Is possible to connect multiple iBeacon

Question

I'd like to make a map on a tablet, the size of a room (for example 10x10m) and I'd like to add a point corresponding to this tablet in that room.

I thought about GPS but it's not accurate enough. Another solution is to use two or three iBeacon to get distance between the user (tablet) and the transmitter. But is it possible to have multiple iBeacon connected to one single device at the same time ?

Answer 1

As Paulw11 said, you do not connect to iBeacons, you just listen to their advertising message, this message is mainly composed by two parts:

1. the beacon full ID (UUID+Major+Minor -thx Jerome-)
2. the beacon transmitting power

Knowing the transmitting power and the the signal drop in air the receiver can calculate the distance. This means two important things, the advertising signal is public, the estimated distance doesn't take into account interferences or power loss due to other factors (walls, bodies). You can, of course, triangulate iBeacon to get a more precise position, but it will be an estimation based on other estimations.

Answer 2

You don't actually connect to an iBeacon, you just get notified about the beacons id numbers and the signal strength, but yes you can range multiple beacons at once.

I have my doubts about whether it can be accurately used to calculate a 2d position in a room though due to the omnidirectional nature of the transmissions and the susceptibility of the bluetooth signals to absorption by things like people.

You can dial down the transmit power of the beacon and use that to detect specific points in a room as per Apples "museum" example use case.

Answer 3

Yes it is. Multiple beacons can connect to the app and you can get RSSI, services and characteristics of each of them

Answer 4

Yes you can monitor the range of multiple iBeacons at the same time (at least on iOS you can) but be aware that the distance to a tag that you get is far from being precise enough to triangulate your position. Values fluctuate too much, and waiting to have multiple values to increase precision means you can't move while doing so.