Use of iBeacons with Rails

[oliviervanhees]

I am brainstorming about a way to collect more data from users, without to ask users to do a lot of manual stuff by themselves. One of my ideas is to use iBeacons. If I distribute iBeacons to all restaurants in Amsterdam, would it be possible to register which users have been in which restaurants? I know that it is possible to communicate between native apps and iBeacon, but how about Ruby on Rails applications, I cannot find much documentation about this.

Alternative solution could be to use GPS coordinates of users maybe or maybe even Wifi tracking?

Obviously I still need to think about users flows.

[oliviervanhees]

I did some research and I think we need a native app to use beacons or some other proximity marketing technology. Do you have experience with creating native apps based on Ruby on Rails code?

I found this http://www.rubymotion.com/ maybe we can you something like this? Curious to your thoughts and experience with this!

[amitpatelx]

@oliviervanhees I have no idea about iBeacon. But I would probably like to explore. Let me first understand the technology.

I would get back to you on Monday. Please keep posting your research here.

@BoTreeConsulting any suggestions?

[oliviervanhees]

I have bought some iBeacons to start investigating how this works. I also subscribed for the RubyMotion technology, however I don't have a Mac to try out the technology. I assume you have a Mac, maybe you can try it? You can download here: http://www.rubymotion.com/files/RubyMotion%20Installer.zip

My license code is: b42e230a97743acbd0977afed3ba25bd6dc34a41

[amitpatelx]

Just for reference what is iBeacon

1.What is iBeacon: An Animated Guide 2.Unboxing and testing iBeacon devices 3.How iBeacon Works 4.Introduction to iBeacon and Bluetooth Low Energy 5.What is iBeacon - ZDnet

[oliviervanhees]

Hi Amit,

I have been discussing this functionality with some key users and restaurants owners as well. It seems that the use of iBeacons is maybe to advanced for now, since user adaption is still low at the moment in the Netherlands (mainly due to little use of blue tooth).

I also thought that since we alreay have a lot of information about the location of restaurants (longtitude and lattitude) we maybe would not need the iBeacon functionality for now. Since we are asking users to share their current location, we already now when a user is at a restaurant. Obviously, I have been testing our web application all the time in Amsterdam, and always when I am at a restaurant, Friends4Food is showing me 0,01 km distance from my location to the restaurant. By having this information we should be able to know in which restaurant a user has been.

The only challenge would be to collect the current location of the user constantly. I know some (native) apps who are doing this by letting a user aprove the permission to constantly activate their GPS functionality and so sharing the whereabouts all the time (good example is the dating app named "Happn").

I am not sure if this could also be possible without having a native app. Do you more about this?

If not, I definitely think we need a native app to track this information. Could you investigate how we can create a low cost native iOS application to prototype/test this?

Thanks in advance and I am really have the feeling we are getting close to some disruptive innovation for the Dutch (and maybe global) market here :)

Olivier

[amitpatelx]

One quick thing comes into my mind to send current location to the server is sending current location at specific interval(say one minute) using AJAX.

I am not sure if this could also be possible without having a native app. Do you more about this?

As I understand, you want to send geolocation data to friends4food.com. This is good idea but not sure if user is ready to install OR ready to turn on GPS.

I would need more detailed requirement so I can share it with our iOS technical partner and get quotes.

[amitpatelx]

This might be useful to pitch your idea!