Bluetooth is a trusted standard for wireless connectivity, intended to link different devices and transfer data over short distances. It is fittingly named after 10th-century king Harald Bluetooth, who united Denmark’s tribes into a single kingdom.
Bluetooth was invented by Ericsson in 1994, but it wasn’t until 1998 that the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) was established by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Toshiba and Nokia, and 1999 when it was initially standardised.
The Bluetooth SIG, which has since grown to some 30,000 member companies, has overseen Bluetooth’s development ever since.
As designer and producer of wireless technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy BLE above all, we believe innovation creates value not only thanks to a smart technology, but also using an original way of thinking.
The BLE architecture is typically composed by fixed Beacons and mobile devices (e.g. smart phone), which receive data from Beacons and are managed by an App.
Our unconventional concept is based on a reverse approach to Bluetooth® Low Energy implementation, creating so in an easy and competitive way an active RFID system suitable for automatic identification and monitoring, as well as localization of people and objects.
In comparison to the traditional concept, our unconventional BLE architecture works in an opposite logic, where moving people or objects are equipped with tag Beacon and fixed reader Gateways are installed in the monitoring area, detecting data from different tags.
Education, update training and research complete the background of BluEpyc growth model.
Bluetooth LE
Bluetooth® is a wireless technology open standard, born to create personal area networks (PANs)
Conventional
Typically, a smartphone with an App can receive notification from Beacons without any volunteer action required
Unconventional
The BluEpyc approach to BLE comes from a deep knowledge and habit of use of the RFID/NFC Technology
Therefore our unconventional BLE mixes the advantages of the active and passive RFID, plus the ones coming from the new BLE Technology, as the reduced costs and the open standard IoT-based. The BLE used with our point of view goes from consumer application to the industry one and is suitable to respond to the market expectations, in all those scenarios where the tracking of people and items (both indoor and outdoor) is required.
Compared to the standard logic in which Bluetooth Low Energy is used in retail, the Beacon is not seen just as a fixed “lighthouse”, but in our BluEpyc system Beacons are in movement, while Gateway are in fixed position to monitor particular area (warehouse, hospital, parks, museum, etc.).
Adopting this approach, the BLE can be used in order to implement a Real Time Location System, for indoor environment where GPS cannot be used.
With this process the RTLS becomes possible with a Zone Method; the Gateway setting a filter on the RSSI of the signals received from Beacon can modify the covered area.
By modifying the Beacons power transmission and the RSSI filter on the Gateway or EchoBeacon, is possible to split the whole area to control, in more sub-areas and realize a RTLS with Zone Method.
Based in one of the biggest advantages of the RFID, where antennas can receive hundreds of unique ID of tags at the same time, we designed the BluEpyc BLE Gateway Reader family devices (Observer), with the same anti-collision performances and so able to detect an high number of Beacons/Tags.