Bluetooth Proximity Beacon - For car/motorcycle?

This is not really related to SmartThings, but also sort of is because it will relate to automation.

Short story: I need a way to wire a bluetooth beacon into my motorcycle, using it’s 12VDC switched power (or switched USB). Where Can I find one? I’m not familiar with bluetooth beacons. All it needs to do is connect to the beacon, nothing else.


Right now, I have Tasker set up on my Android phone so that when I am connected to my cars Bluetooth, it automatically turns off Wifi so that when I open Waze, it’s not stuck on the low signal wifi trying to look up directions. It’s also set so that when Wifi disconnects, it sets my security camera viewer to use the low res feed.

Well, this all works great, but most days I take my motorcycle to work, and I use a Flic while riding to control music. Flic has a tasker and IFTTT integration, so here’s what I’m hoping to do…I want to find a bluetooth beacon I can wire into the bikes auxiliary power (or switched USB), when the bike turns on, my phone connects and tells tasker I’m about to get on the bike…from there it will switch my Flic to the correct profile and whatever other automations I want it to do.


Worst case scenario if I can’t find anything for what I need. Perhaps I can buy a bluetooth tracker like a Tile, MYNT, TrackR, crack it open and hard wire it to the bike.

Both Geohopper and radius networks make Ibeacons that run from mains electrical power rather than batteries. I’m not quite sure how you would wire that into the bike but that would be a place to start.

That said, if it was me I’d just use a battery powered IBeacon. You can set the range to be as little as three or 4 inches and the battery should last a year or two. Or is it a problem that you’ll be walking past the bike frequently when you don’t want your phone to switch over? Even so, you should be able to be able to limit the Detection zone sufficiently for most purposes.

That could work, however, I’d also be annoyed if it were jumping in and out of range of the bike while I’m riding. I suppose it if were within 5 or 6 feet that could work, but I’d have to test it.

I did find a couple of programmable USB dongle bluetooth beacons, and I have a usb port under the seat of the bike for charging my phone and stuff that I don’t really use anymore.

I have some super cheap car bluetooth adapters for converting auxillary audio ports on a car to bluetooth and they are USB powered…I’m now wondering if maybe I could use one of those. I use hard wired headphones on the bike, so I think if my phone connects to that, it shouldn’t affect the phone.

The main reason I want to do this is because I have the flic set up so single click = toggle play/pause, double click = next song, long click = text to speech read my last text message. It’s the single click and long click that get annoying. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at work or out with friends and I accidentally push the flic in my pocket and all of a sudden my phone starts blasting dubstep at work or starts reading the last text I received. lol

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I was also thinking of the bluetooth car adapter earlier when I read your post. My car doesn’t have BT so I added one of those. Now I can add that bluetooth adapter as a trusted device on my phone so it disables the security lock (pin/pattern). At one point I also used it to make tasker dim my phone screen at night.

How would you integrate geohopper or radius networks beacons into Smartthings as a trigger? I don’t see that they integrate with IFTTT or Stringify. I’d like to trigger certain Smartthings actions when I get into the car. Preferably for less than the $130 an Automatic Pro would cost me.

Just found this actually

That’s a good thread to read towards the end, although that particular app is no longer supported.

Basically you use a receiving station app that can send a Webhook When the beacon is in/out of range and then something that can receive the webhook. I don’t know if stringify can receive webhooks for not: IFTTT can through their maker channel. But there are other alternatives as well. Again, just read the last 20% or so of the posts in the thread you linked to for what’s currently available.