log BLE beacons in Android

November 15, 2017

Android devices can be used as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon receivers, loggers and transmitters with the nRF Connect app. For initial experiments, instead of buying BLE-specific beacon hardware, consider using old Android tablets and phones to setup a beacon network. Laptop computerss, BLE-enabled microcontrollers, and BLE-enabled single-board computers can also transmit and receive BLE beacons. A typical application of such beacons is for indoor / outdoor position estimation and tracking. BLE beaconing adjustments include:

transmit beacon contents (de facto standard formats)
BLE Advertisement period
BLE Transmit power

BLE logging uses the nRF Logger app. to write to a log file beacon RSSI vs. time.