Using Boron to detect presence of smartphones and other bluetooth devices

The Archive Product Creation
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1

We’re thinking of using the Boron in the Particle Mesh 2G/3G Bundle (https://store.particle.io/products/particle-mesh-2g-3g-bundle) to detect the presence of bluetooth signals from smartphones and other bluetooth devices.

The idea is identify employees who are in a store either through their smartphone’s unique bluetooth signal or giving them a Xenon ‘keychain’ of sorts to identify them. (assuming they carry their smartphone / keychain at all times.)

Would a Boron be able to detect the presence of bluetooth signals from smartphones and other bluetooth devices? Should the Mesh.listen() function be used to achieve this? If no, will Particle release functionality for this and when?

Thanks,

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The Mesh object in the Particle framework is not supporting BT/BLE (802.15.1) but is dedicated to access the OpenThread environment (6LoWPAN 802.15.4).
BT/BLE support is planned for the next release (1.2.0), but the actual feature set for that initial introduction of high level BT/BLE APIs hasn't been disclosed yet.

However, if you want to dive into the lower levels you already can with a local toolchain and monolithic system/application firmware.

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Thanks for your rapid response @ScruffR! Do we know when the next release is currently planned?