Bluetooth Beacon Payload BC-08 Multibeacon

[sdmccambridge]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the info. Had ordered the ESP32 Development Board as I suspected this might be where I was heading... 😉. Still, will be good to get some hands on with ESP32.

[Michael McSharry]

I did not have luck interrogating the bluetooth devices using the .NET methods with compatibility issues between Windows Universal and Windows 10. This means things like UUID was not accessible in the general case. I could do it with ESP32. Suggest taking a look at Espresense Home | ESPresense as it attempts to fingerprint the BLE devices and uses information from interrogation. ESP32 is cheap and flashing it with the firmware is easy with a browser interface.

The bottom line, however, is that if a beacon signal is not reliable then no matter what info is used, the receiver will have difficulty receiving it and it will appear as if the beacon is not present. While I have not done a rigorous test, I have had good results using longer range beacon such as is described in mcsMQTT.pdf.

[sdmccambridge]

Got hold of the mcsMQTT plugin some time ago. It was obvious it could cover a lot but I was intimdated by size and breadth of documentation so left it. Got a couple of MHCOZY 4 Channel 12V ZigBee Relay Switch devices so knew I would have to bite the bullet and I'm glad I did. Set up zigbee2mqtt and mosquitto on separate RPi devices (I know they will be used for much more going forward!), configured mcsMQTT and off I went. Took some time playing around with the plugin, checking the docs and browsing this board but I have the switches working well now.

Got a bit ambitious and decided to look at BLE beacons again to monitor arrival and departure of vehicles (again! I gave up on it a couple of years ago as being too unreliable with RF signals). Again followed the docs, for hold of a BC-08 multibeacon and now have an HS4 device that shows whether the beacon is in range or not. So far, so good. The problem is the beacon occasionally drops out and then comes back. I'm using an old bluetooth USB plug that I had lying around (v4 I think) but have ordered a v5.1 long range one which I hope will improve things. I know I can change the sampling time to wait for longer before turning device on or off but this will reduce reliability and increase delays. This beacon has some interesting characteristics in the payload which I'd like to get hold of. It's possible to change the UUID if the device is moved which would be ideal for vehicle tracking. If I saw the change to UUID, I would know that the vehicle has started to move and therefore would be more confident in increasing sampling as likely it was exiting. If the changed UUID appeared after the device had been gone for a while, would be confident that the vehicle had come in to range in a moving state. The signal strength would also be great! Is there a simple way to extract the payload (with UUID and other info) from the beacon deviceand is it also possible to get hold of the signal strength as well? This would be a great help to me for modifying and improving confidence on state based on the info from the device and also what I was using the device for. If not possible, do you have any tips for me as to how I shopuld move forward. I have done a fair bit of scripting to get HS4 and various devices and events going and I used to do a bit of coding quite some time ago but I'm no longer very proficient. Still, willing to learn, so your direction would be much appreciated.

The plug-in is amazing by the way and I suspect limitations are with me rather than it. Thanks very much for making it available.