Radar introduces beacon support to power contextual app experiences with sub-meter accuracy
Unlocking an app experience at a specific restaurant table or in a specific store aisle requires location accuracy down to a few meters. That's why we're excited to launch support for beacons, one of our most highly requested features, making it simple to range, monitor, and build experiences with Bluetooth beacons using Radar.
Radar geofences can already power contextual app experiences, contextual messaging, and arrival and visit detection with building-level accuracy. Beacons can power these same types of use cases with sub-meter accuracy, even indoors. You can think of beacons like hardware-enabled micro-geofences that complement your existing geofence implementation.
For example, using geofencing for arrival detection, a QSR can begin preparing a customer's pickup order when they are 5 minutes away. Using beacons, they can then send a contextual push notification right as the customer pulls into the drive-thru or into a specific parking space.
Or, a retailer could use beacons for contextual app experiences with sub-meter accuracy, such as changing the app experience to display relevant information in a particular aisle, or to display the loyalty program or scan-and-pay features near registers.
How it works
Building your own beacon ranging and monitoring on iOS or Android might take hundreds of lines of code. With Radar, it's just a few lines of code:
// range beacons in the foreground
Radar.trackOnce(desiredAccuracy: .high, beacons: true) { (status, location, events, user) in
// do something with user?.beacons
}
// monitor beacons in the background
let trackingOptions = RadarTrackingOptions.responsive
trackingOptions.beacons = true
Radar.startTracking(trackingOptions: trackingOptions)If you're already using Radar for geofencing, adding beacons requires almost zero engineering effort.
After you import geofences, the Radar SDK will generate user.entered_geofence events and return a user's current geofences. Similarly, after you import beacons, the Radar SDK will also generate user.entered_beacon events and return beacons near the user.
These events can be sent to Radar's turnkey integrations with growth stack tools like Braze, Airship, and mParticle for messaging, attribution, and segmentation.
Compatible beacon hardware
Radar is compatible with any iBeacons, and customers can begin ranging and monitoring beacons in Radar after importing beacons and their metadata via CSV. In addition to purpose-built proximity beacons, Radar can help you activate and import in-store devices like wi-fi routers or iPads as beacons.
For customers seeking beacon hardware, we're proud to partner with two of the leading beacon manufacturers: Kontakt.io and Estimote.
As the world’s leading IoT device vendor, our mission is to support partners like Radar with the devices and tools required to deliver enterprise-grade solutions, integrated out-of-the-box. Working together with innovators such as Radar, we focus on making IoT technology simple, helping end-users rapidly unlock business value by complimenting Radar’s applications with beacon, tags and sensors devices, IoT networks, cloud monitoring and remote administration services - everything needed to quickly launch and securely maintain advanced services and new experiences.
— Rom Eizenberg, CRO, Kontakt.io
We are delighted to partner with Radar as we share a common vision of a digitalized physical world. We believe our integration opens exciting opportunities for very precise location based-mobile experiences.
— Jonathan Duque, Director of Sales, Estimote
From product teams unlocking loyalty in the app to marketers triggering push notifications when customers pull into a parking spot, we're excited to power these new use cases for our customers.
Ready to build even more accurate location-based experiences? Request access to beacons from your Radar customer success manager. If you're not yet a Radar customer, contact our sales team. We'd love to hear what you're building.