Beacon: a Geohopper/Beecon plugin

After some days now of testing Geohopper, and the plugin, I have it working quite reliably.
I was in contact with a tech guy at Geohopper who suggested making the fences very large
and see if that helped. It definitely did. It is also working reliably after bringing the fences
sizes back down where I'd like them to be. Go figure.

edit: so far haven't noticed any unusual battery drain either.

Carl

Thought the new Estimote indoor location SDK might be of interest:

http://estimote.com/indoor/

Geohopper 2.0 for iOS has a serious bug . Version 2.0.1 has been submitted and is pending. According to Geohopper support.

Geohopper 2.0 for iOS has a serious bug . Version 2.0.1 has been submitted and is pending. According to Geohopper support.

Thanks for the heads up.

Hi,

I've installed the plug-in to use it with GeoFancy and Indigo.
It does not work as expected: I have the app on my iPhone and configured it first at GET. No device was created. In my search I found that only when POST was configured 'automatically create device if it doesn't exist' works.
The first 2 automatically generated devices showed their state 'Present' and 'Absent'. While busy trying to understand how the Plug-in works I changed their name, because all the numbers did not make it easy to understand which is which device. Then the devices did not change from 'Present' to 'Absent'. So I deleted them thinking that the Plug-in would generate new 'devices'. It did, but only in 'POST' and without the names added - like in the first generated ones - that I gave them in my iPhone. So only numbers and the 'State' only tells me 'UNKNOWN'. When I use GET new devices are generated all the time. I can switch that off in the Plug-inn by unchecking 'automatically create device if it doesn't exist' . I re-installed the Plug-inn, but nothing changed really.
Maybe you have a solution to make it work.

Thanks!

Mirko

Hi,

I've installed the plug-in to use it with GeoFancy and Indigo.
It does not work as expected: I have the app on my iPhone and configured it first at GET. No device was created. In my search I found that only when POST was configured 'automatically create device if it doesn't exist' works

Could you turn on debugging and send me a few logs?

New version 1.0.2: https://furtenbach.se/indigo/downloads/

- Bug fixes
- Support for my new favourite geofencing app, http://www.geofency.com. (Turn on JSON when configuring web hooks)

I've been running Geofency for a while now and I think it's the best one yet. Very few missed check ins and no battery drain to speak of. Well worth a look.

Sorry to thread hijack, have you tried IFTTT? it's not missed one location for me. The only downside is that it only has my location, although I could set my wife up with an IFTTT account quite easily.
I send an email based on location which indigo then reads and adjusts variables as need be

For me Geohopper worked best, it was surely not 100%, often not reporting that I had left an iBeacon area, but still better than the other two I tried.
I have 3 Estimotes in my house, and use the all for location detection in Indigo.
Now with the new version of GeoHopper on AppStore, you cannot use the Estimotes, or any other beacon for that matter, for free anymore. You have to pay 70 NOK (roughly 15 USD) to be able to add an iBeacon manually! I think this is outrageous, as they have turned a free feature into an expensive feature, in order for GeoHopper to push their Bleu Station beacon. That one you can still use for free.

I am reluctant to pay 15 USD for an app that might or might not work as it should now, given that it did not have a 100% track record from before...
I have tried GeoFency and Beecon as well, but in my experience they have even worse track record of reporting correctly...

Alas, I guess its my fault for believing that finally I had found a location device/system that would be reliable. The search continues...

Anybody tried the new GeoHopper app? Is it better than before? (i.e. worth 15USD?)
Any other apps that might be better, and be integrated into Indigo 6?

How did you find out the cost of it? I've searched for information about the in-app charges and there is no mention anywhere about the manual option - I'm in UK so cannot buy the official one so have no choice but to buy one of the alternatives


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yupp, you are correct. They don't even mention it in the AppStore "in-app" purchasing section!
I left a negative review about this, that has since been removed... Kind of feel like this company is not the most serious company I've come across.

Anyways, to find the cost, download the app (free), then click locations->new->beacon.
It will now start to scan for the Blau station they want you to buy. If you have estimotes they will of course not be found, so you can click on "manual". Then a message pops up saying you have to pay to to access the manual setup feature. Sign in to your iTunes account when prompted and you will see the price. You can of course cancel the purchase at this stage.

Ah ok I got as far as the signing in part and stopped as it looked as if I was committed to the purchase at that point without even seeing the cost. I have written to them about it and was told that it was $10, but not sure if this is $10 each time or to unlock for multiple beacons?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I am testing this plugin with both Beecon and Geofency. I have found the Geofency gefeofencing to be very unreliable but both of them are doing well with my beacons. I have Geofency talking to Becon just fine but my problem is that for the life of me I can't get the HTTP GET to work properly. I have tried it from Beecon and have tried GET requests from multiple sources. Here is what I get in the debug log.

Beacon Debug User-agent: Beecon/4.9.1 CFNetwork/711.0.6 Darwin/14.0.0
Beacon Debug Received other HTTP GET data: ('', '', '/', '', 'sender=iphone6&location=garage&event=LocationExit', '')

Any thoughts?

Re: Geohopper's new policy, I am of a mixed mind. On the one hand, it feels hinky to have a feature that worked for free and turn it into a pay feature (taking away functionality unless you pay a ransom.) On the other hand, I don't feel it's hinky when a developer charges for a major program update or requests an in-app purchase for a new feature. I wouldn't expect Matt and Jay to build functionality into Indigo Touch to have it work with competitors' products for free, but I think it's understandable to feel disappointed about something like that being "taken away."

For better or worse, I've found Geohopper to be very flaky and inconsistent. I keep it running as a novelty, but I am reluctant to hang anything critical on it. I'm still looking for something reliable that doesn't require me to reduce authentication.

Can someone offer a little advice please? I have tried setting this up with geofency and if I am on 3G it works perfectly, but if I am on wifi then I get the following error (when using the web hook test buttons) Failed: NSURLErrorDomain error -1004.

Does that mean anything to anyone?

Thanks
Gareth