Hello iBeacon enthusiasts, after some weeks of development, design adjustments, enclosure designs, firmware iterations and battery tests I finished v1.0.0 of my hardware DropBeacon. You might have read about the DropBeacon iOS app acting like a virtual DropBeacon but where is the real one? Here is version 1.0.0 of the DropBeacon: The DropBeacon uses a BLE112 module from Bluegiga. The DropBeacon is designed with an additional SPI flash to enable OTA upgrades of the DropBeacon’s firmware.

Hello everyone, some people already asked my how to reflash the firmware of a BLEbee. Well in order to make the BLEbee as small as possible and not wasting a 2×5 header costing $1.50 each, I decided to use the TagConnect 2030 to flash the firmware of the BLEbee. The PCB of the adapter I created is available from OSHpark using the following link http://www.oshpark.com/shared_projects/Ff2LiKQA  Moreover the eagle design files can be downloaded from my Hardware Tools github repository: https://github.

Hello everyone, since my DropBeacon iOS App is now available for sale in the Apple App Store, I added a small product page illustrating the use of the app in a short Vimeo video. Thanks for reading, Michael.

Hello everyone, after ages I published another article in the proceeding of the XII Usability Day in Dornbirn Austria: Kroll M., Schmidt-Weitmann S., Zecchino W., Otto U., Meienberger B., Brockes C. LILA – Long Independent Living Assistant in: Beiträge zum Usability Day XII, Assistenztechnik für betreutes Wohnen 16. Mai 2014 ISBN 978-3-89967-943-4 The article gives an introduction about the project/product I’m currently working on at emineo AG. Thanks for reading,

Hello everyone, since I’m preparing for a two week dive vacation right now and I don’t wanted to keep the current status of the ANCS firmware development secret any longer, I pushed the current status of the code to my github repository: https://github.com/michaelkroll/BLE-Shield/tree/master/firmware the corresponding Arduino Library can be downloaded from this link: https://github.com/michaelkroll/BLE-Shield/tree/master/arduino/Libraries The firmware and library is a work in progress version which is derived from the example provided by John Gallagher: https://github.

Hello everyone, since I published the blog post about the BLE112/BLE113 OTA firmware upgrade functionality into BLExplr, users are asking me about the DKBLE11x module I created to test this. No I published the eagle files, a BOM and a link to OSHPark to order the PCB directly. The link to the github repo is: https://github.com/michaelkroll/Hardware-Tools/tree/master/DKBLE11x-OTA-AddOn-Board and the permalink to OSHPark where you can order the PCB is http://www.oshpark.com/shared_projects/nWPpYei9 Please do not hesitate to contact me using the boo or my forum at http://forum.

Hello everyone, Bluegiga has released another SDK which supports OTA firmware upgrades. In v 1.2.2 of their SDK Bluegiga optimised the OTA procedure so I just digged into the Application Note “Implementing OTA Firmware upgrade”. After some issues on iOS and not knowing exactly how to deal with the “write without response” characteristics, I implemented the procedure which was only available on the BLEGUI2 app which is part of the SDK in BLExplr v1.

Hello everyone, since the BLE-Shield v2.0.0 availability on http://www.seeedstudio.com is imminent, I described how to update the BLE-Shield v2.0.0 firmware to act as an iBeacon and back to the original BLE-Shield v2.0.0 firmware. The update procedure has been added to the BLE-Shield v2.0.0 description: http://www.mkroll.mobi/?page_id=1124 Thanks for reading, Michael.

Hello everyone, after I read an older Java Magazin Article about Oracle targeting the IoT world with it’s JavaME 8 platform I tried to install and run it on the STM32f4 discovery board. After downloading about 1GB of tools and installing it on a Windows7 machine, I finally flashed the discovery board with the VM. Installed some USB drivers and tried to connect to upload a MIDlet flashing an LED similar to the Arduino Blink demo.

Hello everyone, some people asked me how to use the ranging feature of BLExplr to range for beacons. So I decided to write a blog post describing how to achieve that. Please make sure that you have installed the latest version 1.5.2 of BLExplr installed. You can get it from this AppStore link for your convenience: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blexplr/id524018027 In order to range a beacon, of course you must have a hardware beacon or another iPhone where you can simulate a beacon.