Can I detect proximity between two beacons?

Question

I'm currently study BLE Beacon. I know that with Google Beacon API and its app, it is possible to know when the beacon communicates with my mobile phone, so I can design different notifications based on the proximity. But in my case, I need to know the proximity between a wearable beacon to a stable beacon. Is that possible at all?

Answer 1

Two challenges to doing this:

1. Google Beacon APIs do not provide proximity information beyond a beacon being visible at all (regardless of distance) to a mobile phone.

2. Beacons are generally speaking one way transmitters. You cannot use a beacon to listen for another beacon.

To make something like this work you need one of the two devices (either fixed or mobile) to be a beacon scanner, not a beacon. You could make a beacon scanner out of a fixed Raspberry Pi 3 which would detect the beacon wearables and calculate the distance to them. This is an approach I have helped multiple clients implement.