openHAB iOS App & iBeacon

[TimHH]

Hi,

i was wondering if their are any plans to integrate iBeacons in the openHAB iOS App. I saw an Video with NFC Controls for Android (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgsFGtuUFSw) and would love to have something similar in iOS. 

Are their any plans for it?

Will the source code of the iOS stay open source? I ask because https://github.com/openhab/openhab.ios is currently empty and https://github.com/openhab/openhab.ios.old is 5 month old

Best

Tim

[Jack B]

I had a play with the ibeacon stuff in owntracks/mqttitude, communicating back region enter/leave via mqtt to OH. Whilst the normal region stuff (gps/triangulation based) is really handy, I found the ibeacon regions far less so - I wanted to use it for room enter/leave events but actually found the extensive range in BLE made it less useful, since in my small place it covered pretty much half of the house! 

Thought that ranging it might be the solution, but apparently that only works when the app is fg (due to killing battery life), and doesn't report back via mqtt (that I could see anyway). I was using an rpi with a bt4 dongle as the ibeacon, so thought I could turn down the transmit power on the dongle as another option - had no joy getting that to actually work though. 

Instead I switched back to an older, shorter range, bt dongle, and a python script to check for particular bt device mac addrs and report back enter/leave by mqtt to OH. Not perfect but works ok as part of a presence detection solution - I use it to tweak the default presence timer length fired when a PIR is tripped - 15 mins when bt device present, 5 mins when not.

Cheers

Jack

[TimHH]

Hi Jack,
thanks for your experience with iBeacons. We had some awkward Problems with owntracks (gps), where the tracking was off by kilometers. Also my wife did not like the idea of publishing her position to the (ssl secured and privately owned) web server.

I currently have the chance to try out several different iBeacons. I am confident that - if i modify each signal strength - that i could detect: presence, current floor and the bigger rooms like living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.

I mean this is the most powerful feature of openHAB that it can do basically everything. Which makes it fun for us "nerds" i guess :)

Best,

Tim

[Victor Belov]

Hi,

Well, iBeacon can't be used for an exact replacement of Android's NFC. I already thought about integrating iBeacon support into iOS app, but I can't imagine any use-cases yet :-) If you have some in your mind, please don't hesitate to share them! :-)

Best regards,

Victor Belov

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[promo...@gmail.com]

Tim - Did you figure out the repository for the iOS code? The one on github as you mention is the older version.

I'm still trying to get video to stream to the iOS device while on the local network.

That doesn't work...

Also, I presume that the OH myopenhab.io is proprietary and not opened. I wonder how the interface would allow streaming of video over the my.openhab.org portal....

Anyways let me know how you ended up.

[Matthew Herren]

I guess it depends what iBeacon is in our (collective, wishful, etc.) imaginations, versus reality. 

Since I prefer life in the former, and from what I’ve played with (couple of beacons, really ugly command line software) I’m pretty sure that with numerous beacons, and a relatively straightforward floor map, they can be used to relatively accurately map indoor locations. (By numerous, esp. in larger rooms I’m talking about 3 to a room, and accurate, as in s/he in this quarter or eighth of a room). 

I find that interesting. 

But I’m a bit a nerd, and my phone is always on me. 

My girlfriend on the other end, not as much, (both in terms of doesn’t have her phone on her in the apt, and not really a fan of systems that track locations, etc.) However I think I can bring her around, so I haven’t given up.

What I think may be even more interesting, esp. than just your average phone-type beacon (esp, when we are talking about iOS devices), is the idea of reversing the role. Imagine say (and it is feasible, i just haven’t had the time to explore fully) that significant other and i are both always wearing jawbone bands (or anything else with bluetooth 4), rather than have that device calculate the location, or proximity, have the beacons do it. I foresee this being the beginning of a personal indoor mapping system. 

I also forsee me soldering a small bluetooth 4 transceiver to some sort of girlish jewelery in the future. Life. What can I say.

(Privacy reasons keep this either off many devices default abilities, or what store owners want to talk about. Own both sides of the network, and do as you please. After girlfriend permission of course.)

(Yes, I see the problems, first of all if you triangulate you would have to have either one, or another machine, doing the math). But physically, its possible even with the RPi software image those guys who make RadBeacon (I think I got that right — spelling escapes right now, and I’m on the road) put out. Secondly, accuracy may be somewhat of a crapshoot. But again, enough beacons, and enough not caring what it might do to your 2.4GHz wifi, and you’ve got something.)

best,

m

[Lehane Kellett]

I think you are right around using the reverse logic for HA - the BLE device is mobile and you have [1-n] listeners.

Forget ranging from Apps unless you have some software to map the strength(RSSI) of the beacons around the house and overlay on a plan and then do some significant maths on the RSSI from them all to micro-locate - it is not as simple as basic triangulation, there are some good research papers on it. And you do need lots of beacons, otherwise you get different results depending on who/what is in the rooms. One of the commercial applications does all the maths/floorplan on a Cloud based app server.

For the simpler approach you can use the RSSI from a few BLE receivers to give you coarse presence detection. In the simplest case it could be just house occupied status. You do need to consider the advertising interval too. Some of the BLE tags are 10 seconds and you can't guarantee to get the first packet. There are some keyfob tags (or use the UP24) about and some you can update the parameters.

I could imagine either a binding or an MQTT client (and I suspect there's already some out there) which simply sends the tag info (UUID's) from the advertisement and the RSSI and then a rule does the presence detection.

Lehane

[Victor Belov]

Hi,

Well, accurate positioning is not what one can do with BLE. But presence in the are is probably a thing that can be done. But it's not about iOS app and iBeacons :-)

[Freddie Mac]

Do we know who maintains the iOS code?

Is the source code available anywhere?

I haven't tested on Android but why is the video streaming not working on iOS?

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[Kai Kreuzer]

Hi,

Do we know who maintains the iOS code?

Yes, this is Victor Belov.

Is the source code available anywhere?

Yes, he just pushed it this week: https://github.com/openhab/openhab.ios

I haven't tested on Android but why is the video streaming not working on iOS?

It works from demo.openhab.org - so it is no general problem in the app. Feel free to add an issue in the tracker or investigate yourself, now that the source code is available!

Regards,

Kai