This past week the ARM mbed team went to the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in Austin, TX. We put together an awesome demo that showed off how to use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to create an interactive beacon demo. Attendees of DAC started at our booth, they received a beacon programmed to display their name and as they walked around the show floor various signage would greet them by name when they walked within 5-10 feet of the screen display.

The demo showed off 3 key technologies:

1. mbed Remote Compile API - We created a webpage running on a tablet that could remotely compile a new binary with the attendee's name inserted into it.
2. Wireless Firmware Update via the BLE Firmware Over the Air (FOTA) service - Using the Nordic Master Control Panel smartphone app.
3. Scanning of BLE signals using NodeJS and noble.

The coolest part of this demo is that it is entirely open source and repeatable at home! If you are interested in checking out the demo source code it can be found at www.mbed.com/s/DAC16. If you are interested in expanding further on the demo you can try to create your own smartphone application using Evothings.

Here are some photos from the event.