The one with Maven Central

• Closing #43: Finally Estimote SDK is available on Maven Central (com.estimote:sdk:0.8.7@aar).

The one with robust authentication

Improvements:

• Authentication to beacon is more robust than ever (requires updating beacon to firmware 3.2.0).

The one with improved update

Improvements:

• Security improvements in the beacon authorization mechanism.
• Beacon update is more stable.

The one with material fixes

• This is mainly a bugfix release.
• Fixed (#109): Documentation Bug.
• Fixed (#117): Crash after update to 0.8 version.
• SDK demos are now using Material Design (h/t @RingoMckraken).

The one with Eddystone fixes

• Small fixes for Eddystone protocol.

The one with Eddystone

• Say hello to Eddystone - an open protocol BLE protocol from Google.
  • Estimote Beacons can broadcast Eddystone protocol.
  • In order to start playing with Eddystone you need to update firmware of your existing Estimote beacons to 3.1.1. Easiest way is through Estimote app on Google Play. Than you can change broadcasting scheme on your beacon to Eddystone-URL or Eddystone-UID.
  • New in SDK:
    • find nearby Eddystone beacons (BeaconManager#startEddystoneScanning)
  • configure Eddystone related properties:
    • URL property of Eddystone-URL (see BeaconConnection#eddystoneUrl)
    • namespace & instance properties of Eddystone-UID (see BeaconConnection#eddystoneNamepsace, BeaconConnection#eddystoneInstance)
  • configure broadcasting scheme of beacon to Estimote Default, Eddystone-UID or Eddystone-URL (see BeaconConnection#broadcastingScheme)
  • SDK Examples have been updated to showcase Eddystone support.

The one with nearables, power modes & flip to sleep

• Initial support for nearables. You can discover nearby nearables via BeaconManager.startNearableDiscovery(). With nearbles you can read temperature, motion, orientation without need to connect to it. Directly from discovered Nearable class.
• You can change basic & smart power mode in your beacon via BeaconConnection. Read more about power modes.
• You can also change conditional broadcating in beacon (Flip To Sleep). It is great for development. Read more about Flip To Sleep.
• android.hardware.bluetooth_le feature is no longer required
• Breaking changes (1.0 is approaching, bear with us):
  • most of BeaconConnections write* methods are gone, they are replaced with more appropriate Property class

// Before
connection.writeMajor(newMajor, callback);
connection.writeMinor(newMinor, callback);

// After: reading
connection.minor().get()
connection.major().get()

// After: writing in batch
connection.edit()
  .set(connection.proximityUuid(), newUuid)
  .set(connection.major(), newMajor)
  .set(connection.minor(), newMinor)
  .commit(callback);

The one with authentication fix

• Fixed authentication issues (#111).

The one with firmware update

• You can update update firmware in Estimote beacons from the SDK. There are several ways to do it:
  • Use BeaconOta class to perform firmware update on selected beacon.
  • Use BeaconConnection#updateBeacon which triggers update on the beacon. See updated demos to see how it works.
  • You can also use Estimote app from Play Store to do that.
• Estimote SDK now includes also android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE permission to determine internet connectivity.
• Breaking changes (please bear with us, we are approaching stable 1.0 release):
  • BeaconConnection's ConnectionCallback#onAuthenticated method does not return BeaconCharacteristics object any more. You can read them directly on BeaconConnection object.
  • For example read reading broadcasting power is just connection.getBroadcastingPower().

The one with Cloud

• From now Estimote SDK for Android is distributed as AAR archive rather than jar. That means that you do not need to change your AndroidManifest.xml. SDK's AndroidManifest.xml will be merged with your application's AndroidManifest.xml. See installation guide how to add library to your project.

• Welcome back! We have added support for Estimote Cloud. You can access it via EstimoteCloud class. Remember first to provide your App ID & App Token from App section of Estimote Cloud via EstimoteSDK#initialize method.

• From now all connections to beacons needs to be authorized. If a beacon is not registered to your account, you will not be able to connect to it.

• Estimote SDK's AndroidManifest.xml uses BLUETOOTH, BLUETOOTH_ADMIN and INTERNET permissions.

• Yes, there is single point of initialisation of the SDK.

  //  App ID & App Token can be taken from App section of Estimote Cloud.
  EstimoteSDK.initialize(applicationContext, appId, appToken);
  // Optional, debug logging.
  EstimoteSDK.enableDebugLogging(true);

• All exceptions within the SDK has been unified and exposed in com.estimote.sdk.exception package.

• That means some breaking changes:

  • L class is no longer available, in order to turn on debug logging use EstimoteSDK class.
  • BeaconConnection.ConnectionCallback & BeaconConnection.WriteCallback methods have been changed to contain apropriate exception when happens.