Whether ibeacon and sensortag are same?

Question

I know both are bluetooth smart devices. I need to know whether both can be used for the same applications. If not what do they have in common and what is different about them?

Answer 1

A sensortag can be configured to be an iBeacon, but it is designed to be a more generic Bluetooth LE device that can be put to many other uses as well, providing many other Bluetooth services.

An iBeacon is a very specific type of Bluetooth LE device, and many types of iBeacons can only perform that one function.

Because a sensortag is so generic, it is not optimized to be an iBeacon. Its battery, for example, will not last a super long time when acting as an iBeacon.

Answer 2

A TI "Sensortag" is basically just an eval board for the CC2540 / CC2541 BLE chips.

Most hardware "iBeacon" implementations use either that chip, or the competing NRF51822, on a more specialized custom board.

In either case, the transmission of "iBeacon"-formatted BLE advertising packets is controlled by the custom firmware loaded into the device.

The duty cycle, which is the major determination of power consumption, is also determined by the firmware. The Sensortag does have some other onboard peripherals, but if the design is sane it should be possible to get those into a negligible powered-down state.

Answer 3

Answering @TimTisdall comment (below), the following link is a 3rd party, non-official iBeacon-enabled firmware update for TI's 2541DK SensorTag hardware:

hex firmware files, demonstrating iBeacon on the cc254x

For more info regarding SensorTag, see:

http://www.ti.com/ww/en/wireless_connectivity/sensortag

&

http://www.ti.com/tool/CC2541DK-SENSOR

Answer 4

This question was a bit ahead of the time and here are some updates: The SensorTag now officially supports iBeacon technology. Information on how to configure it to act as an iBeacon is described in the wiki.

As davidgyoung already pointed out: it wasn't build to solely work as an iBeacon, so it may come with reduced battery life. On the other hand, it provides more functionality, which makes it a valuable tool for development at a good price tag.

Answer 5

As noted before the SensorTag has many other sensors on board. Using a "generic" iBeacon firmware on the SensorTag results in a high current consumption. The unused sensors need to be put into sleep mode (I believe it was the Gyro implementation, which eats a lot of power when not configured correctly in sleep mode).