Mini Beacons
What are Mini Beacons and where to put them
What's in this video?
Watch from 00:14
The Tranquil Watch comes with a charging cradle and a FREE mini Bluetooth beacon.
Both the charging cradle (also known as a ‘Home beacon’) and the mini beacon connect to the watch via Bluetooth automatically any time it’s nearby.
When the watch connects to any beacon, it serves multiple functions…
- It tells the app the watch is at home
- It stops the watch from updating its location whilst at home, saving battery life
- When the watch can no longer see a beacon, it can trigger a home beacon exit alert
If you’re getting false alerts saying the watch has left a safe zone or the house when it has not, you may need to purchase additional beacons to extend the range around the home.
Watch at 0:24
The beacons have a 33 feet range*, this is either side in a sphere. Once the user is in this range, the watch connects to the beacon automatically and the functions above apply.
*Similar to other Bluetooth devices, the range can be affected by obstructions.
Watch at 0:49
The aim is to get as much of the home covered by the 33 feet range around each beacon.
This is best done as per the diagram in the video. At minimum, we recommend having beacons in the rooms that the user visits the most, to ensure it’s connected to a beacon as much as possible when the user is in the home.
Firstly, it is always worth rebooting the home beacon, just in case it isn’t connecting.
You can do this by unplugging the home beacon from the wall, waiting 30 seconds and then plugging it back in.
If you’re regularly getting home exit alerts, this is because the Bluetooth connection, mentioned earlier, is being broken while the user is indoors.
In residences where the watch wearer is often more than 10m from the home beacon, mini beacon/s may need to be purchased in order to extend the Bluetooth range around the home. If this does not happen, then the ‘home beacon range exit’ alerts cannot be switched on without receiving occasional false alerts.
Here are the options going forward:
- Experiment with moving the charging cradle and mini beacon around the home to places that the wearer goes, then switch back on ‘home beacon range exit alarm’ notifications to see if you’re still getting false ones. You can do this on the tracking app > Notifications > Device
- Purchase extra mini Bluetooth beacon/s to extend the range around the area within the home that the wearer travels. As mentioned there will need to be one for every up to 10m that the wearer goes within their residence. If the home is large and split across more than 3 floors, you may need one for each floor (if the wearer travels across all of them).
- Simply use the wider geofence alerts and don’t have the home range exit alerts switched on. This means you’ll still be alerted when the wearer has left the area, but not until much later than the Bluetooth home beacon range exit alarm.
