Google Android devices can easily receive notifications from low energy Bluetooth (BLE) transmitters through the Google Chrome web browser’s Physical Web feature. But the same Android devices can also be turned into BLE beacon transmitters using an app called Beacon Simulator. This way your Android smartphone can transmit web addresses or other information over the Bluetooth and anybody with their Android phones or iPhone closer to your Android phone will receive these notifications.
Using the Beacon Simulator is very easy and all it takes is 2-3 steps to start transmitting the low energy beacons from your phone. Here is how:
- After launching the Beacon Simulator app, switch to the Simulator section and tap on the plus button.
- From the different beacon categories that appear on your screen choose Eddystone URL template.
- In the template form, fill in all the details as you wish. Basically you have to enter the URL and you can also Minify it in order to shorten the length of transmitted data. Finally tap on the checkmark on the top to save the settings.
- Back in the Simulator section, you have to tap on the flip switch next to the newly created beacon to turn it on. The beacon will start transmitting instantly.
You can receive notifications from this new BLE beacon on other Android smartphones either through the Google Chrome web browser or using the Scanner section of the Beacon Simulator. This app can also be used to transmit beacons of many other types like the iBeacon, AltBeacon, Eddystone UID, Eddystone EID, Eddystone TLM. As you can guess, iBeacon was developed by Apple and works with Apple iPhone apps, the Eddystone beacons were developed by Google and the AltBeacon was developed by the Radius Networks. All of these beacons use the Bluetooth capabilities of your Android device.
You can get the Beacon Simulator app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.alea.beaconsimulator.