Suggestion for the beacons to be used

Hi @surjan,

first, you have to think about the fact that you will need an app’ to accomplish your tasks. Why? Because beacons only broadcast information, they don’t receive, store and analyze any data.
So if you want to capture the spent time, you will need an app’.

You have now to choose the technology you will use: iBeacon, Eddystone-UID or Eddystone-URL.
With iBeacon (Apple protocol) and Eddystone-UID (Google protocol), you send in the air a frame containing an identifier (UUID + major + minor) that your device can catch to locate himself.
With Eddystone-URL, you broadcast a web-site URL that the devices catch to redirect the user to this web-site.

Having the concept defined, you have to look at the different Estimote beacons.
According to the Estimote web-site, there are 5 kinds of beacons: the classic Proximity beacon, the enhanced Location beacon, the nec plus ultra Location with UWB beacon, the small Sticker beacon and the video-linked Mirror beacon.

  • the Proximity beacon provides you with the basic features (broadcasting 1 scheme of frame), but is not very accurate for indoor location.
  • the Location beacon is better than the Proximity one because it has more sensors, more battery, more range, GPIO ports, it can broadcast up to 8 frames at the same time (so potentially 8 different URL with only one beacon [EDIT: not 8 URL at the same time but 1 EddystoneURL frame, 1 iBeacon, 1 Eddystone-UID, …]) and can be used with the Estimote Indoor Location SDK.
  • the Location with UWB beacon is an enhanced Location beacon that uses the Ultra Wide-band modulation technology along with the auto-mapping feature to create a very accurate floor plan to use with the Indoor Location SDK (more precise indoor location than the Location beacon, and auto-mapping saves you lot of time of configuration).
  • the Sticker beacon is a beacon made for special use-cases because it is the tiniest beacon. It only broadcasts when moved.
  • the Mirror beacon is used to work along with others, it provides video features.

It seems that you will need Location beacon to locate the customer and provide location-based offers. The Location with UWB beacon will be appreciated if deploying in a large store or/and needing accurate location.

Hope it helps :wink: