LocateBLE Demo Kit

LocateBLE is a real time locating system that is based on the Received Signal Strength Indicator RSSI and trilateration to compute the position of moving tags. The BlueUp LocateBLE system components are:

  • BLE Tags – wearable mobile devices, applied to assets or worn by people for tracking;
  • BLE Locators – fixed devices that are installed in the environment and that measure the RSSI between the Locator and the detected tags;
  • LocateBLE Software – collects data coming from the Locators and computes the position of the tags based on the collected RSSIs.

LocateBLE Architecture

Demo Kit

LocateBLE Demo Kit is the optimal solution if you want to test LocateBLE platform and its functionalities.

Hardware components

In the table below are listed the Hardware Components that are included in the LocateBLE Demo Kit.

Device Quantity Image
LocateBLE Server with Power Supply Unit and 1-year license 1 image
TinyGateway PoE BLE 2 image
BLE Beacons among the available models 1 to 9 image

Prerequisites

Prerequisites for using MeshCube Demo Kit are:

  • LAN (Local Area Network). Your LAN should be provided with DHCP server to be able to retrieve the MeshCube Server IP address.
  • A PC/Laptop with LAN (or WLAN) interface and web browser (Google Chrome is suggested).

Setup

The following steps describe the complete setup of the LocateBLE Demo Kit. Please follow each step as suggested.

Step 1: Setup of LAN connection

  1. Power-up LocateBLE Server using the provided Power Supply Unit (PSU) and connect it to your LAN.
  2. Power-up BLE Gateways using the provided PSU, based on the Gateway model and version, and connect them to your LAN.
    In case of PoE gateways, if your LAN is already provided with a PoE Switch, connect the Gateways to the LAN. Otherwise you need a PoE switch between the Gateway and the LAN.
  3. Connect PC/Laptop to your LAN.
  4. Find the local IP address of the LocateBLE Server. On your router interface LocateBLE Server is listed with hostname locateble-XXXXXX, where XXXXXX is a number.

LAN setup LAN with PoE switch

Step 2: Gateways setup

The following steps describe the process to connect BLE Gateways to LocateBLE software. The procedure could vary based on different Gateway models.

  1. Install the Gateways. For general installation rules refer to Ref. [2].
  2. On your PC/Laptop connected to the LAN, using the web browser, open local IP of the LocateBLE Server (local IP found in previous Step 1. point 4).
  3. Login the LocateBLE web interface using default password blueup. Login
  4. Go to the section Gateways. Select GW01 from the drop-down menu. Press on the green arrow to start the Gateway Handler. Click on the ‘+’ button and select one of two options: Scan the network, after which all the Gateways detected in the network will be listed, or Enter the Gateway IP if you already know the IP address of the Gateway/s to connect. When the Gateways to connect have been selected and OK button pressed, it will take a few seconds to connect to them and to list them in the Gateways List. Gateways
  5. The Gateways now are listed in the Gateways page. Connected Gateways
  6. After the Gateways are connected, go to the Tags section and enable the Tags Handler by pressing the green arrow for both iBeacon and Safety (or only one, depending on the provided tags). Tags
  7. To be able to display the tags provided by BlueUp, the user has to specify the UUID of the tags to detect in Tag settings → UUID List (for both iBeacon and Safety). Unless specifically requested, the default BlueUp UUIDs are:
  8. a565cc841e0e4b5ab2d317c98ff54105 for Safety
  9. acfd065ec3c011e39bbe1a514932ac01 for iBeacon. UUID Configuration
  10. After these steps, the tags will appear in tag table for monitoring.

Step 3: Tags positioning setup

The following steps describe how to visualize the tags on the map for graphical localization purpose.

  1. In the “Maps” menu, click on “Create new map” on the top-right side. Map
  2. Upload the file containing the map. When uploading the map, you will be requested to specify the scale of the map (in pixels/mt). The accuracy of this value is required for maximum accuracy of the localization.

Map upload

  1. Place the Gateways on the map. To do that, in Actions select Add GW01 Gateway, select the gateway and place it on the map, in the position corresponding to the real one. Place the gateways
  2. Once the Gateways are on the Map, the tags will start appearing on the map in the positions calculated by the software, based on the RSSI received form the Gateways.