A proximity monitoring algorhitm that registers enter and exit events to a defined area. It relies on the set of Estimote propriety packets optimized for the reliable monitoring and is an alternative to using iBeacon or Eddystone packets.
Integrated into the Proximity SDK (iOS & Android), it is wrapped in the methods that enable you to build an app that will detect beacons in proximity and fire events at the desired moment.
It's the core data protocol Proximity SDK runs on, enabling the app to fire accurate enter and exit events. It can be used with no monitoring limits and managed through software-defined parameters. There's no limit to how many beacon regions your app can monitor for, and you can edit this region remotely, in the app code.
What kind of proximity use cases can you use it for?
- Presence detection: know when a user enters, dwells in, or exits a certain area
- Contextual content: send a user more info about the place/object/area
- Zone- or room-based navigation: find each other or your way in large, complex venues
- Presence authentication: automatically check-in or log in once you are in the room or area
You will find many more ideas in this article.
How does it work?
Based on advanced signal filtering and data protocol processing, it reports enter and exit events when a user enters the range you have pre-defined.
- Is managed remotely, no hardware configuration required.
- Works in foreground and background.
- Is secure: read more about Estimote Secure Monitoring.
- Offers Real-time Analytics.
What are the advantages?
No region limits: no longer you need to limit the proximity monitoring by 20 regions and group the beacons accordingly. It is possible to create as many regions as you need and decide which ones to monitor for ( all of them, certain groups, or individual regions)
What is a region? When you tag an area with a beacon, you create a region your app can later monitor for and react when entering or exiting.
Software-defined range: no need to configure a beacon every time you want to adjust the distance of where the event is reported/notification is triggered. Simply update the relevant line of code and the change is propagated immediately. There also no pre-defined zones - you can choose any trigger distance you like.
Tweaking the physical range only gives you a limited set of options. For example, -40 dBm = 0.5 m range, -20 dBm = 5 m range. If you wanted your enter event to trigger at 2 meters, that meant building your own RSSI filters. Estimote Monitoring does this for you.
Multiple ranges per one beacon: you can trigger events at the different range of the same beacon. Let's say, you'll display "Hello, world!" at 10 meters, and "How is it going?" at 3 meters. This way you can diversify the experience in the same area depending on how close the user is.
More reliable enter/exits: events happen closer to your expected distance. The reliability of the fired events is 60% higher to other monitoring technologies.
A perfect recall score means that you get an “enter” event immediately when you enter the proximity of a beacon, and you get no false “exit” events as long as you remain in the proximity. Every second you’re in range, but the API is saying you’re outside range, lowers the recall. With Estimote Monitoring, the recall score is almost 3 times better compared to other technologies.
No event delays: addressing the known event delays challenges, Estimote Monitoring ensures the events are triggered instantly: no "exit region delay" as compared to 30s on Core Location Monitoring.
How do I start?
1. Follow the tutorials and learn how to build a simple app:
2. Use an App Template to quickly build an app prototype and see how it works.
Go for the "Proximity" templates for foreground and "Notification" for the background. Chose "Blank" to download the blank project with integrated Proximity SDK.
3. Or download the Estimote app (iOS & Android) and go to Proximity Demo to see how it works in 5 min.
4. Go to our Proximity SDK GitHub repos to dig into the documentation or report any issues you might face.
Anything else?
We also have an example React Native wrapper for our Proximity SDKs.