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Getting Battery Level from Blue Charm BC011 iBeacon

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    #1

    Getting Battery Level from Blue Charm BC011 iBeacon

    I thought I had an iBeacon with a low battery but it turned out to be the USB dongle going bad. From looking at the docs for this device, it says it broadcasts battery level (in percentage) as a part of its core broadcast. Is there any way to get this into a feature of the root device? It also can be configured to broadcast Eddystone TLM which contains the battery voltage in millivolts (i.e. 3000 = 3.0V) as well as the temperature at the device.

    Here is a link to the device docs: https://bluecharmbeacons.com/bc011-i...k-start-guide/

    Thanks,
    Ken
    "if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." --Sir Isaac Newton (1675)
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    #2
    I ordered one to play with. It should be here this weekend. The problem I had with the Windows BLE implementation is that Microsoft libraries are for the universal platform (i.e. Windows RT) and I could not get them to fully work on legacy (Windows 10). We shall see when I get the device.

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      #3
      I received the Blue Charm beacon and it works fine. Signal strength, even when set to maximum of +4db, is not as strong as the FSC-BP109. BlueCharm does a much better job of helping the use configure the device with its App and Web-based instruction than is provided by FeasyCom.

      The main purpose is to assess battery level. Turns out the FSC-BP109 also reports battery level. My best guess is that this parameter is part of ManufacturerData and I am still unable to access it using W10. The .NET library I am using is for Windows Universal (Window RT) and I have not yet been able to crack to method to get access to ManufacturerData with .NET under W10.

      I would like to be to do this so I will play some more. I know when I was doing the ESP32 BLE with HS3 I could read the ManufacturerData so I know the data is there, but just don't yet know how to do it under Windows. I am less comfortable with Linux and have not tried it on that platform.

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        #4
        I finally had success on Windows with decode of the full advertisement packet. That was the good news. The battery and other data is not available in the advertisement packet. To get this information I believe a connection to the device needs to be made and the services it provides queried. Battery and Temp show up on the Blue Charm phone App. Some manufactures include the service UUIDs available on the device. I see it with the Bluetooth soil moisture sensor, but I do not see it with the Blue Chart beacon. This means one needs to connect to the device to see if it provides a service.

        At this time I am not going to connect and query Bluetooth devices. It may make sense to query battery level once a day for the beacons that have been associated with HS, but is a future endeavor.

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          #5
          Hi guys, I just happened to notice that our website is getting some traffic from this forum, so popped over to take a look.

          Re the question about the BC011 (and also the BC08 and BC021) beacon's battery level:

          There are two ways to get the current battery level of the beacon:

          1. Send a scan request and get response from beacon. That is what our KBeacon app is doing, so that is why you can see the battery level of the beacon on the KBeacon app initial scan screen without any connection and without Eddystone TLM enabled.

          2. If the Eddystone TLM broadcast is enabled, it includes the battery level also. In that case, there is no need to send a scan request and wait for response. Your app (or scanning device) can simply "listen" for the beacon's TLM advertisement when your app/device is routinely scanning for beacons.

          Michael's McS's guess that you need to connect to the beacon is not correct (at least with our beacons). No connection is required. We always discourage people from trying to connect to (or pair with) beacons (unless they are configuring the beacon) since that's not the way beacons are supposed to work (as opposed to Bluetooth headphones, etc, that we are all accustomed to using in our daily lives).

          It's a little complicated to fully explain here, but I can email you the JSON API instructions if you are interested in studying more in depth. Send me a DM here on this forum if you are interested in receiving this.

          Thomas at Blue Charm Beacons

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