I was wondering if it is possible to modify the contents of a BLE beacon to include extra information. If you insert an extra bit at the end you could potentially broadcast a boolean in one direction. Theoretically, if you modified your device to read the extra bit of information this would work. Given existing protocols though it sounds like this would be a lot of work. Is there something out there like this already?
For info, I'm working on the mbed platform where you can modify your own bluetooth beacon payload.
Yes, you can do this with the new AltBeacon specification. There is a one byte manufacturer reserved field which you can use for whatever you want (tied to your manufacturer ID).
There are reference implementations of the specification available for Linux to show you how it works, and there is no reason you cannot implement it on the mbed platform.