Can i know is it possible to communicate with Beacon without having any Mobile app on device?
Thanks in advance
Both Android and iOS devices need some kind of app installed to interact with your beacons. Some phones have such apps pre-installed, but the options are limited. The two such apps with the widest distribution are:
Google Chrome App (Android/iOS)
Google's Chrome app will interact with beacons supporting Eddystone-URL (also known as physical web), which transmit a URL that can be displayed within Chrome when the app detects it.
This works on both Android and iOS devices with Chrome installed. For newer Android phones, this is a relatively high percentage of devices. For iOS, it is a very small percentage, as the app is not installed by default. This makes it of very limited use on iOS.
The other real drawback to relying on Chrome for beacon detection is the hoops users have to jump through to opt-in, and the way the beacon notifications are buried. Until users opt-in, they will see no notifications on beacon detections. Once they do, they will see a very generic notification "Physical web beacons are nearby", and only once the user taps on that are the specifics about the web page associated with the beacon transmitted URL displayed.
Passbook (iOS)
Apple's passbook app will bring up a passbook entry (usually used for tickets, coupons, etc.) associated with a set of iBeacon identifiers if the user comes within range of the beacon. In order to use this, however, the user must first download the passbook entry to his or her iPhone. Only once this is downloaded and opened will the app respond to associated beacons.
EDIT April 2020: For a time prior to December 2018 Google supported app-less notifications based on beacon detection using their Google Nearby product. This was discontinued in December 2018 due to predictable abuse and spam that it generated. While you may find some outdated documentation online about this ability, understand that this feature no longer works. As of this writing, my understanding is that this answer is still correct.
You should checkout Eddystones from Google. They can push you URLs even without app.
If you want to interact with beacons and do custom stuff (notifications, http requests, etc) you will need an app.
Related
I work for a repair shop that recently decided to implement a square chip/card reader. Up to this point, we have been manually entering credit card numbers into our internal silverlight app running on a pc on our domain.
We ordered the square point of sale system that includes chip reader, ipad, stand, the whole bundle.
We looked at the square pos api, which targets iOS and Android platforms, but also has a Web api for non-native apps. The api is supposed to be able to switch control from our browser based app to the square app to allow a customer to swipe their card, and upon completion, the api switches control back to our app.
Since the system is based on web api calls, we envisioned initiating the sale from our app running on our pc by calling the api, and control would be passed to the square app on the ipad.
However, when we contacted square about this system, we were advised that our app and the square app had to be running on the same device (the ipad in this case).
But it's a web api. Geographical separation shouldn't matter.
Has anyone implemented a similar architecture with a square device? Or does anyone have a potential workaround?
The web request must be initiated from the same device because it uses native App linking/ Intents to switch between the browser and the Square Point of Sale app. You can not currently initiate a transaction on a different device. The "web" in "web API" means that you are starting from a website (as opposed to a native application), not in that the request goes over the web.
I am working on Gimbal Beacons. I have registered my gimbal beacon on Google Beacon DashBoard. Now I can receive notification on any android device using my gimbal beacon. Now I want to do the same thing for iPhones. So that when an iPhone user opens bluetooth in beacon's range then a notification is received on iPhone. Please help me..!
Apple does not have an equivalent of Google's Nearby functionality that allows Android devices with Google Play Services to receive notifications when a beacon is in vicinity without a third party app installed.
On iOS devices, a third part app is generally required to send notifications for nearby beacons. Only one built-in app and one fairly common add-on app allow on iOS respond to third party beacons:
Passbook: if a user has installed a pass associated with a beacon, a notification will be displayed when it is nearby.
Google Chrome: responds to Eddystone-URL beacons if the Chrome Today widget gas been enabled. (Very few iOS users have Chrome and enable this.)
Other than the above, you need a third party app to make iOS respond to beacons.
I am using eddystone beacons to transmit my business url. How can I make the url notification received to alert thru sound on the users device? Any idea?
Understand that Eddystone-URL beacon advertisements don't automatically do anything on a user's phone unless they have an app installed to detect them.
Chrome for iOS and Android (installed on many newer Android devices, but very few iOS devices) will automatically detect Eddystone-URL advertisements and display a notification from Chrome if the user has opted-in. However, no sound is played. Bottom line: on a phone without a custom app, detecting an Eddystone-URL will not cause a sound to play.
If you build a custom app and get it installed on users' devices, you can certainly make it play a sound on Android devices when the beacon is detected. On iOS devices, you could also display a local notification on the device that will play a sound, but only if the user has the volume turned up on the device, does not have do not disturb on, and has opted-in to receiving notifications from the app.
I've been reading through Google's Chromecast developer documentation and I can't seem to find any developer docs that discuss how to develop customizations for the Chromecast home screen, such as HTML overlays, etc.
There are Chromecast apps available that do show stuff on the Chromecast home screen, such as Dashboard Cast, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rir.dashboardcast&hl=en.
Does anyone know what approaches can be used with the Receiver API to allow this?
You cannot customize the home screen (backdrop); users can change what sort of feeds (images) can be used to be shown there. You, as a developer, do not have control over that and if it seems that some developers have customized that, in reality they have not; they are running an app there (like any other chromecast app).
I'm exploring the end user experience for a beacon prototype but I'm struggling to find any end-user scenarios that involve the app becoming active / opening up on the screen when within range.
I can get the app to send a notification and this is the most likely experience on both Android and iOS but does anyone know if it is possible to get the app to open up?
It's unlikely that I'd want real customers to have their experience interfered with in this way, I think it's ok if the app is already running and is open but not if it's running but not open.
Thanks
On Android this is possible. The reference app for the Android Beacon Library demonstrates how to do exactly this.
On iOS, it is not possible due to OS security restrictions. See here for details. The best you can do is send a local notification to the user when the beacon is detected, then if the user gestures to it, bring up the app.