Having issues with the Estimote app on Android.
Beacons are recognized… sometimes… after several seconds or even minutes.
When viewing details of a beacon, app often hangs while trying to “connect”.
Are others seeing these issues? Is iOS Estimote app any better?
I have had similar issues. Another problem I’ve had a few times is being unable to connect to any beacon, even after closing app, logging out and back in, retrying after waiting some time. The only thing that fixed it was uninstalling the app and re-downloading it.
I tried it on iOS, seems to work fine. So much of a difference that Android support should probably be suspended or at least called out as alpha.
Having more problems today and now they are much worse. Somehow my 4 UWB beacons’ major values all changed to the same thing. I have never changed this setting on any of them and my code never tries to access or modify beacon settings. If I change the major value for one of them, all the others change to that value. Yet they still have their own unique device IDs so I don’t know why this is happening.
Then i’ll get the issue where I can connect to any beacons, and can’t log-in, forcing me to uninstall and redownload the app, which is very time-consuming when I’m also trying to figure out why I can’t do basic things like change beacon settings.
These issues don’t happen on the iOS app. It really is so bad that they need to fix it very soon or consider suspending the app, because it has made my beacons unusable right now.
Edit: Not sure anymore if the beacons settings being linked together is an Android app issue or just an issue with my beacons, because even on my iOS app or the cloud changing settings causes that setting to change for all beacons. However, the issue with being unable to connect and unable to login still happens to me regularly on the Android app.
Scanning problems on Android 7.x (and sometimes 6.x) is a known problem. There are some limitations how frequently scans can be started/stoped, batch scan mode behaves irregularly. For example on Nexus 6P, there are some problems with connecting to phones when scanning is enabled (famous GATT error 133), they can even lead to Bluetooth stack crash (thing that should never happen, no matter how wrongly you use API).
Having settings changed for all beacons at once sound like you have mesh enabled. This is exactly how mesh behaves. Could you provide more info like beacon firmware version, app version or if mesh is enabled on Cloud?
You were right, thanks! I have never looked at or learned about the mesh setting and had never accessed it, so I never considered that it could be my problem. I guess doing the indoor location auto mapping through the iOS indoor app must automatically create a mesh with those beacons, which I did not know or expect.
My previously stated problems about not being able to connect to any beacons or login, and the only fix being to uninstall and re-download the app, still occur.
Other issues:
*On Android app (not sure about iOS) if you are not the owner of a beacon and the beacon is in deployment & protected mode you see the button to claim the beacon. However, if the beacon is in development mode, the button to claim the beacon does not show up. So if you buy or are given beacons by someone who had them in development mode, there is no way to send the email requesting ownership of the beacons.
There is no option to enable/disable the virtual beacon on the iOS app like there is on the Android app, and I can’t detect it so I’m not sure if its really enabled like it says.
On some Android tablets the virtual beacon tab is not showing (7 inch is showing, 10 inch is not. Both running Android 5.1.1).
Virtual beacon is only active when device supports it. It is dependent on phone manufacturer and Bluetooth chip rather than on Android version. App checks if broadcasting is possible, and if not, then Virtual Beacon tab is removed. Note that Virtual Beacon on Android switches off when you go to another activity. This is done on purpose, so you won’t left your advertising accidentally on and drain battery very quickly.
Problems with connecting to beacons happen on some Android 7.x (and some earlier) phones (GATT 133 error) and we are working on it. However if app re-installation helps this would suggest cloud authorization problem, but the same effect should be achieved by logging out and logging in again.
I am using Android 5.x devices only so maybe it is a cloud authorization problem… When this happens I won’t be able to connect to any beacons (it will just say to try again after it keeps failing), so I will log out to try and fix it. But then I won’t be able to log in, it won’t give an error message but it will show the “forgot password?” button, then if I click that it shows a toast that says something like “an error occured, please try again”. At that point my only option is to un/reinstall, but that does always fix it.