How to monitor several beacons in an open area with one Hub.

[Vikindio]

Hi.

We are a Norwegian company trying to create a prototype to monitoring people. We are already waiting our BLE 5 with ANT capabilities to start creating the prototype. But we are right now having a hard time to find the right and best device to monitor all the beacons. Do you have any idea or suggestion of what we could use as a hub, reader/receiver for all those beacons we want to deploy in a open space area? The Hub/reader need to be able to handle 50 to 100 beacons at a time, ant this reader/hub is the only device connected to the main PC by ethernet. We plan to extend and improve the options, like 2 way comunication and other type of sensors. But for now only we could get the beacons send a small amount of date to position them (triangulate) in an area that will have several Hubs/readers so we can triangulate them, but each hub/reader needs to be able to handle from 50 to 100 beacons at on time.

[Sigurd]

Note that you should in theory be able to scan/monitor all these beacons running a nRF52 in central mode. The time it takes before all beacons are scanned will depend on much packet collision the beacons causes, advertising interval, scanner settings, etc. E.g. here, a user scanned 80 different BLE devices in his building using a nRF51 in central mode.

[Vikindio]

Thanks Sigurd. We will get our BLE 5 chips by end of this month, and we are exciting to start putting together our beacons. But we still having a hard time to find the right hub/receiver that can read all this beacons and at the same time work in a mesh networking, the key factor of why we are using this BLE 5. Or should we just aim to build our own hubs/receivers? do you have any suggestion what should be the best parts/technology to use on this hubs/receivers? The software we are developing will have several functionalities and options, but from the beacons and hub side, they will only be doing monitoring/positioning, we will use as less amount of data as possible for better battery life. So small data to position them is the key. We have as a reference "pixie point" that can position the beacon by inches, and thats impressive and thats what we aim for. Any suggestion and info about this will be highly appreciated Sigur, thanks!

[David Edwin]

wizwiki.net/.../doku.php , seems to have already done the nRF5x to Ethernet integration. PoE integration also seems to be available so a hub solution for a controlled environment seems to be possible. See also devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../