Can you recommend a cheap durable tag I can use to get started with please?
MichaelCave opened this issue · comments
I have limited funds and don't want to buy a tag to practice on if it is not compatible or of low quality. I am a UK based developer.
Thanks in Advance!
Mike
Hello Mike,
Your question is a little low on details so I am not sure I totally understand what it is your looking for the beacon to do. I'm going to guess you are writing a phone app and you want some beacon hardware to test it with.
I've not found anyone in the UK selling beacon hardware so you either have to get them shipped or you can do like I've done and use a Raspberry Pi as a beacon.
If you have a Pi laying around then great, just add a BLE 4.0 dongle. If not, an A+ Raspberry Pi can be picked up cheap enough. A couple of links of the sort of hardware you are looking for:
Raspberry Pi
Dongle
You can then use the example provided else where in this repository:
https://github.com/RadiusNetworks/altbeacon-reference
If you put a standard distribution of Raspbian on the Pi then you will need to add Bluez. This can be done with:
sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez-utils libbluetooth-dev
Or you can get a beacon shipped from Radius Networks to the UK. You can get three sent including shipping for about £50.
Like the Raspberry Pi solution, the beacons from Radius also supports the other open beacon standard of Eddystone.
Regards,
Barry
I think this issue can be closed, as it isn't a https://github.com/AltBeacon/spec specification issue