Basic Configuration of Minew Beacons
Minew makes beacons in a variety of form factors. These instructions cover the basic setup of a tag beacon, but they will apply to most of the beacons in Minew’s product lineup.
Download the BeaconsSet+ App in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store
Open the BeaconSet+ App. The Minew Beacons in Range should appear. For instructions on the type of beacon you want to configure, see below.
Remove the Plastic Strip attached to the beacon, which enables the battery.
Make note of the Mac Address that is on a sticker on the outside of the beacon, you will use this to identify the beacon so you can configure it. Also make sure you have your Eddystone namespace and instance values ready, or your iBeacon UUID, Major and Minor Values ready (or both if you will be broadcasting in both formats). You can learn more about beacon naming standards here).
Open the BeaconSet+ App
It should open to a scan screen, press the refresh icon in the lower right hand corner to scan for beacons.
Tap on your beacon in the list. You will be prompted for a password. The default password for Minew Beacons is minew123
EddyStone Configuration
- We will use the first slot for Eddystone. Choose Slot 1
- For the Frame Type Choose UID from the scrolling “Frame Type” Picker
3. Paste in your InstanceID and NameSpace and press Save
Congratulations, the first slot should now be set-up to broadcast your company or organization’s namespace and the unique instance of this beacon with the Eddystone Format.
On to the next slot!
iBeacon Configuration
- We will use the second slot for iBeacon. Choose Slot 2
- For the Frame Type Choose iBeacon from the scrolling “Frame Type” Picker
3. Past in the UUID, Major, and Minor. Note that the field entry has Major at the top rather than UUID.
Hurray! The Second Slot is now set to broadcast in the iBeacon Format.
URL Configuration
The Third slot is set up with an Eddystone URL. Google has discontinued using this URL with nearby notifications, but it is still useful as it can be viewed by applications built to support it. The URL is set to Minew’s Site by default.
For this example, we will change the url to revolution11.com; you will use your organization’s URL. Once that change has been made, press Save
TLM Configuration
The fourth slot is set-up to broadcast TLM. This is useful to monitor the health of your beacons with Google’s Beacon Manager Service and the Proximity API.
Leave this slot alone.
Check out our blog (coming soon!) on setting up the Proximity API and using it to add your beacons so they can take advantage of this service.
Info Configuration
The Fifth Slot is for broadcasting information about the beacon. We will leave this one alone for now
Each of the slots has three configurable slider bars:
- Adv Interval – The frequency at which the bluetooth signal from this slot will broadcast
Rss@1m – A Measurement of power used to calculate relative distance
Radio Txpower- The Strength of the signal this slot will be transmitting at - You can adjust these sliders as you work with apps and gateways that pick up these signals to optimize the usefulness of the beacons.
- The last thing we need to do is change the default password. Return to the General tab and press Modify password
You will be asked to supply a new 8 character password. Type it in and press OK.
That’s it! Your beacon is now set up and ready to be added via Google’s Proximity API to the Beacon Manager. There it is easily managed and anyone assigned to the project with an app built to use the Proximity API can utilize the beacons.
Download a PDF of this blog: Configuration of Minew Beacons
Thanks for sharing information.
Thanks for sharing this.