Beacon Toy

Featured at Google I/O 2016! Create Bluetooth Low Energy beacons using your device.

A beacon is a self-repeating, low-power, Bluetooth advertisement of small data (31 bytes or less), that can reach devices 50 feet or more (or only immediately close if desired). Some of them can be detected without needing an app; see http://physical-web.org for details.

You can broadcast beacons only on Android 5.0+ devices that support BLE peripheral mode. Most 2015 and later devices are compatible, but many older ones are NOT, Check out a list of known devices at https://goo.gl/p3w5Qj

Supported beacon formats:

Eddystone-URL (Physical Web) - advertise website addresses to be picked up by Android, and Chrome on iOS

Eddystone-UID - static identifier that can be used to collect attachments to things

Eddystone-EID - production-ready encrypted identifiers with automatic refresh

Eddystone-TLM - broadcast actual device telemetry: battery temperature, voltage, service uptime, and an estimated count of total advertised Packet Data Units.

iBeacon - static identifier format, better supported by iDevices.

Special features

Host Eddystone-GATT service configuration - register production-ready Ephemeral ID or UID beacons with Google's Beacon Tools app, or configure the beacon using Chrome, directly via Web Bluetooth.

Run multiple beacons - device limited: up to 4 on Nexus 6, up to 8 on Galaxy S7, etc.

Built-in goo.gl shortener

Ephemeral URLs via https://uriio.com - create un-spoofable, rotating URLs; change the destination target without touching the beacon!

Beacons are managed by a light self-stopping Service that resumes on device boot and takes care of beacon's lifecycle during Bluetooth events.

View nearby beacons, and clone supported formats.

Use cases

Broadcast any URL you want: your site, your store's / cafeteria webpage (or why not, even the menu?), your personal website, your social network profiles, a funny YouTube video, or anything else you can think of and want the people nearby to come in contact with.

Share nearby a link relevant to the place your device is located at, which is yourself, or maybe a kiosk or anything else.

For advanced usage, play around with the Proximity Beacon API and attach any kind of data to your beacons.