Beacons close to each other. Directed BLE Beacon signal possible?

[honsey1]

Hello there,

I'm working on a "handsfree" audio guide for a museum application. Right now I'm exploring BLE to trigger the audio files based on the received signal strength of Beacons. Unfortunately my application might ask for beacons being quite close to each other (like 2-3m). So the idea arise to put the Beacons up the ceiling with low power transmission strength, but concentrate the signal downwards.

Is this a valid approach? Has it been done before? Do you have any recommandations on modules that allow to connect an external antenna?

Thank you very much,

Hans

[Kenneth]

RSSI to detect distance is very inaccuate, so I am sligtly skeptical to any approach where you rely on RSSI to detect distance, though I do know there are solutions out there that seems to work, for instance ibeacon by Apple. If you want to test an approach with external antenna you can for instance just purhase an nRF52-DK, which can be used with external antenna. In terms of modules you may find this overview useful:
https://www.nordicsemi.com/Nordic-Partners/3rd-party-modules