Can we send any other data in iBeacon apart from its standard packet (uuid,major,minor,tx)

[Dhruv Agarwal]

Hey , I am working on nordic nRF51822 chip and using it as an iBeacon. I want to send some custom data apart from UUID,major,minor in the packet. How can I send it ? As in where should it be included because I could not find any provision to send any other data. I might be totally wrong , but happy to be corrected

Thanks in advance .

[RK]

If you want the beacon to be recognised as a beacon by iOS then you have to stick to the packet format and you cannot send any other data.

The iBeacon spec actually specifies that the device use non-scannable advertising, but currently it seems that, as long as the rest of the packet is correct, devices using scannable-advertising are still recognised as iBeacons, so you can do that and put extra information in the scan response packet. I would however point out that each version of iOS has tightened up on what is recognised as a beacon and it's possible that at some point in the future complete 100% adherence to the spec will be required for an iBeacon to be valid and recognised and so there's a small risk using scannable advertising if you choose to do so.