

[{“uuid”: “b9407f30-f5f8-466e-aff9-25556b57fe6d”,“minor”: 65170,“major”: 52924,“rssi”: -56}, {“uuid”: “b9407f30-f5f8-466e-aff9-25556b57fe6d”,“minor”: 3718,“major”: 58720,“rssi”: -70}, {“uuid”: “b9407f30-f5f8-466e-aff9-25556b57fe6d”,“minor”: 22406,“major”: 64204,“rssi”: -75}]

Questions:

  1. Is it any special meaning for rssi = -1 ?
  2. What can be the reason for such behoviour on some Samsung Devices - there was similar issue reported 2 years ago on github : https://github.com/Estimote/Android-SDK/issues/135

We are using latest proximity beacons and Estimote Android SDK

Looking forward for any suggestion/help.

2

Maybe you could test using Android’s own BluetoothLeScanner, and see if it also returns 0/-1 on these devices. This would mean that the 0/-1 is coming directly from the Bluetooth stack.

And do note that it seems you’re using the deprecated ranging/monitoring APIs. Consider migrating to:

https://github.com/estimote/android-proximity-sdk