Altbeacon Android Library - didRangeBeaconsInRegion

Question

I am ranging beacons and my target is to process the beacons collection in didRangeBeaconsInregion so that I get the closest one in the collection and show on screen a string related to the beacon itselt (beacon1=red, beacon2=blue...). My current ibeacons advertising rate is 1Hz (and I can't configure them to increase it yet).

I have tried the following:

public void onBeaconServiceConnect() {
    beaconManager.setRangeNotifier(new RangeNotifier() {
        @Override
        public void didRangeBeaconsInRegion(Collection<Beacon> beacons, Region region) {

            Beacon closest = null;
            double distance = 100.0;
            logToDisplay(beacons.size() + " beacons in collection");

            for (Beacon beacon : beacons) {

                if (distance > beacon.getDistance()) {
                    closest = beacon;
                    distance = beacon.getDistance();
                }

            }

            if (closest == null) {
                logToDisplay(getCurrentTimeStamp() + " | Closest = null");
            }
            else if (closest.getId3().toInt() == 1) {
                logToDisplay(getCurrentTimeStamp() + " | BLUE");
            }
            else if (closest.getId3().toInt() == 3) {
                logToDisplay(getCurrentTimeStamp() + " | RED");
            }
            else if (closest.getId3().toInt() == 4) {
                logToDisplay(getCurrentTimeStamp() + " | GREEN");
            } // ... and so on with some more colours

        }

    });

    try {
        beaconManager.startRangingBeaconsInRegion(new Region("myRangingUniqueId", null, null, null));
    } catch (RemoteException e) {   }
}

As far as I know, the didRangeBeaconsinRegion has a beacons collection which is a buffer of the beacons seen in the last second. As a consequence of my beacons having only a 1Hz ad rate, the collection size is very small and I can't get consistent results.

I think that there are two solutions:

1. Increasing ad rate (not possible for me yet).
2. Increasing the 1 second period from the didRangeBeaconsinRegion method so that the beacons collection buffers the beacons seen in the last 5 seconds (for example).

Is it possible to do this? How can I do it? Is this set with something like beaconManager.setForegroundScanPeriod(5000l);?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do what you say, and it should help make results more consistent.

Add the line you mention right after you first get a beaconManager instance: beaconManager.setForegroundScanPeriod(5000l);