Renesas provides a full Bluetooth beacon reference design. A beacon is a small Bluetooth low energy device which on a regular basis sends a data packet containing some unique information. Beacons can be placed in an area to help devices understand information and context relevant to that area. For example, the data packet may point to special offer information on the internet in a shop or information on an exhibit in a museum. The beacon only sends a pointer to the actual information. The wanted information is then retrieved by a SmartPhone or similar device via its own internet connection. There are two major beacon eco-systems deployed: The Apple iBeacon and the Google ‘Eddystone’, named after the Eddystone Lighthouse in the UK. A Bluetooth Smart beacon is essentially a radio lighthouse. Using the DA14580 device, the SmartBond Beacon reference design can operate for approximately six months on a tiny 70 mAh battery if transmitting every 700 ms. If transmissions are once every 5 seconds, the battery life extends to over 2 years. The design has a number of programmable features to tune the operation of the beacon to a user’s particular requirements. The beacon can also be made ‘connectable’, allowing the system administrator to connect to he beacon and adjust parameters over the air.