BeaconMQTT Android 8.0+ App

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1

It all started because of frustration…
I could not find a good android app to monitor my beacons: Owntrack on android does not support beacons, 90% of the beacon friendly app of the play store received their last update un 2014 and for the remaining one they could not cope with my cheap beacons…
Yeah… I bought cheap beacons and they all have the same UUID, same Major and same Minor… However, they all have a different Bluetooth address…

After searching some open-source code I could improve, I found some really good looking code from Gjermund Bjaanes (https://github.com/bjaanes/BeaconMqtt).
As it was not maintained anymore, I decided to fork it and enhance it.

The current release of the app supports the following features:

  • MQTT Authentication
  • MQTT Beacon Enter Topic
  • MQTT Beacon Enter Distance Topic
  • MQTT Beacon Exit Topic
  • MQTT Beacon Exit Distance Topic
  • Time between scans
  • Time spent on scans
  • Minimum distance to trigger an event
  • Notifications for debug purposes
  • Log on the app for debug purposes

Beacon detection is based on all available info: Bluetooth address, uuid, major and minor. Therefore the app can be used with any cheap beacon you want.

This is still an early-stage release, but I would be happy to receive some feedback.

Note: due to android limitations, don’t expect the beacon detection to be ultra-fast when the app is in background. Especially on devices with restricted background activities…

You can find the code and the APK on github:

1 Like
3

nice app, is there a way to connect to a different MQTT server based on the Beacon?
ie using the same mobile to connect on different HA/MQTT instances

4

Hi,
That is not yet a feature.
If the app perform well i will think about adding this feature.

Do you have such setup ?

5

yes, I have the work and home HA instances for example

6

Have you considered working together with @Turbo? He also maintains an app with the exact same functionality. See Beacon MQTT [Android] for more info.

7

Great work!!

Do you have any plans to connect to the Home Assistant API as well?

8

I am currently implementing webhook (like ifttt). Is it what you mean by Home assistant API?

9

I meant this: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/en/external_api_rest.html

But webhooks would be great as well. You wouldn’t need a mqtt broker then to interact with home assistant.

10

Ahh, I see.

This is out of scope for now.

BTW, I’ve just updated the app with support for Webhook.

The app will also be available on Play store very soon (a matter of hours)

EDIT:
Here is the link on the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsantalucia.beaconmqtt

11

Congrats on that release! I’ll try it out soon!

12

How difficult would this be to utilize Bluetooth 5.1?

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The app use https://github.com/AltBeacon/android-beacon-library under the hood. So if the beacon library supports it, it is just a matter of updating the dependency.