Search code examples
ibeaconeddystone

Can I still buy Eddystone-EID beacons?


I know asking this question here is not proper, I feel sorry for that.

I have tried searching websites, Amazon and Alibaba, but fail to find any product can support Eddystone-EID.

So, I think developers in stack overflow may know any product can support Eddystone-EID.

Could you share any any information for that?


Solution

  • The two vendors below claim to sell beacons compatible with Eddystone-EID as of October 2021:

    Before you buy anything beware that Google shut down their beacon platform web services in April 2021. I wrote a full blog post to explain what this means: Eddystone is Dead, Long Live Eddystone!

    Using these web services is completely optional for Eddystone-UID and Eddystone-URL, but critical for Eddystone-EID, because the beacon identifier rotates with a crypto algorithm and a “trusted resolver” server is needed to convert the advertised “ephemeral identifier” from jibberish to something meaningful and useful.

    Without Google’s beacon platform web services, I am aware of no commercially available trusted resolver for Eddystone-EID. You would need to build your own, which is a non-trivial effort. Without a trusted resolver Eddystone-EID is worthless.

    Because of this, make sure the vendors above still support using their products with Eddystone-EID. In time, it is likely they will remove support in their beacon firmware.

    Finally, it is important to note that just because Google gave up on their beacon web services, most apps that use Eddystone, iBeacon and Altbeacon are unaffected. Beacons are standardized and will work forever — just don’t use Google web services! Again, beacon technology aside from Eddystone-EID has no need for Google web services.