Suggestion: iBeacon Support for home automation

Former Member over 10 years ago

I am interested in writing some apps using Connect IQ for Home Automation.

The use case is using a watch and walking around the home, I would like to use proximity to trigger actionable notifications on the watch to do this. (Open door, Turn on Hue lights, Turn on power switch etc.)

I have purchased some RAD USB iBeacons (which also work on Android) and would like to be able to receive a notification when "near" a beacon to trigger a watch notification for example "Would you like to turn on living room lights?"

As the watch is always being worn this seems a very useful feature, I understand I would still need to then make a proxy call (via an iOS/Android) App to complete the task (i.e. Make a web call to a vera lite device).

The beacons use BLE to broadcast their signal and it would seem possible the hardware on the watch could allow this.

Also, can you tell me when the iOS client library will be available?

Thanks

AlphaMonkeyC over 10 years ago

I haven't done a large investigation here, but I'm assuming the iBeacon runs as a BLE peripheral. The CIQ wearables run as BLE peripherals because the cell phone is running as BLE master. We don't have plans at this time to allow the device to be a BLE master, or to expose that level of BLE to CIQ.

Bouncing the iBeacon off of a phone app is probably your best bet. We are planning to provide the iOS/Android CIQ libraries near the end of January.

-Alpha Monkey

Former Member over 10 years ago

Thanks for the reply.

I just saw this garmin product

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/shop-by-accessories/geocaching/chirp-/prod74811.html

which seems to be the ANT+ equivalent of an iBeacon, so I would assume I could use this device for proximity based actions instead.

Former Member over 10 years ago

You are correct that the Chirp could be used for proximity detection. Keep in mind that, at this time, ConnectIQ apps do not have any type of run-in-the-background abilities, so it would have to be open and running to connect to a Chirp and take actions based on the proximity.