BEEKS Beacon Maker for iOS

Owned by Lutz Hennig
Last updated: Jul 13, 2015
5 min read

Our BEEKS Beacon Maker app for iOS can be easily downloaded and installed on your iOS device from the App Store. The latest version is: 1.27 (Build 2600).
Once you downloaded and installed the app, please launch it and follow these steps to do a firmware update on a beacon:

Open the app's main beacon list

If you enter the app for the first time, you will see the screen below. Tap on "Beacons" to open the beacon list.



Alternatively, you can directly select the beacon list from the apps bottom tab bar. Your screen should now look like this:



Select a beacon to update and enter its detail page

Now you need to select the beacon that you want to update. Simply tap on any of your beacons to expand its details. As seen in the screenshot below, a previously unknown beacon will only show limited information. In that case the BEEKS app will automatically connect to your beacon to gather more details. The flow looks like in the images below:



Once the app has all of your beacon's details it will bring up it's detail page. This page will contain an option to update your beacon's firmware only in case there actually is an updated version available.



Enter the beacon's firmware update page

In case there is a new firmware revision available, please tap on "Update firmware" now. You will enter the beacon's firmware update page. It should look similar to the below screenshot.



Install the latest firmware

Installing the latest firmware is now just one button away. Simply tap "Install" on the top right corner of the screen to start the update. The app will now automatically connect to your beacon and install the firmware. You can now watch the progress of the updating process:



Once the update is completed, you will see this message:

The firmware update is now complete and the beacon is disconnected again. It will now need a couple of seconds to apply the new firmware. Please don't try to update your beacon during that process.

Verify the update

After you waited for the beacon to apply the firmware update, you can update your beacon's details to check if the new firmware was installed correctly. Please navigate back to the beacon's detail page and do a pull-to-refresh gesture. You literally just need to pull the view all the way down until your screen looks like in the images below:

Once the update is done, your screen will go back to normal and the beacon's details should be updated:

Please tap on "Beacons" now to go back to the main beacon list. Your beacon's expanded details will now show the updated firmware revision:

 

Troubleshooting

Updating a beacon's firmware is a multi-step process for our BEEKS app that can sometimes fail. Please don't worry about your beacon in that case. Our beacons are constructed in a way that will protect them from any harm done through failed firmware updates. You can retry the update as often as you like. Failures can occur due to the nature of Bluetooth communication. To avoid and overcome any issues during the installation of firmware, please make sure that ...

  • ... your iOS device is close to the beacon at all times to avoid out-of-range issues
  • ... you isolate your beacon from any other devices that could cause radio interference (e.g. other beacons)
  • ... you retry the update at least 2-3 times to rule out usual connectivity issues

Connectivity issues in general can arise if your beacon is not setup for ideal connectivity. Each of your beacon's advertisements - such as sBeacon or iBeacon - is setup with a broadcast rate. This value determines how often the beacon will broadcast said advertisement (e.g. in Hz, per second). Sometimes broadcast rates are set to a low value to conserve battery life of a beacon as it will use less energy when broadcasting less advertisements. The main conflict here is that iOS needs to receive an advertisement of your beacon in order to connect to it. When it does not receive an advertisement during your connection attempt, that attempt will fail. For that reason we advise our customers to always retry a couple of times on failed connections.