In May, BD+C's blog partner, CASE, covered the rise of indoor positioning technology, and identified architectural applications for beacon technology.
BLE (Bluetooth low energy) beacons are small battery-powered devices that connect with tablets and phones that are in the immediate vicinity. This can enable businesses and other entities to send messages to users based on where they are in a certain space. Apple released the iBeacon in 2013, and the iOS8 update last summer made the innovation even stronger.
Mashable reports that Google will challenge Apple in this realm: The company unveiled Eddystone, a new BLE beacon format, along with tools that will let developers create apps along with the service. Google named the beacon after the Eddy Lighthouse in England, and the company has drawn the parallels between new beacon technology and classic guiding lighthouses.
Unlike iBeacon, which is only compatible with iDevices, Eddystone is cross-platform and discoverable by any Bluetooth smart device. It is open-source so any beacon manufacturer can make hardware compatible with it.
Though beacons usually broadcast information publicly, Eddystone has the option to communicate privately as well. The privacy feature, called Ephemeral Identifiers (EIDs), lets users track their luggage while traveling and find their keys, for instance.
For developers, Google released two new APIs. The Nearby API connects apps with other close devices and beacons; for example, users at an art museum can receive additional facts about a piece or display over their phones. The Proximity Beacon API allows developers to associate semantic location with beacons and store it in the cloud.
Eddystone is available on GitHub under the Apache v2.0 license. Google says Eddystone can be installed with a firmware update.
Related Stories
| Nov 25, 2013
Electronic plan review: Coming soon to a city near you?
With all the effort AEC professionals put into leveraging technology to communicate digitally on projects, it is a shame that there is often one major road block that becomes the paper in their otherwise “paperless” project: the local city planning and permitting department.
| Nov 22, 2013
Kieran Timberlake, PE International develop BIM tool for green building life cycle assessment
Kieran Timberlake and PE International have developed Tally, an analysis tool to help BIM users keep better score of their projects’ complete environmental footprints.
| Nov 8, 2013
Can Big Data help building owners slash op-ex budgets?
Real estate services giant Jones Lang LaSalle set out to answer these questions when it partnered with Pacific Controls to develop IntelliCommand, a 24/7 real-time remote monitoring and control service for its commercial real estate owner clients.
| Oct 30, 2013
Why are companies forcing people back to the office?
For a while now companies have been advised that flexibility is a key component to a successful workplace strategy, with remote working being a big consideration. But some argue that we’ve moved the needle too far toward a “work anywhere” culture.
| Oct 30, 2013
11 hot BIM/VDC topics for 2013
If you like to geek out on building information modeling and virtual design and construction, you should enjoy this overview of the top BIM/VDC topics.
| Oct 18, 2013
Meet the winners of BD+C's $5,000 Vision U40 Competition
Fifteen teams competed last week in the first annual Vision U40 Competition at BD+C's Under 40 Leadership Summit in San Francisco. Here are the five winning teams, including the $3,000 grand prize honorees.
| Oct 18, 2013
A picture’s worth a thousand words… if you can find it
Photographs are becoming more essential to project communication and documentation. Recently, I sat in a local airport integration project meeting in which the owner outlined their expectation for construction documentation. One of the first requirements was to provide photographs throughout the building process.
Sponsored | | Oct 7, 2013
Bridging the digital divide between the BIM haves and have nots
There's no doubt that BIM is the future of design. But for many firms, finding a bridge to access rich model data and share it with those typically left on the sidelines can be the difference between winning a bid or not.
| Oct 2, 2013
Corporate HQ in 10 months made possible with BIM coordination
An integrated Building Team uses BIM/VDC to convert a 1940s-era industrial building into a flashy new headquarters for Hillshire Brands in a matter of months.
| Sep 26, 2013
Mobilizing your job site to achieve a paperless project: fact or fiction?
True mobility in the field has rapidly evolved from lock-box kiosks on each floor to laptops on rolling carts to tablets and iPads loaded with drawings sets stored in the cloud. And WiFi-ready job sites have gone from “nice to have” to “must have” status in just a little over a year.
