I want to read the temperature sensor of the Estimote beacon on a Rasperry Pi. That means that it needs to be done without the use of the provided Android and iOS SDKs. Can it be done?
Thanks to John Shovic I am able to read UUID and RSSI etc, but so far I have found no way to access the temperature data.
I'm afraid it's impossible. UUID/RSSI are part of the beacon's advertising packet, so it's easy enough to get these. Reading the temperature requires connecting to the beacon to use its Bluetooth services and characteristics, but Estimote Beacons have a security mechanism in place which'll prevent you from doing so outside of the official SDKs.
This is not because we want to discourage use of 3rd party platforms -- the reasoning is more pragmatic. Being connected to the beacon allows you to change its settings, and we really want to make sure that nobody other than the owner of the beacon is capable of doing that. Estimote SDKs work with Estimote Cloud to confirm the ownership through a set of tokens before allowing to connect. Bypassing the SDKs would also allow you to bypass the authorization.