There’s 3 basic ways how to manage beacon fleet. Here’s how it works.
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Beacon deployments are growing, and nearly every study reflects that. One major study from Grand View Research recently suggested that the Bluetooth beacon market will reach $58.7 bn by 2025. This increase in number of beacons and size of deployments could spell trouble for infrastructure owners who are behind the curve on management practices.
3 ways to manage beacon fleet:
- SDK
- dedicated app
- bulk management.
Each of these has related pros and cons for infrastructure managers. Let’s take a closer look so you can see which is best for you.
SDK
By integrating the SDK into your app, solution providers can leverage the users themselves to update and maintain an infrastructure. This isn’t just practical–it’s pretty cool. Every time a user interacts with a beacon, their app also reaches out to the cloud. With the SDK, that user will send and ask for updates.
It’s a simple way for managers with a wide app-user base to update their infrastructure without even trying.
App for beacon fleet
On the other hand, a dedicated app allows managers to update beacons directly. One good example is the Kontakt.io Administration App. This is perfect for those managers who don’t want to build an app or prefer to maintain their infrastructure first-hand. For example, a small business owner need only walk near their beacons with the relevant app activated in order to check for or send updates.
This is a fast and easy way for owners of small fleets to maintain their beacons directly.
Bulk management
For many business owners, neither of the previous options are viable. Instead, they’ll need to use a dedicated tool to manage their infrastructure for them. The Kontakt.io solution utilizes a Gateway device in order to send data to and from the cloud. In this case, the Gateway regularly scans for beacons in a 50 meter radius.
Now, with Fleet Management, it can transfer beacon health information and pull changes or updates from the cloud, delivering it straight to the beacon without any smartphone or third-party interaction necessary.
This is perfect for managers of large, dense fleets who need their infrastructure to operate and update in a more automated fashion.
There’s a lot to consider when building your infrastructure. Don’t miss out on something crucial like proper maintenance. We wrote a complete white paper on the topic to get you up to speed.