iViri is now BETA testing v1.3 which supports iBeacons. I am looking for users who have purchased iBeacons and are willing to test the latest release on their iPhone (don’t have to be a current iViri user, hopefully testing it will lead you to become a purchasing user!). I am having awesome use of my 3 estimote iBeacons in my home. One controls turning on the basement lights as I walk down the stairs to the basement, the other controls unlocking my door as I walk up to the front door (and locks it as I walk away) and the third iBeacon controls turning on my bedroom lights and if the schedule has passed 10:30pm and both my wife and I are in the room it will start a 30 minute timer and then shutdown the whole house as long as it stays true that we are both in the room.
I think this is true home automation, I never actually open the app anymore as my home now just reacts to my presence through the use of geofences and iBeacons. I plan to add a iBeacon to each room and tie them all into multi-switches and have the home be fully controlled without ever needing to interact manually with the app.
[quote=“guessed, post:2, topic:180850”]I have a TwoCanoes Bleu Station device, which they just patched to iBeacon compliance… If you want al alternative iBeacon tested.
PM me if you’d like me to try that combo out.[/quote]
It should work with any iBeacon. Email me at support@instruodev.com you UDID of you device following the instructions from this link (http://whatsmyudid.com/). Then register your device with test flight. I will have a beta up today for you to test once I have this information.
[quote=“dsroberts1945, post:3, topic:180850”]My iBeacons kit has just arrived, as a loyal user of iViri I would be happy to beta test 1.3 for you. I have iPhone 5s on Ios 7.1.1 and vera3 on UI5.
David[/quote]
Email me at support@instruodev.com you UDID of you device following the instructions from this link (http://whatsmyudid.com/). Then register your device with test flight. I will have a beta up today for you to test once I have this information.
[quote=“awake33, post:6, topic:180850”]Would I need an iBeacon for each iPhone?
And how adjustable is the range setting?[/quote]
No you can configure each iPhone to talk to your iBeacons (and the iBeacons won’t be specific to a iPhone). With all the iBeacons I have messed with (estimote, and sticknfind) I have found a way to adjust the iBeacons range. The estimote app allows you to connect to your iBeacon and adjust it’s range of signal and I used SNF app to adjust the stick-n-find to work correctly with a specified range. iViri does not allow you to set a range because what I have noticed is I could sit the phone next to one and one second the iBeacon is reporting 0meters away and then 2 seconds later it reports 3meters away without me ever moving my phone. So what I have done is just made it where the iPhone trips a configured switch on your Vera when it receives the Enter Region call back and when it exits (which takes up to 20 seconds) it will turn that switch off. Since the iBeacons let you change their range I find that iViri will stay with this layout and just work with the enter and exit call backs instead of seeing how close you are to the device. I am not ruling it out for a future release because with all of these companies coming out with iBeacons who knows where that standard will end up and if the API gets better and we can truly triangulate someone in a room iViri will probably under go its own transformation to adapt.
Just as a side note my best testing has occurred with the estimote ibeacons and they are by far the easiest to setup and use if you don’t have knowledge to hack some of the other ones on the market.
Just got the email that my estimotes have shipped and should be here next week–really looking forward to trying this! Question for you–was looking at the sitckNfind beacons. They’re a little less expensive and I’ll need a few more than the initial 3-pack from estimote to do what I want to do. How hard is the setup on these? I’m not even remotely a programming/tech expert, but have managed to get my alarm system wired in to vera, so am not totally clueless.
I would avoid the stickNfind. I had 2 of them, I used the sNf app to reprogram them as they are not broadcasting as iBeacons by defaults and less than 2 weeks later they died. I setup them up the exact same as the estimotes with the interval rate and the distance and my estimotes are doing just fine. Plus the range and detection of the stickNfind was never accurate like the beacons, I would basically have to sit my phone on top of them before it would detect them in the room whereas the estimotes I just need to be within its range and it works fine.
Got it–thanks for the quick feedback. Was looking at amazon reviews and sounds like others are having similar experiences. Will have to wait to get another set of estimotes!
I have had best success with estimotes, but I am having struggles with my VeraLite and frequent restarts. Been working with support for 2 weeks now (restarts are not caused by iViri) and they keep pointing at a different plugin and now they are saying it is the multi-switch causing my crashes, but I am not at the point where I will uninstall multi-switch as I truly think something is wrong with the unit or their core code, not any plugin causing the crash.
I have got my iBeacons and I have set one up to light up a room on entering. It works quit well, but the reaction vary a lot. I have not manage to configure the iBeacons range as it is not stable. This is after an hour with the iBeacons !!!
I have got my iBeacons and I have set one up to light up a room on entering. It works quit well, but the reaction vary a lot. I have not manage to configure the iBeacons range as it is not stable. This is after an hour with the iBeacons !!![/quote]
With the beacons you purchased do you have the ability to adjust the advertising interval? I have found the best success with it set to 50ms. I can say that yes reaction time does vary with these because apple cannot afford with their api to scan for bluetooth devices all the time. So what I have done inside of the app is if you hit the lock button or home button to wake the phone it runs a scan so you could do that upon entry, the second thing I have noticed is when set to broadcast 12ft at 50ms my reaction time is anywhere from immediate to 10 seconds and I will say that some of the lag sometimes comes on the Vera side as it doesn’t always react to conditions that quickly which I am no 100% sure why that is or even why sometimes conditions are missed by the Vera.
Thanks - I have somewhat the ability to alter both brodcast intervall and range, but it has to be altered in hex code or something - which I does not know. Which program do you use with your beacons ? I use ebeacon app
The beacons that I had the most success with were one purchased through estimote, which has it very own app in the app store. Inside its app it allows you to set your advertising interval and the distance that you want to project just by using iOS sliders, so the app handles all of the hex for you.
I am not sure - I am still testing. On WiFi it works ok (but just ok). when I try it on unlocking my door I am out of the wifi range - it is far to slow. I will not stand outside the door waiting for 20 sec to unlock it. Have to test more, but it seems that waiting for an iPhone 6 with NFC is going to be worth it.
Now I soon leave for a two month trip to Norway leaving all the tech behind me (nearly).
I am not sure - I am still testing. On WiFi it works ok (but just ok). when I try it on unlocking my door I am out of the wifi range - it is far to slow. I will not stand outside the door waiting for 20 sec to unlock it. Have to test more, but it seems that waiting for an iPhone 6 with NFC is going to be worth it.
Now I soon leave for a two month trip to Norway leaving all the tech behind me (nearly).[/quote]
I don’t keep up on specs of iPhones or iDevices, where did you see that apple was going to implement NFC? As far as I had known NFC was never coming to apple but that is just my thoughts, if you had seen somewhere I would like to read about it.
Of course I do not know - it has always been roumore of an Nfc support ios so we never know. But what make me belive in this this time is t Cooks statment of Apple entering the payment buisiness. Ibeacon as it is today seams to be no alternative in that regard by now.
Well I do not know - but I hope - I think that is the route to go regarding home automation - at least for the moment. The iBeacons are to unstable
What’s this? NFC in an iPhone? About time too. Well, that’s what iDownloadblog reckons, quoting Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. He’s not the only analyst tossing his hat into the iPhone 6 NFC ring, with Ming-Chi Kuo also supporting the theory.
It’s a theory that’s looking ever more likely as it’s now been revealed that Apple has partnered with China UnionPay to add its banking service to Passbook. That in itself needn’t mean NFC, but apparently users will also be able to make payments on China UnionPay’s QuickPass machines, which use NFC.
Many Android phones now boast NFC and Apple appears to have been happy to be left behind here, so we’d be a little surprised to see it suddenly rocking the contactless technology when it appears to be on the wane. Then again, the evidence for it is mounting.