By   December 17, 2014
0

Beacon Configuration
After getting the beacons delivered, beacons must be configured with appropriate settings based on the required specification. We cannot directly apply a setting to a Gimbal Beacon but we need to follow certain steps for this purpose. I thought this is a good idea to list them here.

Activating Gimbal Beacons

When you receive a Gimbal beacon, you need to first activate it. This would require beacon’s factory Id. For a Series 10 beacon, you need to open the beacon casing to find it. Now you can add it in Gimbal Manager online application:

activating_beacons

Configuring Gimbal Beacons

Configuring a gimbal beacon is a three step process. This makes use of Gimbal Manager online application and Gimbal manager iOS app. A configuration can be applied to all beacons added to your inventory in Gimbal Manager online application.

Step – I [ Defining Configuration]

Gimbal provides an online platform to manage beacon configurations. It also gives you the ability to keep track of configurations applied to any particular beacon. The configuration is defined using Gimbal Manager. The configuration is based on the selected beacon type.

There are two possible beacon types. They are iBeacon and Gimbal beacon types. Here Gimbal type is a simple enough configuration. Here we can configure if we want to detect beacon only when the app is on the screen (Foreground only) or when it is not on user screen (Foreground or Background).

gimbalBeaconType

It must be remembered that iBeacon specification is only supported for a firmware version 1.6.1 and above.

beacon_type_001

There are two types of antennas in a beacon device. They are Omnidirectional and Directional types.

beacon_antenna

The measured power can be defined with a value in the range of 0 to -110 dBm.

measured_power

The transmission power can be defined with a value in the range of 0 to -23 dBm.

transmission_power

Step – II [ Assigning Configuration ]

After creating the configuration, we can assign to a beacon. Since we need to add all beacons to Gimbal Manager application. This is just a matter of selecting a configuration from a drop down listing all your configurations defined in the previous step.

assigned_configuration

Step – III [ Applying Configuration on a Beacon ]

Now the configurations can be applied on a beacon using Beacon configuration manager app. This is an iPhone app, available for free.

gimbalBeaconManageriOS

I know this is disappointing, but there is no android app available yet. Let’s hope for it and keep asking…