Android, Owntracks and IBeacons - IBeacons not seen by owntracks

Configuration
1

Small question: regarding iBeacon support in Owntracks for Android…

  • I setup an iBeacon on my raspberry pi 3 as follows (https://andrewmemory.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/turning-a-raspberry-pi-3-into-an-ibeacon/)
  • it is broadcasting using UUID e7a3a5a9-1ed4-4ae7-bfaa-2898514cedff, major 0201, minor 0001
  • using iBKS config tool on my android phone I can see the raspberry pi transmitting iBeacon packets (see screenshot below)
  • I configured owntracks on Android with a region as follows:
    • Description: ‘-home’
    • Latitude: 0
    • Longitude: 0
    • Radius: 0
    • Beacon uuid: e7a3a5a9-1ed4-4ae7-bfaa-2898514cedff (I also tried without the dashes as noted in iBKS)
    • Beacon major: 201 (I also tried empty)
    • Beacon minor: 1 (I also tried empty)
    • Share: true

Yet my mqtt messages don’t contain anything regarding me entering or leaving the region. The region also does not become red as noted in the following blog post (https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/04/30/ibeacons-part-1-making-presence-detection-work-better/) but that may be due to the fact that it’s the Android app and not the IPhone app?

Any idea what I’m doing wrong? I’m crossposting here as I don’t get a reply from Owntracks themself and I think there is a lot of Owntracks knowledge here.

iBKS Config tool with IBeacon transmitting

Owntracks configuration

2eae2094-d9de-11e6-910a-b29250dfe22e.png1080×1920 71.3 KB

1 Like
2

In case anybody else encounters this issue: I found out what the problem is… This stuff is for version 1.1.6 and below.

  • your uuid should be in the format with dashes (e7a3a5a9-1ed4-4ae7-bfaa-2898514cedff)
  • after installation and after you setup your region as mentioned above, you should restart your phone as the Android ServiceBeacon is already started without IBeacon support as it did not find any regions. Because it is not notified with the newly setup region, the BeaconManager is not started and listening for IBeacons is not working.
  • Once you restart your android phone, all should be working as expected… killing the app will not work as there is a bug in a dependency of OwnTracks called AltBeacon. AltBeacon will not listen once it is killed in Android (in version 2.9.1, this is fixed in 2.9.2). So, restarting your phone is the way to go…

Cheers,
R

2 Likes
3

Thanks for clearly posting your issue and solution!

I’ve had the same trouble and am hoping I can get mine to work based on what you’ve done.

What confirmed its properly working for you? Does it in fact turn red in Owntracks (Android)?

4

Nope, it does not turn red in Android. However, I just created a pull request in OwnTracks (https://github.com/owntracks/android/pull/443) to make it also red in Android. Let’s see how this goes and hopefully it will go in the next release of OwnTracks…

1 Like
5

Hi I have exactly the same issues as described in the opening post. Restarting the phone (a Samsung S7) doesn’t change anything. I can also see the beacon on the rp3 in a beacon scanner but owntracks doesn’t seem to react/see the beacon. Any more progress on this front?

6

Hey Guys

I also have trouble with this. I’m having a Samsung S5 mini with LineageOS and and Samsung S7 with the strock OS. In both cases it seems, the beacon is not recognized or used at all. I can see the location entry and exit events if I use geofencing, but I never see any location event based on an beacon (radius set to 0).

7

Same issue here on a nexus 6p and a galaxy s8+ and i haven’t found any fix yet so far.

8

Hey all,

I use the iBKS Config Tool on Android to see whether the iBeacons are publishing - lovely tool for debugging.

I still run my own version of Owntracks. I recently went through the code and I don’t think my pull request made it in.

Perhaps an issue at https://github.com/owntracks/android/ can help? I found it confusing that the docs state that the fence turns red which is only the case on an IPhone.

Kind regards,
R

9

After lots of trial and error i finally seem to have it working. I had to leave Beacon minor and major empty in Owntracks; entering 0 there did not work somehow.

One thing I do notice is many enter/leave events when I’m a few meters from the beacon. I may need to get some more i guess, will have to experiment.

10

how do you check to see if OwnTracks is working with the iBeacon please?

11

Turn on debugging of the mqtt component.

12

Did you include a major/minor when you ran the sudo hcitool cmd on your pi?

I know that this is an epic bump, but I’m working on the same thing