Beacons are a useful new twist on location awareness. By simply tying a unique ID to your cell phone device, it can get you an accurate location along with other relevant context about the beacon’s location and what it is attached to. You can use them for a bunch of cool stuff with your iPhone, your Mac, and a couple of beacons. Let me get you through the real life examples that how you can use Beacons in a wide range of industries.
Track things smarter
All sorts of industries are looking at affixing beacons to pallets, carts, and other movable equipment to track location as they move about. Think airline cargo containers, hospitals’ computers-on-wheels, warehouse pallets, museum artwork, bulldozers at a construction sites, contractors at a job site, even hospital patients, students, or visitors.
No more risk of missing connecting flight
A consortium of airlines and airports is testing the placement of beacons at security lines in airports. Passengers’ with an airline app would know those people are in the security line, and airlines could thus know if there are people at risk of missing their flight, so they can send out reps to get them or hold the plane. The same notion could be used at airport gates to monitor people who risk missing connecting flights or whose gates have changed — even helping them get to their new gate faster.
Navigate buildings and other spaces
When you visit a customer, you often get lost when trying to find a conference room, bathroom, or kitchen. Beacons can be used both as virtual “where am I?” kiosks and as monitors of your movement, so an app can guide you to your destination
Plus, you can get information about where you are, whether about the artist whose painting you are viewing in a museum or the instructions for the copier you’re trying to operate — even just the Wi-Fi password for the conference room’s public hotspot.
Remember to take out the garbage
Imagine, you affix a beacon to your garbage can/bag and your task appointer knows that Thursday is garbage pickup day. If you go past your garbage can on Thursday, a BLE auto-connection sends you a reminder to take it out. Combine that with GPS location detection from your phone, and your app will know if you did actually move the can to the curb and not remind you.
Authorize access to cars, buildings, and more
We already have Bluetooth fobs to unlock our cars so that we can drive them and Bluetooth locks that know it’s your iPhone at the door. Kaiser Permanente uses Bluetooth badges to authorize physician access to their individual accounts in shared computers in each exam room. The same can be done with tablets.
It’s no surprise them that companies are exploring the use of beacons and people’s own mobile devices as access systems in their buildings or to unlock and start your car rather than use proprietary radio readers or fobs.
Check out ski conditions at the lift
One ski resort is placing beacons at the ski lift entrances not just to track the number of people using each lift, but to let skiers check the conditions for the runs available at each lift before they get on the lift. If a resort’s app had information about your age or skiing skills, it could even suggest that you should try a different run and thus go to a different lift.
Epilogue
So, does something bubbles up in your conscious mind as ideas and insights? If yes, let us know. Because, there’s much more to beacons than tracking customer visits and offering coupons in retail stores. Hire beacon developer from us and turn your thoughts into reality. For any further assistance, you can drop us an email at [email protected] to get an ongoing support from us. Feel free to contact us in case of any queries.