Create an Eddystone Beacon using Node-RED. Eddystone-URL beacons can be used with the Physical Web. Add this node to your Node-RED environment for easy prototyping for the Physical Web.
First install Node RED, if not done yet, and add node-red-contrib-eddystone:
npm install node-red -g
npm install node-red-contrib-eddystone -g
node-red-contrib-eddystone is based on the awesome node-eddystone-beacon. However, node-eddystone-beacon has the same prerequesits you might want to check.
You can install the prerequisite packages with the following command
sudo apt-get install -y bluetooth bluez libbluetooth-dev libudev-dev
On Linux Bluetooth LE requires root access to the hardware to work, you can achive this by running Node-RED as root or by setting the required flags on the node binary with the following command.
sudo setcap cap_net_raw+eip $(eval readlink -f `which node`)
setcap can be installed with the following command if needed
sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin
We recommend to use a Raspberry Pi with a Bluetooth 4.0 compatible USB dongle.
This flow allows to control a Eddystone URL beacon for setting the URL, starting and stopping broadcasting, setting temperature, and setting power. All parameters can be set by sending messages to the EddystoneURL node.
The official Android App for The Physical Web might me a nice addition for testing and playing around:
