HiBeacons

A Swift 3 demo app for the iBeacons API in iOS 10, with Apple Watch support (watchOS 3.0)

HiBeacons is a fully functional demo app for the iBeacons API in iOS 10, updated for Swift 3. The app can be used to demonstrate beacon region monitoring, advertising and ranging, simply by toggling on/off three switches in the UI, or the accompanying Apple Watch app.

The apps implement a basic interface for starting all the operations from the iPhone and the Apple Watch, but the state of the various beacon operation can only be seen in the phone. (The watch app acts as a simple* remote).

The source is easy to understand and modify. The structure of the app is based on a simple hierarchy of operation classes. There are three NATOperation subclasses, each responsible of a specific operation: NATMonitoringOperation, NATAdvertisingOperation, and NATRangingOperation. The app is easy to use with any given proximity UUID and identifier, which can be changed in NATOperation.

The app is fully documented, using the reStructuredText standard, which SourceKit can parse.

The main branch of the project is the swift branch, but you can still find the old Objective-C code at the obj-c branch. Note that the old branch has some bugs, that I have fixed in the new one.

The app is fully documented, and should work well with Xcode 8, iOS 10, and watchOS 3.

Screenshots

Notes

• The UI shows only a small number of alerts, when major issues occur. To understand the process better, you can easily follow the Console logs.
• Monitoring works also when the app is in the background. You will get a local notification when entering the specified beacon region.
• The app can only monitor and range a single beacon region. (It can easily be extended for multiple, but not for any beacon region. Apple only allows for specific UUIDs to be monitored or ranged.)
• With advertising turned on, the app will show itself as a beacon on other instances of the app, or other beacon apps, running on other devices. It cannot range or monitor itself. (It’s how the iBeacon API works.)
• Major and minor integers are generated randomly every time a new advertising session starts.
• You can find and set the UUID and identifier for the region in NATOperation.swift.

* The Watch app can trigger actions on and can reflect the state of the app on the phone, but will not accept state change in the background. The same applies vice-versa, i.e. the Watch app will be unable to operate on the app when it’s backgrounded.

Contact

Nick Toumpelis (@nicktoumpelis)

Licence

HiBeacons is available under the MIT licence. See the LICENCE file for more info.