UTOUG Training Days 2018

Have you ever wanted to track the location of a physical object? Would you like to trigger an action, such as sending a notification or even locking a deadbolt, based on the proximity of that object? The problem is, how can you do this without spending a small fortune?
In this session, Blaine walks through a project that uses multiple inexpensive Raspberry Pi Zero Ws to track a small Bluetooth Low Energy beacon. After a short explanation of BLE beacons, he installs and configures the Pi. Next, he builds a small NodeJS application used to interact with the beacon and sets up alerts with triggering actions. Beacon tracking generates lots of data for analysis, which needs a home, i.e., a database. Using REST APIs, Blaine enables the NodeJS application to both GET configuration data and POST beacon data. With the data safely stored in a cloud database, Blaine finishes up with a demonstration of how to use spatial queries to determine the location of the beacon and display this information in an IDE. All code used in the session is available on GitHub under an open source license. Attendees will come away from this session with the tools to build their own beacon scanning system that won't break the bank.