If you don’t see this in your navigation, your administrator can switch the module on under Administration → Modules, or it may not be included in your plan. Indoor location and BLE tags are part of the same module.
Finding a tag uses the phone’s own Bluetooth radio, so it works only in the installed app on an Android phone or an iPhone. The screen cannot be pictured here for that reason.
Two ways in
The asset button and the Home door appear only when all three of these are true: your organisation has indoor location switched on, the handset holds at least one asset with a tag fitted (for the asset button, this asset), and the phone has a Bluetooth radio the app can use. On an iPhone the button is still shown for a tag the phone cannot hear, because the screen behind it says why — see iPhones and iBeacon.
Tags are fitted to assets in the web app, from the asset itself or the BLE tags register — see the asset screen. Sync afterwards and the tag appears on the handset.
Choosing the tag
Once a tag is chosen, a Looking for panel shows what the phone will listen for: the tag’s name, MAC , and iBeacon · · where an iBeacon identity is recorded. Choosing another tag ends the search for the first and starts clean.
Looking for it
1
Press Start looking
The first press is also when the phone asks for any permission it needs. Before you press it, the meter reads Press Start, then walk slowly and watch the bar.
2
Walk slowly and watch the bar
The bar, labelled How close the tag is, fills as the signal strengthens, with a percentage and About m away. The words under it move in three steps so they can be read at arm’s length: Heard, but far away, Getting warmer, Very close. Not heard yet — keep moving means nothing has answered — or that a tag you were hearing has gone quiet.
3
Press Stop when you have it
Leaving the screen stops the search too, and so does putting the app in the background, so a forgotten search does not drain the battery in your pocket.
The distance is rounded and says “about” on purpose. Indoors, walls, bodies and metal shelving bend a Bluetooth signal, and an estimate from signal strength is good to roughly a factor of two — use it to choose a direction and the bar to close in, not as a tape measure.
What stands in the way
The screen says what will stop it before you start rather than after a fruitless sweep. Each problem has a sentence, and where the phone allows it, a button straight to the settings page that fixes it. Coming back from the settings checks again on its own.iPhones and iBeacon
An Android phone listens for a tag by its MAC address, the one printed on its label. An iPhone cannot: iOS hides MAC addresses from apps, and the only way an iPhone hears a tag is by its iBeacon identity — a UUID, a major and a minor number, set in the tag maker’s configuration app. So a tag with no iBeacon identity recorded cannot be found from an iPhone at all. Rather than let you sweep a corridor for something the phone is not allowed to hear, the screen shows This tag cannot be found from an iPhone yet in place of the Start button, and says what to add: the UUID, major and minor from the tag’s configuration app, entered on the tag in the web app. Until then, look for it with an Android phone. The web app’s BLE tags register flags the same tags as ones an iPhone will not be able to find.Register and asset
The asset screen that offers Find its BLE tag.
Encode and locate RFID tags
The same kind of search with a handheld RFID reader.