How to Detect Beacon in Android?

[Ashish Bisht]

Hi,

I would like to know that "how can we detect Beacon in Android", which is a device that is designed to attract attention to specific locations.

[Brilstern]

The Android OS does not have any code that detects iBeacons, but it does have code that allows you to scan for Bluetooth LE devices, which are a lower-level device than an iBeacon.

You can roll-your own code that detects iBeacons using this Bluetooth LE scanning. That's exactly what the Android iBeacon Library from Radius Networks does. It is open source, so if you don't want to use the library, you can simply copy blocks of code out of the library and do your own detection.

The source code is here: http://github.com/AltBeacon/android-beacon-library

If you detection use cases are very simple, this might work fine. Be careful not to bite off too much work, though, because handling all the edge cases can become increasingly complex. That's certainly what I learned when writing the library.

If you just want to play with this, I would focus on one class from the library: IBeacon.java

This class can convert from an Android Blueooth LE scan record to an IBeacon (if the scanned Bluetooth device is indeed an iBeacon)

You can read about how to set up Bluetooth LE scanning on Android here: http://developer.android.com/guide/t...etooth-le.html

[kmartin]

Hi Ashish,
The open source Android iBeacon Library will allow you to do this.

Here is a basic code sample:

public class MonitoringActivity extends Activity implements IBeaconConsumer {
protected static final String TAG = "RangingActivity";
private IBeaconManager iBeaconManager = IBeaconManager.getInstanceForApplication(this);

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_ranging);
iBeaconManager.bind(this);
}
@Override
protected void onDestroy() {
super.onDestroy();
iBeaconManager.unBind(this);
}
@Override
public void onIBeaconServiceConnect() {
iBeaconManager.setMonitorNotifier(new MonitorNotifier() {
@Override
public void didEnterRegion(Region region) {
Log.i(TAG, "I just saw an iBeacon for the firt time!");
}

@Override
public void didExitRegion(Region region) {
Log.i(TAG, "I no longer see an iBeacon");
}

@Override
public void didDetermineStateForRegion(int state, Region region) {
Log.i(TAG, "I have just switched from seeing/not seeing iBeacons: "+state);
}
});

try {
iBeaconManager.startMonitoringBeaconsInRegion(new Region("myMonitoringUniqueId", null, null, null));
} catch (RemoteException e) { }
}

}

I hope this will help you.

[jondsouza]

Beacons are the tiny devices that allow transmission of data in the form of Bluetooth frames. Beacons have limited information to transfer hence we call it lightweight devices.Check this link it can solve your issue.

https://www.mindstick.com/Forum/12639/how-to-get-correct-beaconlayout

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/question/77611/how-to-detect-ble-beacons-on-android-tablet/