Simulating beacon with smartphone

[Jacob Noergaard]

We are currently working on a project where we use a NRF52832 in a beacon to act as a keyfob for another device. We are concerned that if we lose the key we cannot use the device since we are not able to then connect a new beacon to the device. Is there a way to either copy the beacon to a phone through some app, or to simulate a beacon so that we can bond the phone as a regular beacon to the device.

I know this information is not really specific, but we are just curious if there is a, more or less, out of the box solution or a similar solution we can work out from.

Best regards Jacob

[swanav]

Hey Jacob,

The experts at Nordic might be able to guide you with a better solution, but thought I'd drop my 2 cents.

I would suggest using the iBeacon format for your beacon, since the iOS natively supports generating beacons in this format.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/turning_an_ios_device_into_an_ibeacon_device

The licensing and easy application of this format should allow you to realize this use-case, since iBeacons can be broadcasted by an iOS, Android as well as any native BLE device (nRF52832) in your instance.

If you do not need to support iOS devices, you can also look into the Eddystone beacon format, which is Google's format (but more flexible in terms of payload).

https://github.com/google/eddystone

Also, if your usecase is just about BLE Beacons you might want to look into the nRF52805, since it should be able to serve you abundantly.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Jacob, 

Our nRF Connect app on Android/iOS can clone a beacon and broadcasting that same data using the phone (It's the clone button when you click on an advertiser) 

However, the main challenge here is if the beacon keep broadcasting the same data or it's the dynamic data that the beacon transmit. If it's the dynamic data that change over time, the phone won't be able to generate that dynamic data because it doesn't have the algorithm. You would need to implement the algorithm in your own app to generate such data.