BTLE tags

[Ed]

On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 10:09 AM, David Schwartz
<newsletters at thetoolwiz.com> wrote:
> There are several companies that make these little BTLE “tags” that can be
> used for proximity detection.
>
> Some are passive (unpowered) and some are more active and require power.
>
> TrackR Bravo has small quarter-sized devices that are only as large as they
> are because of the battery in them. They last for a year.
>
> EveryKey has little rectangular devices that have LiPo batteries in them
> that need to be recharged weekly.
>
> The interesting thing is that from a functional standpoint, they’re pretty
> much both doing the same thing.
>
> The difference is in the applications.
>
> TrackR’s business model is this: stick our tags on your stuff and you’ll be
> able to find them esily if you lose any of them.
>
> EveryKey’s business model is similar: stick one of our tags on yourself and
> you’ll be able to automatically log into any of your devices when you get
> within range of them.
>
> Both are dependent on people running their app for their model to work.
> TrackR’s model requires the world to be using their app, but EveryKey’s only
> requires the equipment owner to be using their app.
>
> They’re the same proximity mechanisms at work, but opposite approaches that
> lead to different use cases.
>
> They could probably be done with passive tags as well.
>
> These are both closed models — you have to use their software with their
> devices. If you want to be able to, say, login to another app using
> EveryKey, you need to wait for them to build that in.
>
> Are there any open-source tools or libraries where people are building
> similar types of apps that work with any number of different types of tags?
>
> -David Schwartz
>


David - all Bluetooth low energy tokens need power (radio), and
today's industrial models are good for 5 years - there are many
manufacturers and infrastructure services, like https://kontakt.io.
They break down into two camps, Apple and Google. Apple is of coursed
behind their garden wall, Google's Eddystone is free to use but also
geared to tie into Android and Google analytics - but you can roll
your own, or go with alt integrators like Kontakt. see also
https://google.github.io/physical-web/

There is an open source frontend (originated from Kontakt) is
essentially abandonware and may not have made the BLE4 to BLE5
transition earlier this year. There are many libraries and they are
free, also vendor libs (Nordic) - the BLE usb scanner fob from
Adafruit was only windows for anything but raw capture. There may be a
Wireshark plugin in the works - I haven't looked recently - updates
appreciated.

I've found BLE hard to work with (firmware updates) as there are many
sources of interference for an essentially weak signal, like usb3
ports and wifi.  Great excuse for that Faraday room we've all been
planning.