App callback for any iBeacon proximity UUID

1
votes

I have played around with Airlocate and two iPhones. Also between a Linux /hcitool beacon transmitter and Airlocate ranging. I see that the set of proximity UUIDs to be tracked are hardcoded in the Airlocate source code.

Is it possible for an iOS app to get a more generic call back , when it is in the vicinity of any iBeacon (any proximity UUID) and let that app decide how to go about behaving the way it wants.

I understand that this should definitely be possible from the OS perspective, as I see a 9 byte iBeacon prefix in the start of the PDU, which is independent of the proximity UUID.

Another query - I view hardcoding the proximity UUID in the APP as some sort of pairing . How is general bluetooth pairing different from this.

My aim in asking these questions is to understand the feasibility of using beacons to beam (broadcast) data, so that all recipients in the vicinity can receive it. If I choose to go with a specific 16 byte proximity UUID, then I am left with only 5 bytes (Major/minor/power) to beam data. Otherwise I get 21 bytes

1
iosbluetooth-lowenergycore-locationcore-bluetoothibeacon
The Core Location library in iOS requires that you nominate (at least) the UUID of the beacon and optionally the major and minor values. These define a "region" and you can monitor 20 regions at a time. The typical use case for an iBeacon is to identify some location with the app then providing this information to some service in order to retrieve data – Paulw11

1 Answers

2
votes

By "more generic call back", it seems like you are trying to listen to iBeacons that are not deployed by you. The answer to this is NO, you can't do that.

According to this post:http://beekn.net/2013/10/ibeacons-can-my-ios-app-find-beacons-that-arent-mine/ , in order to listen to an iBeacon, you must know its proximityUUID first. Unfortunately Apple decides to limited your ability to do that. CoreBluetooth framework can detect iBeacon nearby but since it only returns the device UUID, not the proximityUUID, you cannot add callback to them.

And Android can read the proximityUUID of any iBeacon without any problem.