If you are building simple proximity applications start with Proximity Beacons - the most popular beacons on the market. They support both iBeacon™ and Eddystone™. For touch experiences, they also have NFC built in.

Proximity approach involves “tagging” certain areas (a hotel lobby, a restaurant table, an airport gate, etc.) with a “marker”—a beacon—recognizable by smartphones. You can tune beacon’s broadcasting power to adjust the range of this marker. Your app can simply detect it in the proximity, read its identifier to figure out which marker it is, and act accordingly.

Estimote Proximity Beacons offer long battery life and great range, and are usually put on walls, tables, shelves and other static objects. Mobile apps with beacon support can then detect the smartphone coming in and out of range of a beacon, and act on that information. Estimote Proximity Beacons support iBeacon and Eddystone protocols, offer over three years of battery life on default settings, and have a range of up to 70 meters. They were designed to attach to fixed points in venues, to provide apps with location context.

Adding simple beacon detection code to your app with Estimote SDK will take you 30 minutes with our tutorial.

	Location Beacon	Proximity Beacon	Sticker Beacon	Video Beacon
Battery life	5 years	2 years	1 year	Endless (USB?powered)
Range	200 meters	70 meters	7 meters	10 meters
Thickness	24 mm	17 mm	6 mm	14 mm
iBeacon™ or Eddystone™ packets	8 simultaneously	1 at a time	1 at a time	2 simultaneously
Additional packets	connectivity, telemetry, user?defined	connectivity, telemetry	connectivity, nearable with telemetry	connectivity, telemetry, user?defined
Built-in sensors	motion, temperature, ambient light, magnetometer, pressure	motion, temperature	motion, temperature	n/a
Additional tech	GPIO, RTC, LED, 1Mb EEPROM	Programmable NFC	n/a	WiFi, HDMI, USB, 1GB eMMC Storage
Devices in the Kit	3 beacons	3 beacons	10 stickers	3 mirrors