How do I sort through beacons

[doug.p...@gmail.com]

So, I have multilple beacons showing up on the presence server.  How do I know which beacon ID is which device?

Serveral should be Tile's, but I have multiple BLE devices around my house.  At least one Tile has not been paired or registered with something running the Tile App.

[Jim T]

Did you figure out how to do this?

I just got my Happy Bubbles in the mail, configured one of them and installed the presence software on a Raspberry Pi - and I see 9 beacons.  I have no idea what any of them are - or how to identify them.  I was given 2 Tile type devices over a year ago which could be in a drawer somewhere although I really doubt that their batteries would still be working.  It doesn't appear to be my iPhone.   I've got a ton of electronics in the house but I honestly don't know which ones work as beacons and which don't.

How does one normally go about finding and identifying beacons?

Thanks

[nemik]

Jim,

When you look at the latest becaons on the web interface you'll see signal strength for each one. Try to place your beacons very close to a detector one at a time and see which ones are strongest then. That's a good way to find out which is which. 

Also, the devices it finds may not be all yours, sometimes it can pick up signals from neighbors' devices depending on how close they are to you or how strong they transmit.

I hope this helps.

[Jim]

So....I’m using v1.8.0 of the Presence Detection.

I unplugged my “Front Door” bubble about 5 minutes ago and moved the “Living Room” bubble to the other end of the house...

...but I’m still seeing 5 devices that are reporting “Front Door” for Beacon Location with fluctuating Distance values and all of them show “a few seconds ago” for Last Seen.  But the “Front Door” Happy bubble has been unplugged for over 5 minutes now...  what gives?

Sent from my iPhone 8+

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Happy Bubbles" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/happybubbles/JZmBfrIw4QU/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to happybubbles...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to happyb...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/happybubbles/d10cbf4e-5a75-44f0-98d5-2d17c1b0f6d1%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[nemik]

Lot of questions here I'm trying to keep up, sorry. Glad you got the beacon working!

First thing, when you set up the MQTT server on the detectors from their Wifi config page, make sure the "client_id" is unique for each one. This is very important for them to work properly and for the MQTT server to be able to know which is which. Give them unique hostnames but also make sure that "client_id" is unique too.

There's no hidden battery, so I suspect that maybe the client ID's are fighting each other and that's why you're seeing results from a stale unit that's turned off?

You're right, when you add a device, it no longer shows up in the Latest Beacons Seen, maybe that is confusing, sorry. But I consider those 'special' since they've been added so I don't show them there anymore. Maybe I should change it to "Unknown Devices" or something else. Thanks for that feedback.

For finding raw ones, same thing is to move them closer to detectors and watch RSSI. But another trick is to visit a site like: https://aruljohn.com/mac.pl and enter in the MAC address (or "Beacon ID" and it can tell you the manufacturer based on the MAC. Maybe that helps you whittle it down to which device it's seeing.

On Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at 5:32:32 PM UTC-6, Jim T wrote:

So....I’m using v1.8.0 of the Presence Detection.

I unplugged my “Front Door” bubble about 5 minutes ago and moved the “Living Room” bubble to the other end of the house...

...but I’m still seeing 5 devices that are reporting “Front Door” for Beacon Location with fluctuating Distance values and all of them show “a few seconds ago” for Last Seen.  But the “Front Door” Happy bubble has been unplugged for over 5 minutes now...  what gives?

Sent from my iPhone 8+

On Jan 10, 2018, at 5:43 PM, nemik <happybubblestechnology@gmail.com> wrote:

Jim,

When you look at the latest becaons on the web interface you'll see signal strength for each one. Try to place your beacons very close to a detector one at a time and see which ones are strongest then. That's a good way to find out which is which. 

Also, the devices it finds may not be all yours, sometimes it can pick up signals from neighbors' devices depending on how close they are to you or how strong they transmit.

I hope this helps.

On Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at 4:06:53 PM UTC-6, Jim T wrote:

Did you figure out how to do this?

I just got my Happy Bubbles in the mail, configured one of them and installed the presence software on a Raspberry Pi - and I see 9 beacons.  I have no idea what any of them are - or how to identify them.  I was given 2 Tile type devices over a year ago which could be in a drawer somewhere although I really doubt that their batteries would still be working.  It doesn't appear to be my iPhone.   I've got a ton of electronics in the house but I honestly don't know which ones work as beacons and which don't.

How does one normally go about finding and identifying beacons?

Thanks

On Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at 7:43:46 PM UTC-4, doug.p...@gmail.com wrote:

So, I have multilple beacons showing up on the presence server.  How do I know which beacon ID is which device?

Serveral should be Tile's, but I have multiple BLE devices around my house.  At least one Tile has not been paired or registered with something running the Tile App.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Happy Bubbles" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/happybubbles/JZmBfrIw4QU/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to happybubbles+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Jim]

Thanks very much for all of the quick replies and the assistance.

Yes - I changed the host names for each of them - but I didn’t touch the client Id.  I thought that since it was pre-populated and didn’t change to match the host name I entered - that maybe they had to be identical so that the presence detection algorithm knew that they were all part of the same group.  That probably explains my weird behavior.  I’ll reconfigure then tomorrow and make sure they’re all unique.

But again - a small insert in the packaging would have been helpful.  As it was, I followed a “Bruh Automation” YouTube video to configure them - and he changed the host name but not the client Id in his video.

And on my comment earlier about the “added” device.  I don’t mind that it doesn’t show up in the big list anymore - but I *WOULD* like for it to still show me the distance it is from the bubble.  There is no “distance” column available in the display table it gets added to.

Last question - at least for today...  what is an “Added Button” and why might I need one?

Thanks again for the help....

Sent from my iPhone 8+

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to happybubbles...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to happyb...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/happybubbles/0234e217-2d65-48cf-a02b-3c523ef8d2c9%40googlegroups.com.