jimiasty

Interesting - same concept as Amazon Mechanical Turk when you could crowdsource tasks

Yes, you are correct!

Knowing the MAC makes the attack reasonable - let's say 5 hours compute for 3080Ti.

Not knowing the MAC makes it exponentially harder. You can still "guess" it, but the search-space is vast and that would take bazillion-years.

So to attack iOS device: - user has to download the app - app has to broadcast fake BLE - some other devices (e.g. Android/RasPi would need to pickup that MAC and pass it to you

You don't need MAC address - you just need the iPhone to broadcast specific BLE advertising packet/payload.

Using Core Bluetooth API it is trivial, but you need to either: a) create an app that does it and user has to download it b) modify SDKs existing in apps (e.g. Ad SDKs)

Also turning app/phone into a "BLE beacon" is only possible when app running in the foreground (on iOS).

Founder of Estimote, Inc. (YC S13) here — we do beacons.

In Project Aria video, they claim to have installed beacons at an airport to enable indoor location, only to dismiss it as something that "doesn't scale."

Instead, they say they "trained" an AI model using vision from glasses, allowing for vision-based localization.

So, here’s an honest question: which approach is actually easier, more cost-effective, and energy-efficient?

1) Deploying 100 or even 1,000 wireless, battery-operated beacons that last 5–7 years—something a non-tech person can set up in a day or two.

2) Training an AI model for each airport, then constantly burning compute power from camera-equipped glasses or phones that barely last a few hours.

Thoughts?

Hi HN, this is Jakub, one of the founders of Estimote Inc. (YC S13).

After almost 10 years of research and development, it is finally here - SpaceTimeOS, a new operating system for the physical world from we have been working on after we graduated YC.

With our new sensors (UWB/BLE/LTE) placed in the corners of any room and it will create a digital twin of any physical business and store it in the cloud where real-time position of all objects/people/vehicles is visible with inch-precise accuracy.

This digital twin can be manipulated with using JavaScript where developers can create automation, visualize and in general mold this digital replica of a physical world/business.

Happy to answer any questions...

Hi HN,

this is Jakub, founder of Estimote, Inc (YC S13). Happy to share we have just launched a new device that has BLE, LTE-M/NB-IoT and GPS integrated.

It can compute its indoor and outdoor position and last years on the battery.

It is fully programmable using JavaScript and simple Web IDE.

Happy to answer any questions here!

Hi HN, This is Jakub, founder of Estimote.

We just launched a new Asset Tracking API. Bluetooth beacons attached to walls can now scan and locate smaller beacons attached to objects and pass that location data to the Cloud via low-power mesh network they create.

Via API it is possible to access quasi-real-time location of these assets on the floorplan.

If you have any questions we are around.

Hi HN, This is Jakub, founder of Estimote, Inc.

We have just released and published to GitHub https://github.com/Estimote/iOS-Indoor-SDK an update to Indoor Location SDK. It does use sensor-fusion built-it into ARKit, thus dramatically improves accuracy.

It is also possible to keep session persistence, so all mobile users in the same location will see the same virtual objects via AR mobile apps.

Please note our Location Beacons with UWB have two radios: - Bluetooth (BLE) that is low-power and can give few meters positioning accuracy - Ultra-wide-band (UWB) that's not low-power, but can give inch-precision.

This Robot Operating System (ROS) SDK does use both radios. We use BLE and Bluetooth mesh to power UWB that are nearby to preserve energy of the system.

John,

our beacons are commercially deployed in many verticals. SDK together with Cloud does allow some provisioning and security mechanisms.

Since beacons broadcast public Bluetooth signals we don't want any app/device to know their location in a venue that is not provisioned for the application.

For example you don't want AliBaba mobile app to know you are in Best Buy, next to console games.

That's why we do have optional encryption mechanism and our ToS prohibits reverse engineering our SDK.

Our customer have access via APIs to almost all raw data, so if they want to improve accuracy for their application they can do it.

Hi Hacker News,

this is Jakub, co-founder of Estimote, Inc.

Earlier this year we have added additional UWB radio to our BLE beacons. We did that mostly for floor-plan auto-mapping (read more here: http://blog.estimote.com/post/154460651570/estimote-beacons-...)

Many people asked us if it is possible for robots/drones/AGVs to connect to UWB beacons and get few-inches precision location positioning, so we have decided to release a ROS package.

You can install it on your Raspberry PI, connect to UWB beacons and start locating your robot/device.

We are around - let us know if you have any questions?

Hi HN,

this is Jakub, founder of Estimote, Inc. (YC S13).

We just released a new beacon firmware supporting low-power routed mesh over BLE.

It's slightly different implementation that the one Bluetooth SIG has just standarized, but it will give you a good overview what is possible with Bluetooth Mesh.

If you have beacons already just upgrade the firmware and here is a nice tutorial: https://developer.estimote.com/managing-beacons/mesh-at-scal...

Feel free to post any questions - happy to answer them here.

The time-of-flight is actually possible because of UWB radio. It's an additional chip to Bluetooth that can estimate distance between nodes with inch precision. Then using Bluetooth mesh these data are passed to other beacons and to phone where automapping is performed. Once we know location of nodes standard indoor positioning with Bluetooth beacons is performed.

Bluetooth range is aprox 100m and UWB range 70m, so that's the maximum distance between nodes. The more nodes you have the more accurate the shape is.

For a 1000 sqf office you would neeed probably 12-20 beacons. For a retail store more than a 100.

Hi HN, this is Jakub, founder of Estimote (YC S13). We just presented during CES Bluetooth Discover Blue event our new product: Location Beacons with ultra-wideband (UWB) radio built-in.

Thanks to time-of-flight technology beacons know the distance between each other and using Bluetooth mesh pass these data to cloud creating a floor plan automatically.

On top of that indoor location apps can be created. Happy to answer any questions here.

Beacons use only BLE to talk to each other; there no Zigbee or other connectivity technology. That way both phones or other beacons/BLE devices can inject data to mesh.

BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) is supported these days by all modern phones and we haven't seen mesh implementations on top of BLE that would be low-power. There are other non-low-power BLE implementations for example for lightbulbs, but it's not useful for beacons since they need to be wireless due to operational costs of deployments at scale.

Of course, beacons do not keep the persistent connection since that would drain too much battery. But they are not synchronized, so you can pass data to one edge of the mesh and it will be passed with some latency to another edge - like on the tree video. If you watch carefully the tree video it's like a chain reaction since more nodes are influencing other nodes in the range.

Wow, this is great - nuclear-energy powered beacons would be a hit. Hope they will commercialize it soon : )

Thanks! Please see this list of use-cases - there is an entire section for education: https://community.estimote.com/hc/en-us/articles/207295257-A...

Hi HN, this is Jakub, founder of Estimote, Inc. (YC S13).

We just released a new firmware to support mesh networking with bluetooth beacons - you can read more on our blog: http://blog.estimote.com/post/153812538740/introducing-the-w...

Happy to answer any questions here! : )

Hi HN, this is Jakub, Founder of Estimote (YC S13).

We have just enabled in our SDK simple key:value storage for 1Mb built-in memory in our Location Beacon.

Your simple beacon apps don't need to store data in the cloud anymore; for some application you can keep content/sensor data/analytics directly in the nearby beacons.

Happy to answer any questions here : )