BC021 (this item)

I used 3 of these to develop a system to track my cars in the garage. They worked extremely well. Documentation and the corresponding app were excellent. Recommended

Using several of these to track objects within Home Assistant. This beacon broadcasts with MQTT and can be utilized to track and locate these items throughout my home. Previously, I utilized Tiles and there is no comparison! These feel more solid, have a replaceable battery, and are customizable in many different ways (UUID, RSSI @1m, etc). Also, Thomas (owner of Blue Charm) has been extremely helpful explaining the features and technologies within the devices so that I can make more educated decisions on my project. I've also utilized the BC011 and USB versions.

These beacons are easy to set up and have great range. I’ve used them over several months for cresting proof-of-concept apps, and the batteries have held well above 95% the whole time.

Works great out of the box. The KBeacon config utility has tons of great features including enabling TLV broadcasts for battery / uptime monitoring and forcing "always on" mode. Note that you can find the same item from Chinese sites at half the cost. I still prefer supporting the small company that sells on Amazon w/ quick delivery.

Bluetooth showed up, but no connection ever worked. The app just kept saying could not connect. Waste

Bought this to track keys for an occupancy sensor in ESPresense. Out of the box it already transmits iBeacon so didn't even need to download the app to configure. Had it running for a few days and it's been working great and consistent. UPDATE: I bought a second one of these. Turns out that out of the box they give off the exact same iBeacon IDs as each other. I debated taking a star off for this but it was easy enough to alter the ID using their app. I still really like it so keeping the 5 stars but this should be known by others.

First, it works -- compared to the cost of competitors and for what you get, it's a great value. The downside (or possible upside) is that this is more of an Open Source eco-system whereas the other brand-specific Beacons tie you to their curated ecosystem, so this one is more flexible, but won't have the best utility UI/polish. You can use the iOS/Android software to set it up as you want (not the most friendly, but you can figure it out, I believe in you). With Android, you can use Tasker/etc. to trigger all sorts of things -- for my use case, I have it trigger a specific Tasker profile when I'm near an Android tablet so I can get that Tony Stark feeling when I walk into a room. Unfortunately; and this has nothing to do with this particular beacon; for those looking to do similar stuff with Windows .. it's not as easy. For some reason, Microsoft is really behind in Beacon support, they still treat them like normal Bluetooth devices, and the 3rd party apps just scan for them. Meaning that try as I might, I could not trigger any script when the presence (passive support) of a Beacon was detected, as Windows really wants for you to connect to it beforehand and you don't want to do that in most cases. Not sure if Win11 has introduced any improvements, but one could hope they catch up so we can use them as dynamic lock devices.

I wanted a beacon to use with Tasker and unfortunately, this thing was only detected when I was within 10 feet from it. All I needed to do was to see the device with my phone; no connection needed. I just needed it to keep broadcast itself so that my phone can see it but this device failed me. I'm not sure if this device was meant to do what I needed it to do but it seems like a simple function. Connecting to it using their app is easy. No problem doing this and the settings seemed easy to configure. I wasn't able to connect to it through the phone's Bluetooth connection as you would with other devices like headphones or keyboard and mice.