BeaconThings - Beacons and SmartThings

Well if it’s anything like ObyThing (which has had a “Coming Soon!! Big Update in Progress” notice on the website since January 2015), I guess I’m not holding my breath. It would be so much more professional and considerate to just admit they dropped the ball than to make empty promises which never get kept.

The paid SmartRules app got repaired three months ago of the exact same problem.

Sorry folks. I desperately want to get updates out to BeaconThings and ObyThing. Unfortunately it has been a problem of time and resources. I’ll post in the community once one or both are back up and running.

For what it’s worth… I would gladly pay a subscription fee for this app, if that would garuntee timely updates. BeaconThings is super interesting and has major potential…

$1/month? $2/month? I’d be thrilled. Right now, the beacons (that I purchased through the affiliate link on the BeaconThings website, btw) are totally wasted.

Agree it would be great if this app were updated, but meanwhile you can still use Ibeacons with SmartThings through webhooks if you like.

Go on…??? :slight_smile:

Is there some other iOS app that can translate iBeacon signals to web calls?

Sure, both the one for Geohopper and beecon+ can.

I personally use and really like Beecon plus, but the problem is The developer has moved on to other projects and they have shut down all of their customer support and just refer people to the FAQ on the website. Like I say, I still use it and I’m happy with it but I’m reluctant to recommend it anymore because they’ve gone from having great customer service to literally having no customer service. It’s still a popular high rated app, but it’s just hard for me to recommend it given the lack of support.

The following thread from two years ago discusses various options. It’s a little out of date, but it will give you the idea.

There are also other apps in the App Store that you can try. All you need is one that can do a post and then you can use the IFTTT maker channel to integrate with SmartThings.

You could also just write your own with the SDK from either estimote or radius networks, which I think is what a lot of people do these days.

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Thanks. I’ve been digging around the App Store and it seems like most of these apps haven’t been updated in a year or more. Beecon plus at least has been updated recently. I might try to write my own so I can at least keep it updated as iOS is updated and for new hardware.

I really appreciate the breadcrumbs.

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To be honest, I think once both estimote and radius networks had good SDKs, which happened in 2016, there really wasn’t a market for the third-party standalone beacon apps anymore.

@NorCalLights Thanks… yes I’ve got so many ideas for this but still have not had the time. I’ve got a new personal project that could really benefit from solid beacon support, so I may have some more good motivation to make it happen soon.

I apologize about the fact that you have unusable beacons right now. I hadn’t thought about that, but now have added a note to the site so that people know it is not currently available.

Thanks @JDRoberts for the good suggestions to bridge the gap for now.

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You hadn’t thought about it? More than a year’s worth of messages on here from users begging you to keep the promise you made two years ago for a functional version, then subsequently pulling it from the App Store in the last couple of months while Smart Rules continues to get monthly updates? Your website still advertises it as though it’s a brand new and available innovation. “Finally! Beacons for SmartThings! Until you scroll aaaall the way down to the bottom (just like your other broken Obycode promises).
But you haven’t thought about it. There’s another app … it’s called Calendar/Reminder. Think about that perhaps. Another thought, just plain old honesty works wonders too.

Jerry, I am not trying to be dishonest here. I simply left the site as it was, because I figured it was not worth the effort to change it… people would simply realize that they could not download the app, no harm, no foul. Apps take time and money to build. If you recall, BeaconThings was free before I removed it, and the only reason it was removed, rather than left as-is with that initial version was due to the changes that SmartThings made to their authentication process which broke the existing app. I don’t think I’ve made any promises about when I would re-release it. I do still hope to do so, but I still cannot make any promises.

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@obycode Any chance you would be willing to open-source the app?
Plenty of people would be willing to work on fixing it, you would do a big favor to the smartthings community.

My apologies @SteveWhite, it appears you do have affinity towards BLE beacons <3 As they say in Friends, “Sisters?”

I think the best opportunity for BLE to work with SmartThings, solely and completely because ST has determined BLE to be unworthy of their holy matrimony, is to go about this in an alternate route, as some have already attempted here. I think it prudent to state that such a path might not be possible unless someone can create a mobile app to do said integration for them, in which case, through a smartapp, it may be possible to link BLE devices as things as well as your phone, etc.

This seems like it would require several things in order to work.

  • A throw-away phone. Several of us have these, old unused phones, meh. This would be used to have the beacon app running on it at all times which would integrate with the beacons and smartthings.

  • A beacon specific mobile app. There are tons of BLE becaons out there, and they’ve all got their own code. Unless the community as a whole can decide on a single beacon they’d like to use, then there’s absolutely no hope for this ever to work. There are just far too many systems out there for a single app to work with (although, it’s possible, but is also just as likely to be extremely messy and might not even work at all, given it’s complexity).

  • A developer willing to code this. I for one use Estimote beacons, and the beacon app for android that did work with this stopped working years ago and was never replaced. Given the amount of work a project like this would require, I’m not sure a developer would do this for free, and if so, they’re a frickin hero.

  • All apps must be able to work in the background so as not to interfere with normal day to day operations, unless you have a dedicated throw-away phone to run the app on.

Hey everyone. I just started playing with beacons and have come into a few items that might help the new guys. It seems many of the beacon apps that were used at one point or another are even gone, expensive or only kind of work. If you are on iOS BTrigger is a pretty solid app that is free and will help you associate a beacon with a trigger. Pair BTrigger with IFTTT web hooks to make Smartthings dance… however delayed it might be…

Onto app development. I am thinking of taking on this project but I am at the disadvantage of not really getting to see how SmartThings interacted with beaconthings. Can anyone help with giving me a sort of workflow for how things interacted? For example did you have to install a smart app in SmartThings and then pair an app in order for beacon things to work? It seems to me that going through IFTTT just further delays things so I am more interested in directly integrating the application directly. I really just want to make sure an in app integration wasn’t their methodology.

Any thoughts on things people think should be built in or other options that are required to make this useful. Proximity is a big one for me, and I was thinking of trying to use multiple beacons to indicate direction. I recognize that is rather optimistic but I do believe I have a way to use three beacons yo indicate location. It’s a fun idea anyway.

Cheers!

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That sounds awesome Brad. I don’t think BeaconThings is going to be coming back any time soon, so I’d love to help. I’ll try to put together some thoughts that I have, and clean up and open source the SmartApps / device types this weekend.

A quick summary is that the BeaconThings app used an OAuth authentication to install a SmartApp, so no extra efforts on the users side other than logging into SmartThings within the BeaconThings app. That SmartApp then created child devices to represent any beacons that are registered with the app.

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That sounds great! I appreciate your time!

I actually just recently downloaded SmartRules and saw that interaction and have already started looking at a few of the APIs I didn’t know about. So thank you for that as well.

Sounds great, I’m sure there are many people that would appreciate new iBeacon integration options that don’t require them to code. :sunglasses:

Thanks for the tip on BTrigger–I did just want to note that it hasn’t been updated for a couple of years, it’s just that it was so simple to begin with that it’s still working with much newer operating system versions. But it doesn’t look like the developer is still working on it, so just be aware that it might get out of date.

For people who do their own coding, if you buy either estimote ibeacons or radius Network Ibeacons each has their own SDK that you’ll be able to do lots of stuff with. I think that’s the main reason that there are so few IBeacon apps now.

As far as microlocation, estimote has an excellent location system which has done most of the heavy lifting for you, but you do need to have four (not 3) of their beacons for each region that you are trying to define. But it works really well and they have a step-by-step tutorial to walk you through it, with a lot of pre-built options as well. It’s used by museums, shopping centers, sports arenas – – it’s just as it gets expensive for low-cost home automation. But it’s worth looking at just for the concepts anyway.

http://developer.estimote.com/indoor/map-your-location/

Of course if you just want to use an IBeacon as a presence sensor, you only need one. :sunglasses:

Good luck, definitely let us know how the project is going. As I’ve mentioned before, I do use Ibeacons in my own home for both small zone presence and touchless switches, and I’ve been really happy with them. But I also have an iOS tablet on each side of the house to act as a base station. So I’m probably spending more than many people will want to.

I just want to use micro location to have my lights follow me like in Robert Daly’s apartment in the Black Mirror episode USS Callister. Can we make that happen with ibeacons?

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Start a new thread for this under projects or smart app ideas and we can discuss the possibilities. It’s going to make a big difference if you want it to be able to distinguish between two people in the same home, in particular there’s the issue of will it turn off the lights because person A left the room even though person B is still in the room.

Anyway, there are ways to do it, but it’s going to be a fairly complex discussion and really needs its own thread.

I didn’t forget this weekend… I’m still working on getting the code together. I’ll post a link to a github repo with the groovy code and a readme with the plans I had for future enhancements.

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