Where do we stick our beacons? I haven’t heard any (sensible) suggestions that answer this. Instinctively it felt right to place them on walls at just a little over the height of a person. This way they would be high enough to be clear of obstructions, and low enough to still give out a strong signal. We now think that this is wrong and the best position is probably going to be on the ceiling.
In this video we demonstrate how the received signal strength from an Estimote beacon can vary depending on the angle at which the phone is held.
Most notably we have observed that the received strength is significantly higher when the phone is facing the beacon, rather than when the back of the phone is towards the beacon.
This is a little unfortunate because we are working towards using beacons in a gallery environment. Typically, we would expect a user to be standing looking at an exhibit. However if they are holding their phone in a normal position it is more likely the back of the phone would be facing towards the exhibit. There is a range that a beacon behind the user could result in a stronger received signal because the phone is facing more towards it.
This has led us to conclude that where there are multiple beacons in a single room the optimum position for the beacons would be on the ceiling.
[…] pretty well. We weren’t unable to put the beacons on the ceiling as we had hoped (see the Where to Position Your Beacons post), so we have ended up with a couple of areas where the beacons interfere slightly with each […]