Estimote Is Pushing The Limits Of BLE And Beacon Technologies With Their New Product

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Estimote is on the mission of changing how people interact with the world around them. Estimote Beacons and Stickers are small wireless sensors that you can attach to any location or object. They broadcast tiny radio signals which your smartphone can receive and interpret, unlocking micro-location and contextual awareness. Below is our interview with Mark Modzelewski, Chief of Staff & Senior Advisor of Estimote:

Q: Mark, what is Estimote? Could you tell us Estimote’s startup story?

A: The roots of Estimote are in Krakow, Poland, where in 2012 two seasoned entrepreneurs —Jakub Krzych and Lukasz Kostka — came together with the goal of providing context to the real environment, not just virtual ones. They developed Estimote with the vision that software of the future will not be developed for phones, computers or tablets, but instead layered on top of the physical world. Estimote began their journey by developing beacons —small sensors that act a bit like a lighthouse, broadcasting it’s position and triggering apps within a smartphone.

After creating a prototype and raising some seed funding, they went to the US and were invited to become part of the Y Combinator program, where they honed their business idea, expanded the team, and brought on funding from Bessemer, BoxGroup, Betaworks, Birchmere, Homebrew, and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Estimote went on to launch the first beacon into the marketplace and continue to serve as the innovation leader in the location based services field. There has been an almost fanatical vision to make products that have amazing capabilities, great durability, beautiful design, and ease of functionality.This has led to Estimote being the only company in the space operating at scale, serving major retail brands and others across multiple venues with unmatched performance in hardware and software. It has also led to growth in revenues, in people (nearly 100 in the US and Poland), and a $10.7 million A round led by Javelin Venture Partners.

Estimote rarely releases information on their customers, but 70% of Fortune 100 have been customers of the company. Major deployments with globally leading retailers including Tesco, America’s second-largest discount retailer, and one of America’s largest home improvement supplies superstore chains. Cities, airport authorities and other have used Estimote to guide people through their services including Qatar Air and Virgin Atlantic; Manchester Airport, London’s Tube, and dozens of others. Literally 100s of world famous museums, sports and cultural centers such as the Guggenheim, Seattle Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, FC Barcelona, and even the NHL champion Pittsburgh Penguins use Estimote Beacons.

Q: Give us more insights into Estimote’s products?

A: Estimote Beacons and Stickers are small wireless sensors that you can attach to any location or object. They broadcast tiny radio signals which your smartphone can receive and interpret, unlocking micro-location and contextual awareness.

So there are several kinds of beacons. First off, Proximity Beacons. Estimote Proximity Beacons are the simplest way to get started with adding physical-world context to mobile apps. Place it in a point of interest (entrance to a store, a museum exhibit, etc.), and mobile apps with beacon support can then detect the smartphone coming in and out of range of such “hot spot”.

We also have Location Beacons our new generation of our core product coming to you with several improvements. They are tailored for Indoor Location, and together with Estimote Indoor Location SDK, they turn a smartphone into a sophisticated compass to position and navigate in any venue. Location Beacons also come with many built-in sensors (motion, light, temperature, magnetometer, atmospheric pressure), which adds even more context to apps. And, with a GPIO connector, it’s possible to connect Location Beacons with other objects, essentially adding Bluetooth capabilities to that object—e.g., if it’s a home appliance, it can now advertise its state via the beacon, or be controlled over Bluetooth from a smartphone.

We also have Nearables or Sticker Beacons, these are much smaller in size than the regular beacons, which makes it easy to stick them to everyday objects: wallet, laptop, bike, etc. It also allows mobile apps to detect these objects (we call an object plus sticker a “nearable”). Built-in motion sensor also allows apps to detect when customers interact with the nearables, e.g., pick up a product with a sticker attached to it.

In addition to hardware, Estimote has a great deal of software to expand the capabilities of our beacons. Estimote Cloud is a web-based platform for managing beacons– basically, it allows you to remotely access and change settings of beacons. We also have some amazing Analytics, which allow for a easy visualization gateway to understanding what your users do—where they go, how often they return, dwell time, pathways, triggering actions. And we also have Here & Now, a recently launched Physical Web powerhouse, that lets you send messages, alerts, support and offers to any device, and collect engagement statistics in real-time.

Q: Tell us something more about your beacon and its functionality.

A: Our products all work on the Bluetooth low energy (Bluetooth LE, BLE, marketed as Bluetooth Smart) standard, a wireless personal area network technology designed and marketed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group aimed at novel applications in the healthcare, fitness, beacons, security, and home entertainment industries. Compared to Classic Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart is intended to provide considerably reduced power consumption and cost while maintaining a similar communication range.

Estimote is trying to push the limits of BLE and beacon technologies in general.

It should be noted, Estimote rejects any clandestine tracking or collection of data. All our products are permission based and require the user’s consent to allow for any exchange of information.

Q: You’ve recently announced the Mirror, a dongle that turns any TV into a smart beacon system, how does that work?

A: Estimote Mirror is the world’s first video beacon, and allows users to interact with any video screen, providing them with curated information. Content can be based on multiple sources including mobile-phones, beacons and Web APIs. Estimote Mirror doesn’t even need the user to have an app on their phone to have a magical experience –by using Estimote’s other beacon products attached to any object you can transform it to a “smart object” that triggers the nearby screens. The best part is, it’s super easy to use. Mirror seamlessly plugs into any video screen’s USB and HDMI ports. From there, it can use the information from beacons and apps powered by Estimote’s SDK to show personalized content, and react to movement accordingly. Also, it is amazingly simple to program. If you have previously developed an app using Estimote products, it will take just a small snippet of code to tap into the power of Mirror.

Q: How does the future look like for Mirror and your company in general?

A: One of the most awesome things about Mirror was it allowing for people to break free of their smartphone screen, and look up at the world around them rather than staring down at their phone.

And people have noticed! Preorders for Mirror have been astounding and the buzz around it really has opened up a whole new category of clientele as well as creating whole new opportunities for our existing customers in retail, advertising, cultural institutions, smart cities and others.

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