The idiot's guide to iBeacons

This guide to ibeacons is from somebody who, up until a week ago, was uncertain as to exactly how ibeacons worked or exactly what they did. After two days of explaining them, demoing them and answering questions on them at TMW Agency’s technology expo last week, I am now a bit of an expert. Here’s my breakdown of how I wish somebody had explained these clever little dinosaur egg looking bits of tech to me… without jargon.

What are ibeacons?

Not all Ibeacons look like the image above - these ones are 'Estimotes', but the ibeacon chips can be found in laptops, mobiles - anything really. Ibeacons are a transmitter, pure and simple. They use low energy Bluetooth – like you used to have in your phone and connect your seriously cool Bluetooth hands free earpiece to – to communicate little tokens or identifiers, which apps in your phone, digital out of home, or anything else for that matter, can use to look up the exact information that you want shown. This can be offers, locations, information, anything… as long as you’re in range of one of the ibeacons. The joy of this, is that you don’t have to have signal, or satellite connections, or any of that highly restrictive rubbish if your app has pre-loaded content for the ibeacon to reveal. So it works as well on the underground and in caves, as it would at the tip of the BT tower, as long as your app has the required updates. Other than that, it does need to be in signal to load pages that the ibeacons are linking to.

This does unfortunately mean that you have to have Bluetooth switched on for them to interact with your phone. But do not fear the Bluetooth. You can have it built into your app permissions, or just have your app prompt the user to switch their Bluetooth on when the app is launched. Bluetooth has changed since back in the day – it won’t rinse your battery. I had my Bluetooth switched on my android phone all day, through both expo days, and it managed to last a solid nine hours each day, regardless of the Bluetooth and constant use.

^ This bit in a nutshell. They’re Bluetooth powered transmitters that send your phone information, when you’re near it. No satellites involved.

When should I use them?

Whenever you want to do something based around proximity. One way that it could be used would be an app that would tell you whenever you were near the ingredients for specific recipes within the supermarket, making your hunt amongst the crowded aisles of the supermarket that little bit more efficient… you don’t even need to think about it, you’ll just know when you’re near!

One activation that won an award at Cannes this year is really worth a look, as rather than telling you how close you were to an item, it let you know how far away you were from your kids. Nivea Sun made these cute little wearable wristbands on their print ads, in which an ibeacon ID could be tethered to your phone.

Then, if you were sending a text on the beach instead of watching your kids running around in the sand, and your children went outside of the distance range you’d set the app at, it would let you know to go running after your little terrors and stop them from drowning. Brilliant.

^ This bit in a nutshell. Use them when you want to tell people how close they are to something, if they’ve gone out of range of something, or for location specific targeted advertising/information.

Stuff that’s good to know

They come in loads of different shapes and sizes – the size is relative to the battery life. They’re also really cheap, generally speaking. The battery life is pretty variable though, depending on how often, and how far, you want information to go out, and of course, the cost varies between producers. Here at TMW agency we seem to be favouring Estimote – they’re cute looking, with a simple programming interface that matches the design of the products.

They’re seriously durable. Waterproof, fridgeproof, freezerproof – and tested. They work through thick walls and glass, so you can still use them even in the most extreme of conditions. They’re tough little cookies.

They’re reprogrammable – So you can change your little information transmissions as often as you like. You can even change the range and strength of the ibeacons remotely on a smartphone app.

You can’t be bombarded with information unless you choose to be. It’s not one of those technologies that’s going to take off too quickly, and everybody’s constantly going to be getting push messages and everybody will hate them… because we currently have to choose to accept ibeacons through specific apps. Only brands that we choose to associate ourselves with will send us information from ibeacon. Very handy.

Thankyou very much for reading, my name's Francesca Brook, and that was iBeacons. I hope you feel well educated and more willing to get iBeacons involved in your campaigns.