Comment by mojuba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mojuba | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know why everyone is talking about pushing ads in the first place, whenever BLE beacons come up. As if the visual clutter created by outdoor advertisement wasn't enough, now I'll get garbage on my phone? No, thanks. Really, No Thanks.

As the article mentions, it's not obvious what value iBeacons provide compared to direct audio/visual information. For the same reason QR codes never took off. Ever since QR came into existence I haven't seen a single person who'd voluntarily scan a code (or an NFC label for that matter) in the street, anywhere in the world.

Clearly iBeacons/QR/NFC are not interesting in terms of providing information "on the spot", let alone advertisement. OK, then maybe microlocation? Finding lost items? Checkin/checkout? Payments? I don't know, none of these is so unique and indispensable that it triggers the excitement light bulb in me. Most of these things can be achieved somehow else, except maybe finding items lost within 20-30m from where you are.

Maybe the problem is that iBeacons are a bit too passive/static. But even a full BLE device that can transmit a bit more complex information is still debatble in terms of value. Where are the BLE A/V remotes, why aren't they replacing the IR ones? Would you trust a BLE baby monitor? How important is BLE for fitness tracker users? (Answer: somewhat, but if BLE never existed everyone would just use the USB connection to charge and exchange information at the same time, no big loss).

Plus purely engineering problems, such as unreliability, poor battery life, etc.

So let me be that guy who turns out to be wrong some years from now, but: despite the hype BLE turns out to be a niche technology with poor capabilities and questionable benefits.

I think the technology here is so deceptively simple and generic that it's hard to say what the true killer use case is yet. It's definitely unfortunate that the "ads" examples are the most prevalent. Despite that, I'm betting devs will find cool and novel uses for it.

Public transit is one of the more compelling uses for beacons. If every bus, say, transmitted their vehicle ID you could improve the real-time experiences in third-party apps.

For instance, to precisely know which vehicle you're on when showing arrival estimates or vehicle locations. You can also determine a bunch of other contextually aware info when you know which vehicle a user is on (traffic delays, detours, trackwork, etc)

I feel like, as for QR codes, there are industrial uses for this tech. I think consumer use will be very very niche and not widespread at all. Perhaps things like beacons in a museum or archive or library to help you navigate it faster or in an exploratory way.

>I haven't seen a single person who'd voluntarily scan a code (or an NFC label for that matter) in the street, anywhere in the world

Post-men do it all the time.

>Maybe the problem is that iBeacons are a bit too passive/static. But even a full BLE device that can transmit a bit more complex information is still debatble in terms of value

You are missing the point, too. I guess, the value of iBeacon is in reception, not transmission, as is also said about RFID terminals, while it still may have some other use.

Post-men don't do it "voluntarily", by which I mean e.g. out of curiosity, whereas the purpose of advertisement QR codes is just that. "Wow, look an advertisement QR code, I should definitely scan it and see what they are offering!". Really?

despite the hype BLE turns out to be a niche technology with poor capabilities and questionable benefits.

While I agree that beacons are over-hyped, I think it's worth pointing out that BLE does other things that I think are more useful. Being able to talk to devices without having to perform the awkward pairing process, for example.

Pairing is an equivalent of connecting devices with a physical wire. When you stream music you want to know exactly where it goes, or e.g. which BT headset is connected to which phone in the room.

Pairing can be combined with connecting in a lot of situations though, and I believe the Bluetooth standard, as well as implementations are moving towards simplification. For example, I'd rather have a list of BT audio speakers around me directly in my music player app, then I'd just tap on one of them and hear music playing straight away. This is a protocol/API/UI issue rather than a fundamental limitation.

I've always thought BT pairing kind of backward - the computer is the 'master' in the protocol; the headset is the 'slave'. But its the headset I have picked up; I know which one I have in my hand, but the computer (iphone/music station) knows about many of them. So I have to select one from a list, and maybe I don't know which one in the list is the one in my hand. MAC address? really. How about vendor string? What if I have two of those? A mess.

Instead, the headset could scan for the computer, select it and voila we're bound.

True, and actually some cleverly designed BLE devices advertise only for a limited time after pushing a button. I don't see why classic BT devices shouldn't do the same and work (almost) like you described: only advertise for a minute or two when asked to, and shut up for the rest of the time.

Using un-paired BLE devices you can do things such as adhoc mesh networking, which isn't possible with "old" Bluetooth. That's kind of cool, and possibly useful.

I agree that general Bluetooth usability could be improved - having to switch to an OS-provided, generic "add device" wizard before being able to use any Bluetooth device is just UX murder.

Agree! With http://tah.io/get we have tried to make use of BLE not just as beacons but also for combining the power of your physical sensors with 'smartphone' sensors to have much more interesting use cases!

Like what, for instance?

Stuff like this: http://docs.tah.io/examples With a bunch of shields you can add more functionality

Which one of them uses exactly the iBeacon protocol?

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