Ionic as BLE beacon

[Moskus]

We have a smart home. I have just installed some BLE trackers from Happy Bubble to track our trash cans (yes, you read that right), and discovered that it can also track certain Fitbit devices. E.g. the Alta HR or the Flex 2 are easily tracked.

But the Ionic is not. 😞

Can I turn on "BLE announcements" or something like that?

I'd like to put it on my wish list.

[SantiR]

@Moskus Welcome to the Fitbit family! Interesting idea. How does that tracks the Alta HR and the Flex 2? 

Could you provide more details about what exactly would you like your Ionic to have? Or how does the "BLE announcements" would work?

I was taking a look at the Feature Suggestions Board, which is the best place to post any innovative ideas for new features you would like to see for Fitbit in the future, but wasn't able to find anything similar to turn on BLE announcements or Bluetooth beacon.

I recommend searching on that board for any existent similar idea to yours or create an original one. That way users can vote and comment for it to make it popular.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you create a new suggestion, keep me posted! 

[Moskus]

 wrote: How does that tracks the Alta HR and the Flex 2? 

Well, the Alta HR and Flex 2 are sending BLE announcements. There is no setting for it, the Fitbit engineers needs to enable it. 

I'll look in the Feature Suggestion Board. 🙂 

[SantiR]

@Moskus Thanks for your reply! Interesting. Thanks for checking the Feature Suggestions Board. Let me know if you post an idea.

Also, take a look at the Discussions Board as you will find a lot of interesting things there. Feel free to post on any thread you want. If you are looking for Fitbit friends to compete with on challenges, check this thread to add some! 

Keep me posted! 

[SunsetRunner]

This is super interesting! Do they act as beacons even when paired with a phone?

[DunkyMonkey]

Was there a feature request for this? 

I had a look, but couldn't see one. My room assistants can pick up my fitbit's ble mac for both my wifes and mine. However, i have noticed that the ionic isn't that reliable at sending out a heart beat. This results in being marked as away, when we aren't.

[BarkyMcBark]

---

@Moskus wrote:

We have a smart home. I have just installed some BLE trackers from Happy Bubble to track our trash cans (yes, you read that right), and discovered that it can also track certain Fitbit devices. E.g. the Alta HR or the Flex 2 are easily tracked.

I guess I don't really understand.  Why would anyone really care?

[dolkensp]

If you have "smart" appliances (e.g. lights, heating, air-conditioning, irrigation, etc), then you can set up rules to automatically turn these things on/off when you leave/arrive at home.

Now it's easy to buy a BLE beacon to attach to your keyring, or swap to a Xiaomi Mi smart band or similar which offer this functionality by default, but ideally we could use the devices we already carry on us every day.

The Alta seems to broadcast BLE beacons fairly regularly, whilst the Charge 4 is far less reliable.

Not going to lie - the Fitbit ecosystem seems to have stagnated (and even regressed in some ways) since the days of the Charge 3 - so definitely tempted to swap to low-cost competitors in this space right now. Presence detection integration with Google Home could be a killer feature for Fitbit if they're quick enough, but rivals definitely have a head-start in this space.