What is a Bluetooth Gateway?
A Bluetooth Gateway is a device that scans for, and captures, Bluetooth radio signals. The Gateway is attached to a network either via ethernet or by joining a Wi-Fi Network. They can easily be configured to send the captured data to Cloud Services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
See our blog Setting Up a Cloud Account & Hooking Up A Smart Thing for examples of how to set up services for each gateway.
Revolution11 Currently Supports Bluetooth Gateways From Two Manufacturers
This manufacturer produces two versions of the Bluetooth Gateway. Both versions work with the many varieties of Ingics’ sensor beacons, including:
- temperature and humidity
- proximity
- human detection
- motion detection
- sensors that work with magnets
Ingics Sensors do not use the Eddystone or iBeacon protocols. They send their own protocol, which means you will need to be comfortable parsing the custom strings the beacons produce to make use of them.
You can, however use Eddystone or iBeacon sensors with Ingics Gateways. This requires some setup in Advanced/BLE Filter. See details here https://www.ingics.com/doc/iGS01/AP007_iGS01_payload_filter.pdf
IGS01S Wi-Fi BLE Gateway
This is a great choice if you are going to leave your Gateway configured to a Wi-FI Network for long periods of time.
IGS02E Ethernet BLE Gateway
This is a great choice if you will be moving the gateway from place to place. You only need to configure and set it up with AWS once; then you have the ability to plug it into new networks via the ethernet cable.
Minew produces the G1 Wi-Fi BLE Gateway, which is a great system for beginners. It attaches to your Wi-Fi network and supports standard iBeacons. Minew sells a sensor beacon that collects temperature and humidity, and they have a great lineup of beacons in a variety of form factors that use multiple power sources. The JSON that comes out of the Gateway is human readable, and the ability to appropriately match power requirements with your use case in their beacon lineup is a huge plus. And it has fancy flashing disco lights!
Download a PDF of this blog: Bluetooth Gateway Roundup