Anuj is going to give a talk at DroidCon-In 2015 and we ( I with Chinmay and Bhushan ) developed a simple Android application to show how we can create context aware navigation experiences using beacons. We used Estimote beacons as hardware and their Estimote Android sdk libraries for the application.

Beacons are small transmitting devices which continuously transmit Bluetooth low energy i.e. Bluetooth 4.0 signals at regular intervals within a short range. We used Estimote beacons with Eddystone which is a protocol specification for defining the beacons message format.

You can download the app form Google Play Store here.
You will need beacons with eddystone format to test the app.

The major steps in the application were:

• Create a navigation drawer and respective activities and fragments.
• Add Estimote Android-SDK to the project. Write functions to scan and and store their data using Estimote APIs.
• Add resources such as Floor Plan and Fire Exit Plan.
• Create a notification handler service to create notifications from the beacons scanned using Estimote APIs.

Here are some of the screenshots of the application:

That’s all folks.