The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT Podcast

A few weeks ago we heard about the new Bluetooth 5.1 specification, and notably two new exciting features: Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD). This week we are reunited with a familiar face, Fabio Belloni, to bring these features to life using Quuppa technology. Fabio Belloni is the Chief Customer Officer at Quuppa, a location platform that has pioneered AoA for RTLS solutions. In this episode, Fabio takes us through a demo of the reverse architecture, Angle of Departure (AoD), at their annual Quuppa Partner Conference. Rather than real time location applications, AoD is best used for indoor positioning and navigation. We then take some time to get updated on the last year at Quuppa, including their announcement of the new family of Quuppa products, and discuss what the future landscape of this Bluetooth specification. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This one is for sports fans! Liiga, or Finnish Elite League in English, is the top professional league in Finland, and the first be deploying Bluetooth technology in an ice rink! Antti Jussi, CDO of Liiga, joins us to talk about the real-time positioning project in their arenas. Antti paints a picture of Quuppa gateways with angle of arrival technology hanging from the ceilings which track Bluetooth tags on players and the puck with incredible accuracy. For the first time, teams and players are given the opportunity to dive into the data and statistics that can be collected by this system, whether it be to improve the teams flow together, their individual performance, or to look at the competition. Check out this week’s episode to learn more about the potential for Bluetooth beacons to enhance the sports industry and the challenges in initial investment as well as implementation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Think back to the days when we thought of Bluetooth as the connection between our wireless headphones, keyboards, and the audio systems in our cars. Today we know it as so much more. Bluetooth Low Energy brought to life a new array of connected device applications. Now we are just starting to see the huge potential Bluetooth has in location services. This week we hear from Ken Kolderup, VP of Marketing for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the standards organization responsible for specification, qualification, and promotion of Bluetooth technology. We discuss the newest Bluetooth feature, Direction Finding, and how it is transforming our expectations of what location services Bluetooth can provide. We are moving from simple proximity detection to real time sub meter positioning. This new standard is enhancing the level of accuracy that can be achieved. For example, in manufacturing, we can go from knowing that a pallet is ‘present’ in a building, to knowing which pallet is which and exactly where it is in a crowded warehouse. Listen in to learn the difference between the two different methods of direction finding: Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD), as well as Ken’s insights on how this new feature will influence different industries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have all experienced the annoyance of a waiter that has disappeared, whether it’s because you need menus, you’ve been waiting to place your order, and especially when you are in a rush to pay your bill. Rene Batsford, CEO andFounder of OrderPay, realized that ordering and paying haven’t really changed for 20 years and there was an opportunity to enhance operational effectiveness that ultimately results in happier customers. OrderPays aims to provide ‘a simple and seamless way to deliver at table ordering and payment” to simplify life in hospitality. In this episode, we talk to Rene about the competing technologies in this space, and what he sees as a ‘panacea’, one technology enabling many different use cases in the consumer journey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Something we talk about often on the Mr. Beacon Podcast is physical to digital convergence. The world of fashion is no stranger to this phenomenon. Apparel now has its own identity and retailers are creating experiences with IoT devices and augmented reality. The blending of fashion and technology is something our guest, Barry McGeough, has seen and been involved in first hand. Barry worked with Dr. Martins, at North Face, Speedo, and founder and former head of innovation at PVH: a portfolio of iconic brands such as Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and IZOD. In this episode, we talk about why brands have to be more consumer-centric than ever, the effects of online shopping, and the pros and cons of different technologies such as RFID, QR Codes, and Bluetooth beacons in apparel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Mr. Beacon, we welcome back Dominque Guinard, CTO of Evrything, this time in his capacity as co-chair of the GS1 Digital Link Standard. The GSI Digital Link is defined as a “standard for web-enabling barcodes promises to enhance the shopping experience for consumers around the globe, while strengthening brand loyalty, improving supply chain traceability and efficiencies and bringing mobile phone scanning into the 21st century”. Today products are tagged for many reasons: compliance, marketing/consumer engagement, supply chain,l … The digital link standard allows all of this data to be combined into one URL that can be used at any point in the product life cycle. Global Trade Item Numbers (GTIN), or more commonly recognized as barcodes, are something we may see every day but as a consumers, we don’t have any connection or use for them. The digital link aims to change this by moving these numbers to the web, and allowing everyone to interact with them. Beyond the information used in supply chain, consumers can have a direct link to things like product information and content, expiration dates, nutritional data, warranty registration, or discount offers. Brands can now use QR code, radio-frequency identification (RFID), near-field communication (NFC), and even Bluetooth to deliver information to their customers. Listen in to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a full solution, created with such ease of set up that businesses big and small alike could have a proximity marketing campaign set up in minutes - This has been Mobstac’s guiding principle. This week on Mr. Beacon, Ravi Pratap, CTO & co-founder of Mobstac, talks to us about why he believes that Bluetooth beacon applications are led by software. Ravi explains that proximity marketing, indoor location, and way finding will only be as successful as the quality of the software that is available to leverage the technology. Mobstac’s track record is a testament to this, with one of the largest beacon deployments in the world and working with customers such as T-Mobile, Google, Amazon, and Unilever. In this episode, we also get Ravi’s opinions on the state of the beacon industry, as well as the decline of Google Eddystone’s Nearby and Samsung’s Closeby. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we welcome Bob Friday, CTO of Mist, back to The Mr. Beacon Podcast! On this episode, Bob gives us an updated on how Mist are using machine learning in the realm of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks. We discuss some of the recent Mist deployments at Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort and The Veterans Department, and discuss the state of the Bluetooth ecosystem and where it is going. Find out why Bob thinks Bluetooth is going from a “nice to have” to a “must have”. If you missed the first episode with Mist, watch it here: https://youtu.be/AlNRGbTEMkc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Mr. Beacon, we talk to Micha Benoliel, CEO of Nodle, a connectivity provider for the Internet of Things. Nodle has an impressive 4.3 million active nodes, and 78 million IoT devices connected to date. Nodle has built and continues to grow a network, based on Bluetooth Low Energy, that connects devices and collects their data. They have a unique approach of leveraging smartphone infrastructure to create availability for the network, crowdsourcing connectivity as Micha puts it. In this episode, we talk about the evolution of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi standards, as well as dive into how blockchain can enable this network and data to scale while offering protection and privacy to its contributors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we talk to the Wiliot engineers behind the first sticker sized battery free Bluetooth tag about how it works and the approach to its design. Wiliot envisions a world of smarter "Things" that can sell themselves and offer functionality not possible before. Apparel and pharmaceutical packaging become connected to the cloud. The Internet of Things can scale and offer real value as we understand where products are, who is using them and when they need to be replenished. Manufacturing, supply chain and inventory can be optimized. Makers of products and retailers can flourish in the face of disruption from online shopping. Anything we wear, touch or use can include sensing and connectivity, thanks to battery-free devices with an infinite lifetime.Wiliot is a semiconductor company whose mission is to connect people with products with cloud connected sticker sized Battery Free Bluetooth tags. The company was founded by the leadership of the Gigabit Wi-Fi pioneer Wilocity, a group of wireless engineers experienced in building new products and the ecosystems required for their success. Wiliot has a research and development team based in Israel and a business development headquarters in San Diego, California.Thanks to our partners at Beckermus for allowing us to capture footage at their facility of the system used to assemble Wiliot engineering prototypes.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.