There's a lot of devices and platforms that can be used with the Estimote beacons. Our beacons broadcast standard Bluetooth 4 packets and, in general, any device that's Bluetooth 4-compatible should be able to receive those packets and act based on them. Simply grab any Bluetooth library/API/SDK for your platform, in your preferred language/technology, and you're good to go!
If your device runs iOS or Android (i.e. Apple Watch, Google Wear devices, smart fridges or security systems running either platform etc), grab our SDK from GitHub and adjust it to your needs.
Our partners are hard at work to bring contextual computing with beacons to more platforms. So if you're coding for Raspberry Pi or Arduino board or you simply prefer building solutions in Xamarin or Unity, there's an abundance of tools you will find useful.
Below, we've listed some of the most popular SDKs, plugins, and tutorials that we know of. You can find a more extensive list, with more detailed comments, on our Developer Portal.
Keep in mind that we don't offer any support for any of these tools nor can we guarantee they're still functional and up-to-date. We're including them here based on our users' recommendations. If you're facing any issues with either of them, please reach out to their developers directly.
Xamarin iOS & Android (C#)
Xamarin provides official support for the Estimote SDK. They have released components that support both the iBeacon packet Estimote Beacons broadcast by default, and the Nearable packet that’s broadcasted by Estimote Stickers.
PhoneGap/Cordova on iOS & Android (JavaScript)
- Peter Metz maintains an amazing Cordova iBeacon plugin.
- Evothings is maintaining a PhoneGap plugin too. They've also created a tool called Evothings Studio, the platform allowing JavaScript and HTML5 developers to build beacon-enabled apps. Keep in mind some features are not up-to-date.
Linux (Raspberry Pi & Intel Edison) and OS X (Node.js)
Node.js bleacon library works on OS X & Linux systems, including Raspberry Pi and Intel Edison. Check out the full list of supported platforms here. Bleacon supports iBeacon and Nearable packets.
Windows 10
Windows 10 has a built-in Bluetooth Low Energy API. There's a topic on our forums devoted to API usage for iBeacon detection. There’s also a ready-made beacon library for Windows 10, with support for iBeacon and Eddystone packets.
Ionic 3
Although we're not aware of any SDK for Ionic 3, Paul Halliday made a very useful tutorial on getting our beacons to work with Ionic 3. Check it out here.
Unity
If you're planning to use Estimote beacons in your game built with Unity, the folks at AWE built a plugin that makes it possible. You can get it at Unity's Asset Store here.
There's also an older, Estimote Unity plugin available in the Asset Store.
If you know of any other useful tools or SDKs that could help our community, let us know at contact@estimote.com! In another community article, you will also find a list of resources for various technologies and frameworks that can be used with beacons.