FI-WARE - How a beacon can send info to a POI Data Provider

Question

I just started reading about FI-WARE, so this might be a very noob question.

A beacon is basically a device that just uses bluetooth for pushing info about its position.

How should it be connected to a generic Enabler, for instance aa POI Data Provider, an Iot Broker or a POI GE?

Shall it first send its coordinates to a mobile device via bluetooth and then this device is supposed to send this value to the Iot Broker? If so, how?

Answer 1

A bluetooth beacon is much simpler than that. It is merely a device that transmits a unique identifier constantly. Because the identifier is unique, you can tie it to a specific location using external databases or information sources embedded in a mobile app.

Integrating with external systems like you describe is a process completely outside the beacon's responsibility. You must go through a process to manually associate the beacon's unique identifier with such systems when it is deployed.

Answer 2

You need base stations to listen to possible beacons coming and going nearby. A base station can very roughly approximate the distance of a nearby beacon. These base stations must know their own locations at least for POI applications. The base stations can communicate with data servers (POI, IoT,...) about nearby beacons. The contents of communication depends on the purpose of the system. For the FIWARE POI DP GE a base station may be directly associated to a POI and the corresponding UUID. A beacon may has its own POI record having the UUID of the beacon. When a base station detects a beacon, it may update the coordinates of the beacon POI record to correspond the location of the base station itself. (Supposedly we talk about this device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon )