The thing where everyone has some idea of what they want people to see it as useful for (Ads, etc), but don't understand how to jive this from what consumers want from them.
At this stage, it still looks like a technology solution in search of a consumer problem (it certainly solves the "how do i push indoor location based ads/etc" problem, but consumers don't care or want that).
Watching most of these companies is like watching microsoft announce the xbox one.
Everyone tries to sell indoor location, but there are better ways to do indoor location, cheaper, than placing $200 of beacons and meticulously mapping where you put them. So that isn't going to go very well over time (highly likely to be supplanted by something better).
Even some of the examples are just a result of otherwise poor planning on companies part.
For example, i don't want to know "things on my shopping list are nearby", i want to know, ahead of time, exactly where the things on my shopping list are.
It's only recently (past year or two) home depot or lowes would even tell me what aisle stuff was in.
I still can't go to a safeway website and get an idea what aisle my items are in.
In some cases, this is deliberate - they want you to have to browse.
In any case, beacons solve none of this problem (except maybe the "i'm in aisle 46 and i still can't find x" problem, but the distance issues often stop this from being particularly useful use case).
I struggle to think of an interesting use case on the consumer side for beacons.
Maybe locations for things that move like booths at a farmers market or something.
What would be some of the better alternatives for doing indoor location? It'd help me a bunch to see a few examples, as I was previously thinking of beacons for this purpose.
You can do a better job of indoor location by using tv signals, than you can with beacons.
(All of the antennas are registered, along with type, propagation, etc, with the FCC, and they produce a large database)
Not that TV signals are great.
But even the bluetooth group itself says not to use beacons:
"According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group,[24] Bluetooth is all about proximity, not about exact location. Bluetooth was not intended to offer a pinned location like GPS, however is known as a geo-fence or micro-fence solution which makes it an indoor proximity solution, not an indoor positioning solution."
Interesting thought. But I can't sample TV signals from a mobile device. I'm looking at applications that can be implemented underground as well, unique use case. And in this case, proximity might be just fine enough rather than positioning.
"Interesting thought. But I can't sample TV signals from a mobile device. "
You couldn't sample FM radio or GPS from them in the past either :)
But honestly, i don't expect this to take the world by storm either, i'm just pointing out it's a better possibility of working for the use case of "indoor mapping".
" I'm looking at applications that can be implemented underground as well, unique use case. And in this case, proximity might be just fine enough rather than positioning."
Underground is really hard, yes.
If all you care about is knowing you are within 40 feet, great.
Truthfully, specialized wifi points are likely to be better for indoor positioning than bluetooth.
So drop the GUID in favor of a simple coordinate system -- you have enough space for a latitude-longitude-altitude triplet, with a reasonable amount of precision.
Then you need to program your beacons at the time of placement, using whatever locating system you have that works but is too bulky/expensive/power-hungry/hard for users to use.
There are companies using Kinect to track users travelling through retail stores. There's also using existing WiFi recieved signal strength, which is not terribly granular but benefits from existing infrastructure.
The thing where everyone has some idea of what they want people to see it as useful for (Ads, etc), but don't understand how to jive this from what consumers want from them.
At this stage, it still looks like a technology solution in search of a consumer problem (it certainly solves the "how do i push indoor location based ads/etc" problem, but consumers don't care or want that).
Watching most of these companies is like watching microsoft announce the xbox one.
Everyone tries to sell indoor location, but there are better ways to do indoor location, cheaper, than placing $200 of beacons and meticulously mapping where you put them. So that isn't going to go very well over time (highly likely to be supplanted by something better).
Even some of the examples are just a result of otherwise poor planning on companies part.
For example, i don't want to know "things on my shopping list are nearby", i want to know, ahead of time, exactly where the things on my shopping list are.
It's only recently (past year or two) home depot or lowes would even tell me what aisle stuff was in. I still can't go to a safeway website and get an idea what aisle my items are in.
In some cases, this is deliberate - they want you to have to browse. In any case, beacons solve none of this problem (except maybe the "i'm in aisle 46 and i still can't find x" problem, but the distance issues often stop this from being particularly useful use case).
I struggle to think of an interesting use case on the consumer side for beacons.
Maybe locations for things that move like booths at a farmers market or something.