The Mr. Beacon Ambient IoT Podcast

Headquartered near Barcelona, Accent Systems’ main business is designing and developing tailored Bluetooth enabled IoT devices, from concept to an end-to-end solution. Accent Systems has worked with well-known brands such as Samsonite and Volkswagen, enabling them to offer unique services to their consumers through beacons technology. In this episode of Mr. Beacon, we talk to the CEO and Founder, Jordi Casamada about the evolution of the company over the past 11 years as well as the evolution in the beacon market: including his opinion on the retirement of Android’s Nearby and how it will affect the future. We also discuss an area where Accent Systems has pioneered, using Narrow Band IoT to connect Bluetooth devices directly to the IoT.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Mr. Beacon we talk to Justin Zastrow, CEO, and Ira Hayes, CTO, of Smart Armor.Smart Armor builds controlled access points, in other words Bluetooth locking systems. The company was born out of creating a solution for locking medicine cabinets and measuring adherence to medication. Now they are finding many different applications where securing drawers and cabinets, and using your phone as the “key” using the Smart Armor Smart Cube is very useful. You can find their cube in Best Buy today, and soon it Home Depot and Costco! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There doesn’t seem like a more perfect use of wayfinding services using Bluetooth beacons than in the largest shopping and entertainment complex in the United States – Mall of America. Janette Smrcka, Information Technology Director at Mall of America, took on the challenge of enabling users to locate and navigate effectively across 520 stores on 5 levels, spanning 4.3 miles, over 5.6 million square feet. In this Episode of Mr. Beacon, we talk with Janette about what beacons and “blue dot” provider they are using, why they are using beacons over Wi-Fi, and how they deal with scaling in such a complex and large structure. We even get the inside scoop of where she sees the technology adding more value in the future.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With 300 million square feet, covering 35 countries, 100,000 beacons, and 200,000 connections per day, the French company Pole Star definitely deserves its recognition in the Beacosystem. In this episode, we talk with the Deputy General Manager & CTO of Pole Star, Jean-Baptiste Prost about use cases in their four main verticals. Polestar promises an enhanced user experience, engagement with visitors, and insight into how your spaced in used. Polestar can make any venue “smart” with indoor location, geofencing, and analytics. Watch this week’s interview to hear about the evolution of Polestar and the beacon market, and where the future is heading. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the essential ingredients to the infrastructure of many systems is a gateway - a device that connects ‘things’ to the cloud. In many cases, these ‘things’ are Bluetooth beacons! Rigado, one of the leaders in this space, produces a ‘edge-as-a-service’ infrastructure - wireless gateways and an edge computing platform. This infrastructure is used for Commercial IoT solutions, like asset tracking and in smart buildings. On this episode of Mr. Beacon, Rigado’s CTO, Justin Rigling, gives us insight into which kind of applications gateways are essential, as well as an overview of their products and services.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the August 24th, Estimote launched a first for the IoT industry, an LTE beacon. It leverages cellular LTE, GPS, and Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. This small device, fully programmable using JavaScript, was built on the idea of enabling asset tracking in both indoor and outdoor environments. Jakub Krzych, Estimote’s CEO, gives us a first look at this revolutionary product, how it works with the Estimote cloud, and their vision of empowering developers to “use the physical world as their canvas”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet the leading designer and maker of Bluetooth beacons in Italy, BlueUp. Partnered with Quuppa for next generation angle-of-arrival location, and supporting iBeacon and Eddystone, BlueUp offers beacons of all shapes and sizes, gateways, along with software and cloud services. As the number of beacons grow and they gain more and more visibility, new applications constantly appear and are even changing the way we talk about “beacons” or “tags”. This week we talk with Alessio Cucini, who has seen the evolution of the beacon market since launching BlueUp in 2014. Optimistic about the direction of the beacon market, Alessio discusses the shift in applications and terminology, iBeacon versus Eddystone, and encryption versus static IDs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asif Khan, Founder and President of the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA), defines location based marketing as the intersection of people, places, and media. Asif through the LBMA shares the best of what is possible and inspires companies to think differently about the technology available to them. On this episode of Mr. Beacon, we talk pilots, surveys, trends, and end with a 3 layer cake that reveals what is essential to an effective location based marketing solution.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ThinkInside is working with some of the most successful retailers and manufacturers in the world. Making physical space “smart” is their vision. CEO Iacopo Carreras discusses how his platform captures large volumes of very precise location data, which is used for operational advantage and to unlock insights into behavior. Problems with flow, layout, engagement, and sales can all be uncovered when looking at the complete buyers’ journey in the store, starting form when they pick up their basket, till after their purchase is made. The benefits extend beyond category management, product placement, and asset optimization. With Bluetooth technology integrated into the infrastructure of the building, wayfinding, interactive shopping lists, and proximity marketing all become available to anyone with a smartphone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all can relate to the feeling of an uncomfortable wristband, one that was fastened too tight, continuously scratching our wrists, or even too loose and falling off altogether. Personal identification, whether it be in healthcare, hospitality, or recreation, has yet to see many improvements either for the user or provider. Idion aims to change this by creating a skin-applied, hypoallergenic, and flexible personal identifier and platform using radio frequency technology. Michael Gilvary, co-founder and COO, partnered with Dr. Peter Costantino, Chair of Head and Neck Surgery at Northwell to design this revolutionary solution. For patients/users, Idion can provide a comfortable, safe method of identification with an additional value-add of aiding the user with relevant and personalized information, education, and services like navigation. For healthcare providers, this skin-applied solution offers a way of overcoming the significant problems associated with misidentification in hospitals and can provide ways of optimizing access control and logistics. In hospitality and recreation, Idion offers a new channel with a revenue-generating opportunity, offering upgrades, promotions, and prizes to the users and also providing valuable data and analytics in return to the providers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.