WinBeacon

Overview

WinBeacon is a managed .NET (C#) library with a minimal Bluetooth LE Stack that is able to detect and act as iBeacon¹ and Eddystone. This stack doesn't support BLE devices, only the detection and transmission of BLE advertisement packets used by beacons.

Supported operating systems

• Windows XP (not tested, but it should work)
• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows 10*

* For Windows 10, you should be able to use BluetoothLEAdvertisementWatcher instead of this library.

Supported BT4.0 LE dongles

If anyone can test with other BT4.0 dongle types, please let me know how it works out or send us a pull request.

Installation

This library needs raw USB access to a BT4.0 dongle. Therefore you should replace the original driver of the dongle with a WinUSB driver. This also means that the default Bluetooth stack is no longer used and Windows will no longer detect the dongle as a Bluetooth dongle until you re-install the original drivers.

To replace or create a WinUSB driver for the BT4.0 dongle, we advise you to use the Zadig tool.

Get it on NuGet

Install-Package WinBeacon

Usage

Detecting beacons

using (var hub = new Hub(0x050D, 0x065A))
{
    hub.BeaconDetected += (sender, e) =>
		{
			Console.WriteLine("Detected beacon: {0}", e.Beacon);
		};
    Console.ReadKey();
}

Advertise as a beacon

using (var hub = new Hub(0x050D, 0x065A))
{
    hub.EnableAdvertising(new Beacon("B9407F30-F5F8-466E-AFF9-25556B57FE6D", 1000, 2000, -52));
    Console.ReadKey();
}

Detecting Eddystone

Currently only the detection of Eddystone UID and URL is supported.

using (var hub = new Hub(0x050D, 0x065A))
{
	hub.EddystoneDetected += (sender, e) =>
		{
			switch (e.Eddystone)
			{
				case EddystoneUid eddystoneUid:
					Console.WriteLine($"Eddystone UID: {eddystoneUid}");
					break;
				case EddystoneUrl eddystoneUrl:
					Console.WriteLine($"Eddystone URL: {eddystoneUrl}");
					break;
			}
		};
	Console.ReadKey();
}

¹ iBeacon is a trademark of Apple inc.