Physical Web and Raspberry PI 3

physicalwebraspberrypieddystoneibeacon

Lately I stumbled over Google’s Eddystone protocol and how it brings the word wide web to the physical world or the other way around: how it enhances physical things with the internet. This idea is nothing new: there was/is RFID/NFC or even barcodes. What I can see as real advantage of the physical web compared to these other technologies is that you get contextual information without opening any app or touching a specific physical thing.

Video auf YouTube ansehen

Real contextual information is possible without being disturbed by push notifications. For instance you are waiting in public office area. Now you can pick up a digital ticket just as you enter or you get finally the online self care service shown. An other good show case might be a train station which shows you the delays etc. Means there are plenty of opportunities!

The good news are you can set-up a basic physical web experiment just within minutes if you have a Raspberry PI 3 with Jessie:

  1. Enable Bluetooth sudo hciconfig hci0 up
  2. Advertise and not-connectable sudo hciconfig hci0 leadv 3
  3. Generate Eddystone URL and call it http://yencarnacion.github.io/eddystone-url-calculator/ (only HTTPS target URLs are working: http -> https works, https -> http doesn’t)

How to enable Physical Web beacons on iOS. Video auf YouTube ansehen

And even more information and ideas you will find in this video: Video auf YouTube ansehen