Beacons — Location-Aware Inventory

Small Bluetooth transmitters, big context upgrades. Beacons tell your AI where you are so it can give you answers that actually make sense for the Zone you’re standing in.

#What It Does

Beacons are small, battery-powered Bluetooth transmitters that you place at fixed locations — a kitchen shelf, a museum exhibit, a garage workbench, your medicine cabinet. They use the iBeacon protocol to broadcast a unique identity made up of three values: a UUID (identifies the beacon family), a Major number (identifies a group or zone), and a Minor number (identifies the specific beacon). Together, these three values are as unique as a fingerprint, except they're useful.

When your phone detects a beacon, ambientChat adds that location context to your AI conversations automatically. Ask "What's expiring soon?" while standing near your kitchen beacon, and the AI knows to prioritize pantry items. Ask "What's on this shelf?" near a museum beacon, and the AI can tell you about the exhibit. The context flows invisibly — you don't need to tell the AI where you are, because the beacons already did.

The app maintains a Beacon Registry where you can see every beacon your phone has detected, along with signal strength, estimated distance, and whether you've given it a name. Think of it as a census of the invisible Bluetooth population in your vicinity.

#How to Use It

#iOS App

#Viewing Detected Beacons

Open the Location tab at the bottom of the screen
You'll see a list of beacons your phone is currently detecting or has recently seen
Each entry shows the beacon's name (if registered), UUID, Major/Minor values, signal strength (RSSI), and estimated distance
Beacons are sorted by proximity — the closest ones appear first

#Registering a Beacon

A beacon's own details — its name, venue, zone, radio identity and web address — live on the central registry, so that everyone who walks past the beacon reads the same thing. They are set in the web admin console, not on the phone.

#Beacons and tags that are yours

Anything you set up — a tag you scanned and tapped Set up on, a beacon in a place you made — is yours. On the phone, Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons → My Beacons & Tags lists them all, whether or not your phone can hear them right now; on the web, the same list is in Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons, where clicking a row opens it in place. Each row says whether it is Live or Paused, and its switch pauses or resumes it in one tap, without opening it. Tap a row to open it and Add item or Add document to link your things to it, or unlink one. Type a word and every match you own comes back — scroll for more on the phone, or tap Show more matches on the web. A tag tracks one item, so for a tag it is Add item only, and choosing another item moves the tag to it, exactly as on the item's tracking card. Chat does the same: "link my Pantry beacon to the jam recipe". Linked things reach the AI whenever the beacon is sighted.

Rename or delete one. Open it, change its name and tap Save — a tag's new name also shows on the item it tracks. Delete beacon (or Delete tag) asks first, then removes it from your list, every device and your AI context; an item a deleted tag tracked stops being tracked. A deleted tag isn't gone for good: scan its label and tap Set up to add it again. To stop a beacon alerting without losing it, pause it instead. Chat can do both: "rename my Keys tag to Front door keys", "delete my old wallet tag" — it asks you to confirm a delete. Remove from this phone is different: it only stops this phone watching for it.

You can't change anyone else's; staff and a brand's admins look after the beacons in shared places like museums and shops.

You add a tag by scanning its label and tapping Set up, not by typing its identity into a form. The app hears the tag right beside you, and that is the proof it's in your hand. It is also why nobody can claim a beacon they don't have.

When you delete your account, the beacons, tags, Zones and places you own personally are deleted with it. Beacons that belong to a group, such as a brand's venue, stay with that group.

In the console, give it a name that describes its location ("Kitchen Counter", "Front Door", "Workshop Bench"). Once it has one, that name appears in your chat context whenever you are nearby: the AI stops saying "you're near beacon Minor 7832" and starts saying "you're in the kitchen."

How a beacon behaves — its alert mode (a notification, one with Chat/Dismiss buttons, or silent), its alert text, its AI context (the words added to the start of your question whenever the beacon or tag is detected — "This is the kitchen pantry — check expiry dates on what's stored here"), how prominently its context reaches the AI, and whether it is live or paused — is part of the beacon's registry record too. Change it from the beacon's settings on the phone, from Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons on the web, from the web admin console, or by asking your AI assistant; whichever you use, every app and every device that reads the beacon sees the change, and it survives restarts. Only the beacon's owner, an admin for its brand, or staff can change these. Linking a beacon to your own items and documents is stored on the record the same way. A snooze is different: it is yours, not the beacon's. Snoozing a beacon quiets its alerts for you until the time you chose, on all your devices, and nobody else's alerts change. To snooze one, tap Snooze 1h or Snooze 24h on the beacon's notification (it works from the lock screen, without opening the app), or in the beacon's settings on the phone or on the web — or ask your AI assistant ("snooze the lobby beacon until tonight"). The beacon's settings show a snooze while it lasts and let you clear it early.

#Where You Are, at the Top of Every Screen

The header carries your street address, and under it — when the app is confident — the name of the Zone you're standing in: Study, Kitchen, Flight Deck. Just the name, nothing decorating it.

It is always the Zone, never a single beacon. A Zone is elected by everything your phone can hear at once — the more of a Zone's beacons you hear, and the louder, the more certain the app is that you're in it — so one beacon with a flat battery doesn't lose you the room. If a beacon isn't in a Zone yet, its own name stands in until you assign it one in the admin console.

Bluetooth hardware that isn't in your registry never appears here. Strangers' beacons, a shop's, a conference badge's — your phone hears them, and ignores them as places. If the line is blank, nothing your registry knows about is currently within earshot.

#Seeing What the Phone Can Hear

Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons → Ranging shows every beacon and tag your phone is picking up right now, with its identity and live signal. It is a read-out, not an editor: it is where you go to answer "is this thing actually transmitting, and how strongly?" — when siting a beacon, checking a flat battery, or working out why a Zone is not resolving.

Registered beacons reach your phone from the central registry automatically; there is nothing to import and nothing to search for by hand.

#Via Chat

Your AI assistant is beacon-aware. Try these prompts:

"Where am I right now?" — The AI tells you which beacons are in range
"What's near the kitchen beacon?" — Asks about inventory associated with that location
"When was the last time I was in the garage?" — Checks your beacon visit history
"What beacons have I seen today?" — Lists your recent beacon encounters

#Via Claude Desktop (MCP)

When connected via MCP, the get_user_context tool automatically includes nearby beacon information in its response. You can pass a focus parameter with type: "beacon" and the beacon's ID to get context specific to that beacon's location.

The focused beacon comes back as structured data as well as prose, and that includes its battery and the temperature where it sits — each with the timestamp of when the reading was taken, and with telemetry_join naming the reason when there is no reading at all. So an outside assistant can answer "is the lobby beacon dead?" and "how warm is the gallery?" with the same facts the app has, and can tell you the reading is four days old rather than presenting it as the temperature now.

Linked documents work the same way as linked items — a catalogue or manual on the beacon reaches the AI with its title and summary, alongside any linked items.

link_beacon points a beacon you own (or, for staff, any beacon) at an inventory item or document — "link the Study beacon to my Hi-Fi" — after which the linked thing's curated details (description, maker, value, purchase date) flow into AI context automatically whenever the beacon is sighted. One beacon can carry up to eight linked things, which is what lets a single beacon cover several exhibits standing close together: each link_beacon call adds to the beacon's list rather than replacing it, and every linked thing you own reaches the AI when the beacon is sighted. To drop just one, ask — "unlink the scone recipe from my Pantry beacon" — and the others stay; kind none clears them all. Ask "what's linked to my Pantry beacon?" to hear the list first.

#The page a beacon points at

A beacon record can carry a web address — the exhibit's page, the product's page, a live dashboard for the case the tag is stuck to. It does two things: it gives the Zone's own card an Info button, and the alert card that pops up when a tag is heard, and it tells the AI there is a page it can read, so "what does this say?" or "is it still in range on temperature?" is answered from the page rather than guessed. Info on an exhibit card goes to the thing itself — the item's full record with its story, its documents and where it lives, or the document — because that is what the card is; the beacon's page is the fallback for a card that is not a thing. (The short line under a Radar card's title is the exception: it reports only the attached thing's own page, never the beacon's — four items on one beacon must not all recite the beacon's document.) The address lives on the registry record, so it is set in the web admin beacon editor, not on the phone.

It doesn't have to start with https://. demo.wiliot.com is an address and is treated as one throughout: the Zone card's Info button opens it, the AI reads the page behind it, and an exhibit you save from Radar keeps it. Before, a beacon written that way was silently treated as having no page at all. The editor fills the https:// in as you leave the field, so what you see is what the record stores — and if you typed something that only looks like an address (a filename, say), you see that before you save rather than after.

The field can also hold something that isn't a web address — an internal reference, or a note. When it does, the AI isn't told to go read anything, and the Zone card offers no Info button rather than one that does nothing when you tap it. An exhibit card still has its Info button: it opens the thing's own record, which needs no web address at all.

#Teaching the App Your Zones (Walk & Teach)

After you've placed your beacons, teach the app how your space actually sounds:

Open Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons → Walk & Teach
You'll see every zone (live beacon) deployed at your location, each with a calibration chip — calibrated, needs work, or never verified
Tap Start a teaching walk, then simply walk your space, tapping the zone you're in each time you arrive
Watch the live ticker — each "app agreed in 4.2s ✓" is the app confirming it followed you
Tap Finish walk to see your report card: overall zone accuracy, average switch lag, and a bar per zone

A three-minute walk is plenty. Zones the app struggled with get the lowest bars — usually that means the beacon is hidden inside a cabinet, too close to a neighboring zone, or has a dying battery. Move it, then walk just those zones again. Your walks are also recorded (privately, to your own account) so detection can be tuned for your specific space over time.

#Venue Invitations — Straight Into the Tour

Venues that deploy beacons (a museum, a zoo, an open house) can invite you into the guided Radar experience the moment you arrive — no need to find Scan and pick Radar yourself. The invitation belongs to the venue, not to any single beacon: every beacon the venue deploys acts as a trigger for one shared welcome message.

Two ways the invitation reaches you:

A notification, if the app is in the background (or not running) when you arrive at the venue. Tap it and you land straight in Radar. This needs notification permission and background location ("Always") — if either is missing, the app stays quiet and simply offers the in-app version next time you open it.
A full-screen welcome inside the app, if you open the app at the venue (say, from a poster QR code at the gate). The first time a venue beacon is recognized during your visit you'll see the venue's welcome with Start the tour, Not now, and a "Don't show this again for this venue" checkbox. The welcome can appear moments after you open the app — so for its first few seconds, only its buttons respond; a tap on the dimmed background (which normally means Not now) does nothing until the card has plausibly been read. A tap that was already on its way to the screen can't silently wave the tour away.

Politeness rules, in order:

The master switch in Settings → Location Notifications turns all venue invitations off. It's saved to your account, so it survives reinstalls and applies on every device.
"Don't show this again for this venue" (or Mute on a Radar card) is permanent for that venue — and it's saved to your account, so it survives reinstalls and follows you across devices.

Every one of these is reversible. Settings → Location Notifications lists your muted venues under Muted venues — flip one back on to get invited again (the web interface has the same list). Or just ask in chat: "unmute the tour invitations at the zoo" — the change reaches all your devices. Flipping a venue back on also starts it fresh: the next time the app hears one of its beacons, you're invited — you don't wait for the four-hour clock. 3. Not now quiets the venue for the rest of the current visit. 4. Even with none of the above, a venue invites you once per visit. A visit is over once the app hasn't heard any of the venue's beacons for four hours — so stepping out for coffee doesn't end it, but coming back tomorrow does, and you're invited again. (This used to depend on your phone noticing you had left; if it missed that moment you were never invited there again. Now it just counts the silence.) 5. If you're already in Radar, nothing interrupts you. You're already on the tour.

Your own home venue invites you exactly once, ever: tick Don't show this again and it stays quiet for you — while guests with the app still get their welcome.

#Show me around Radar — your first named exhibit card, explained

The first time a named exhibit card appears in Radar for your account — whether a venue invited you in or you found Radar from Scan yourself — the app shows you around. It waits for the Zone to settle first, and for a card with a name: a card still arriving (the shimmer) is nothing to point at, so the bubbles start on the first card that has one, even if a shimmer sits above it. Six short speech bubbles sprout from the actual controls, one at a time: the card itself, then AI, Listen, Info, Save, and finally the venue header's hands-free Listen, the one most people never find. Each bubble is one line with a step counter and Next; tapping the dimmed screen also moves you on. The buttons under the bubbles are switched off while it runs, so nothing opens and nothing is charged until you have seen what each one does.

There are two ✕ while it runs, and they do different things. The mustard ✕ inside the bubble ends the walkthrough early and counts as seen; it stays dim for a second after each bubble appears, so a finger already on its way to the screen skips one step rather than the whole thing. The ✕ in the top-left corner is Radar's own Exit — live at once — and it leaves Radar without the walkthrough counting as seen, so it comes back next time. Finish or skip, and it never shows itself again — that's saved to your account, so it holds across reinstalls and devices. (Radar only exists on the phone. The tours that exist in both places, the five parts of your Context, are counted separately for each: finishing one on your phone still runs it the first time you open that section on the web, because the web puts things somewhere else and knowing your way around one does not teach you the other.) Walking into another zone or leaving Radar mid-way doesn't count as having seen it; it returns next session.

Want it back? Ask in chat — "show me around Radar again" — and it runs on your next exhibit card. Or press Show me around again in Settings → Application Behavior → Getting Started on the phone, or Settings → App Behavior on the web; either one re-arms every tour, on both.

#The nearest exhibit floats to the top — and keeps moving

Radar orders its cards by signal, nearest first, so in a big gallery the things in front of you are above the fold. The order follows a smoothed reading, not the last raw tick, and a card has to beat the one above it by a clear margin to overtake — two exhibits at the same distance no longer trade places on noise. When one does overtake, you see it happen: the card springs up past the one it beat instead of jumping into its new place (with Reduce Motion on in iOS Settings, it simply lands there).

Walking into a new Zone is a change of scene. The new Zone's backdrop and name slide in and push the last Zone off the screen: from the right when you're moving on, from the left when you walk back to a Zone you've already been in, which is also how the ‹ arrow under the Zone's name takes you back. Then its exhibits drop in one after another, top first. A card for something you've only just come in range of drops in on its own, straight away. With Reduce Motion on, the new Zone simply appears.

It moves while you stand still, too. Your phone used to listen for beacons only when it felt you move, so the order froze the moment you stopped and caught up a while after you set off again. While Radar is open and on screen it listens with everything it has — both radios, without a break; leave Radar, switch to Chat, or pocket the phone and it drops back to the everyday listening described under How the phone listens, so an unattended screen never costs you battery.

A Zone's own beacon counts too: if it has items or documents attached, they show as Radar cards while you're in its Zone, and a Zone beacon with nothing attached shows none.

Tap a card's ✕ and it stays gone for the rest of your Radar visit rather than returning on the next refresh.

#Track an Item with a Bluetooth Tag

Fixed beacons mark places; a Bluetooth tag rides on a thing. Open any inventory item and you'll find a TRACKING card just under its documents:

Attach a tag: tap + Tag and pick from your own unassociated tags — nearby ones pulse at the top, sorted by signal; your other registered tags sit dimmed below. Fixed Zone beacons never appear here. Picking one links it immediately (undo is one tap away — no confirmation dialogs).
At link time the item's Last seen is stamped from where your phone is standing — Zone > Beacon when the zone has several beacons, plain Zone otherwise — because the tag, the item, and your phone are all in your hand at that moment. No beacons around? If the app already has location permission it uses your phone's own location (GPS/Wi-Fi) instead, shown as "Current location". Neither available: no stamp — never a made-up one.
The tag's category becomes Asset Tracker automatically, and if the tag had no name it takes the item's name.
Chat knows: ask "is my drill tracked?", "which of my tags are free?", or "track my suitcase with the Minew tag". The web interface has the same card on item detail.
Privacy is built in: your own asset tags are always visible to you, and never visible to anyone else — even someone standing in the same Zone. This isn't a setting; it can't be switched off (which is why Asset Tracker appears in Location Notifications settings as an informational row with no toggle).
Unlink from the card any time; the tag stays registered (and stays an Asset Tracker) ready for its next item.

#Setting up a new tag by scanning its label

A tag fresh out of the box carries a QR code with its Bluetooth address printed on it. Point Scan → AR or AI Lookup at that code and a card appears at once — the label is the whole answer, so the card needs no network and appears even with no signal — wearing a tag icon and titled Tag, with the tag's address beside the title (under it, on the card floating over the tag in AR) — so a tray holding two or three tags still tells you which is which. Tapping the card in AR to dock it keeps both, and the docked card stays its usual size. An assistant connected to your ambientChat context reads the same label the same way: ask it "what is c3-00-00-51-cc-e7?" and it knows it is a tag, with its address in the one standard spelling. What happens next depends on what the tag itself is broadcasting:

Nobody has set this tag up yet — with a Set up button. The app is hearing the tag right beside you (that is the proof it's in your hand, not just a photograph of a label), and the button does the rest.
Already set up — somewhere.com — the tag points at a page; the Info button opens it.
Already set up (or Already set up — somewhere.com, with Info) — it's yours and done. A Minew tag also offers Set up again: if the tag is broadcasting different values from the standard profile — say someone tuned it in the vendor's app — the card first says so, with the numbers ("This tag holds different values — interval 100 ms → 900 ms, power 0 dBm → −20 dBm. Set it up again?"), and waits for you to tap Set up again before anything is written. The question stands for fifteen seconds; after that, tapping asks again, so the card never overwrites a tag on numbers it read a while ago. A tag that already holds the standard profile is simply written afresh.
Someone already set this tag up — it belongs to somebody else. Nothing is offered; the app won't write to it.
Yours — not set up yet — you claimed this Minew before the app could program it; Set up does that now. Set-up didn't finish — try again and Set-up failed — try again mean what they say; Set up picks up where it left off.
Listening for this tag… then Move closer — not hearing this tag if the radio never hears it. Check the tag is switched on and close by.

The card updates within a second or two of any set-up — it doesn't keep saying "Nobody has set this tag up yet" over a tag that just became yours.

Set up does one of two things, and the app decides which from what the radio heard:

An Identiv tag (fixed firmware, nothing to write): the tag becomes yours on the spot. "This tag is yours. Add a link to give it a card."
A Minew tag (the ones we use for tracking): the app programs it over Bluetooth — reserves it an identity on your network, writes the standard tag profile (iBeacon at 900 ms, −20 dBm, with temperature on TLM), reads the settings back, then listens to the air to confirm the tag is really broadcasting what it was told to. That can take up to about a minute for a brand-new tag, and the card itself says what it is doing the whole time, on its own status line — no pop-up over it — with its button greyed out until it's done: Looking for the tag…, Reserving its identity…, Programming the tag…, Checking it on the air…, Recording the set-up… — and then "Set up. This tag now broadcasts as yours." Only then is the tag marked live in the registry — a write the air doesn't confirm is never marked as done. A brand-new Minew straight from the box advertises only every ten seconds or so, so give it a moment: if the app can't reach it in time it says "Couldn't reach the tag in time — it only speaks every few seconds. Try again."

If something goes wrong, the message says what: "The tag didn't accept the app's handshake" means the tag refused the app's secure connection before anything was written — trying again gets the same answer, and the app has recorded what the tag sent so the cause can be fixed; "The tag hung up during the handshake. Hold it close and try again" means the tag dropped the connection partway through the secure connection on every try — hold it right beside the phone and tap Set up again; "Move closer" if the tag went quiet; "This tag has a password we don't know" if it was set up elsewhere first (factory-reset it in the vendor's app, then try again); "Written, but on the air minor is 7, not 42" if the tag didn't take the write — try again, and the whole profile is written afresh. A tag whose firmware we haven't verified is still set up, but the factory password is left in place and the message tells you so.

Once a tag is yours, attach it to a thing from the item's TRACKING card as below.

#The item follows the tag

The link-time stamp is only the starting point. Whenever one of your devices hears a linked tag and knows where it is, the item's Last seen quietly moves with it:

Standing in a Zone? The item is stamped there (Zone > Beacon when the zone has several beacons). No Zone but location permission already granted? Your phone's own fix is used instead. Neither? Nothing is written — never a made-up location.
Updates are coalesced: the app writes only when the tag's zone actually changes, or hourly as a keep-alive — carrying a tagged item around does not generate a stream of writes.
The card can never contradict itself: while the tag is Here now and your phone knows the Zone you're standing in, the location line shows that Zone — not a stale stamp from two days ago.
It's your account's devices only for now. Wider, privacy-preserving crowd-sourcing (other permitted people's devices helping locate your tags — without them learning anything) is on the roadmap.

#Left behind — walking away no longer drags the item with you

Bluetooth carries through walls, so "my phone can hear the tag" never meant "the tag is with me" — and it no longer pretends to. When you walk from one Zone to another, the app checks whether the tag actually moved with you: a tag in your pocket keeps the same signal through the crossing, while a tag left behind fades exactly in step with the Zone beacons you just walked away from (same wall, same distance — the beacons are the calibration). Only clear came-with-me evidence moves the item:

Left it behind? The card says so, positively: "Left in Hallway · 5 minutes ago" — the stored Zone with the moment you walked away. The item's location does not jump to wherever you are now, even while the tag is still faintly audible through the wall. Chat gets the same fact: "did I leave my tape measure?" → "you left it in the Hallway 5 minutes ago."
Can't tell? (Open-plan crossings, a tag heard only once.) The stored location simply stands — a wrong "it came with me" overwrites the truth, while a delayed update corrects itself the moment you and the tag are clearly together again.
Getting back together is automatic: pick the item up and cross a Zone boundary with it, walk back into the Zone where it lives, or just settle somewhere with the tag strongly in range for a few minutes — following resumes with no taps.
Every crossing decision is recorded on the item's event log (you can see the reasoning trail in recent changes), and nothing here sends a notification — leave-behind alerts are a separate, future feature.

#Where has it been? — the location history

Tap a tracked item's TRACKING row and a sheet opens with the item's location history — every place it has been, newest first: live tag sightings ("Tag heard here"), plus locations you set by hand or that were stamped when the tag was linked ("Set manually"). Long trails scroll (with a Show older row at the end); the Stop tracking and Use a different tag controls stay pinned at the bottom, so managing the tag never requires scrolling past the history. The web interface opens the same list from the item's TRACKING card.

Chat knows the trail too: ask "where has my tape measure been?" or "where was the drill before the garage?" (For where something is right now, the Last seen line — or just asking — is still the answer; the history is the trail behind it.)

In the same sheet, Share journey report turns the item's last seven days into a page anyone with the link can open — no account, no app. It shows, top to bottom:

a status line that leads with whatever is wrong (a temperature excursion, a partial record) or, when nothing is, where the item was last seen;
the headline numbers — how many stops at how many sites, over how long, the temperature range, and any excursions;
a map between sites when it travelled between them — a plain drawing with numbered pins, dashed where nothing saw it on the road;
each site's zones as a bar sized by how long it stayed, then the stops — one compact row each with its icon, when it arrived (with the date when the stay spans days), time spent, temperature, and how each is known — Tag heard here, Scanned here, Set by hand or Inferred;
the temperature at that site, with a line at every move;
every stop as a table, folded away until you open it.

The page fits the screen it's opened on. On a laptop it's a dashboard: the item and its numbers beside the map, and each site's stops beside its temperature chart, which stays in view while you scroll its stops. On a phone each stop is two lines and the table is folded, so a week of moves is a couple of screens rather than five.

The page is live: carry the tag to another zone, reopen the link, and the move is there. A stop nothing has seen leave says not observed since rather than pretending the item stayed. Positions on the map are rounded to about 10 km unless you ask for exact ones, because a public link to your home should not print your address. On the phone the link goes to the share sheet; on the web the page opens in a new tab and the link is copied. Tapping it again shares the same link. The report is saved as a document in a Journey Reports folder and appears on the item's documents; stop sharing it like any shared document.

Chat can do it too: "make a journey report for the tape measure and give me the link."

Several items on one page. Tap Select, tick up to 25 items, then tap Journey (the footsteps button) among the selection's actions — the phone hands the link to the share sheet; the web opens the page in a new tab and copies its link. Inside an open folder, Journey beside Share at the top does the ticking for you: it opens Select with the folder's tracked items already ticked (untagged items never are, so a report can't come out empty by accident) and says which report a tap will make. Tap Journey without changing anything and you share the folder's live page — an item filed into the folder later appears on the same link; untick or add items and you share exactly those. The hint has its own Journey button, so you can share straight from it. With a chip or search narrowing the folder, Journey ticks the tracked items you can see and shares them as a list. A folder with nothing tracked shows no Journey; one with more than 25 tracked items, or one too big to load at once, opens Select with nothing ticked so you choose. With more than 25 ticked, Journey dims and says the limit when tapped. You can also choose Share journey report from a folder's menu — long-press the folder on the phone, or its ⋯ on the web — for the whole folder's live page. Or ask chat for a report on up to 25 items — "make a journey report for the crates in my Demo Kit folder", or name them. The page then shows one row per item on one clock, so items that were somewhere together line up; each item keeps its own colour and name everywhere on the page. Temperature is drawn per venue with one line per item, the map shows each item's route, and the stop table gains an Item column. A report on a folder follows the folder: an item filed into it later appears on the same link. A folder of more than 25 items is refused with its size rather than cut short, and an empty folder says it has nothing to report on — and if a folder grows past 25 after its report was made, the link shows the snapshot saved with the report and says why.

#Here now, heard a while ago — how the presence dot thinks

The card shows presence in honest tiers rather than a jumpy on/off:

Here now (green dot) — the tag was heard within its liveness window of about a minute and a half. Phones hear tags in pulses (scan duty cycles, short ranging bursts), so the window is sized to cover a full pulse cycle: a tag sitting next to you no longer flickers "out of range" between pulses.
Not in range · heard 4 minutes ago — nothing this instant, but recent: from this phone's radio memory or from whichever of your devices heard it last.
Not in range · Study · 2 days ago — nothing recent to report; the stored location line stands, with its age.

#A beacon's battery

Fixed beacons broadcast their battery level exactly as tags do, and any of your devices that hears one reports it. Until now the app recorded that quietly and showed it nowhere, which made a flat beacon indistinguishable from bad signal or a detection bug — the single most misleading failure in the whole system, because the app keeps behaving almost normally.

You can now see it in three places:

Ranging (Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons → Ranging) — the beacon table shows Battery: 82% (OK) on every row, coloured amber for Low and red for Critical. (The older Manage Registry and Browse Registry screens were retired; the registry itself is managed from the web app.)
The admin console's beacon list — the same reading, plus a Critical / Low / OK filter that now works in the Beacons view rather than only for tags. "Show me every beacon that needs a battery" is one click.
Chat — ask "is the garage beacon dead?" or "which of my beacons need batteries?" and the assistant reads the same numbers you see.

Three states, plus one that matters more than it looks:

What you see	What to do
`82% (OK)`	Nothing
`18% (Low)`	Order batteries
`6% (Critical)`	Change it now, or detection in that Zone degrades
`80% (stale)`	The beacon has gone quiet. It reported this once, then nothing for a month — it is probably dead.
`no reading`	Never reported. Normal for beacons not provisioned by us, or without their MAC on the record. A beacon of a brand that never broadcasts its own address also needs an Eddystone-UID broadcast — see Using a non-Minew beacon below.

The last two look the same at a glance and mean opposite things. stale is the alert: something that used to talk has stopped. no reading just means we've never heard from it, which for a third-party beacon is expected.

A beacon needs its MAC address on its registry record for any of this — the battery broadcast is matched by MAC. The admin beacon form says so on the MAC field.

#A beacon's temperature — how warm is that Zone?

A beacon's TLM broadcast carries its temperature, and the app reports it alongside the beacon's battery. A fixed beacon marks a place, so that reading belongs to the Zone it marks, not to a thing — which means the beacon in the garage can answer "how cold is it out there?"

The web app's beacon list shows Temperature: 21.5°C beside the battery, with when it was read. On the phone, a beacon's stored temperature is not shown yet — the Ranging screen's Tags section shows the live reading for tags the phone is hearing right now, and beacons are on the way (AMB-831).
Chat — ask "how warm is the gallery?" or "is the garage freezing?" and the assistant reads the same number. Just standing in the Zone is enough: you don't have to tap the beacon first. Ask "how warm is it in here?" while the header shows the Zone, and the reading is already in the conversation — in the app, in the web interface, and on the connector alike.
Other AI apps you've connected (Claude Desktop and anything else on the ambientChat connector) get the same answer. Tap through to a beacon there and its battery and temperature travel with it, each stamped with when it was read — so an outside assistant can tell you the gallery is 21.4°C and that the reading is four days old, instead of quoting the number as if it were taken just now.

A reading is a moment, not a standing fact. The app always shows when it was taken, because a number from four days ago is not "the temperature now".

There is no schedule — a beacon is read when someone walks past it. Your phone only hears a beacon while its Bluetooth radio happens to be awake, which depends on what else the app is doing. So a reading might be three minutes old or three days old, and the app always tells you which. When two readings do arrive close together we keep one per quarter hour, so a busy building doesn't file thousands of near-identical readings a day — but that's a limit on how much we store, not a promise about how fresh your number is.

What you see	What it means
`21.5°C · read 3 minutes ago`	Somebody passed this beacon a moment ago
`21.5°C · read 2 days ago`	Nobody has been near this beacon since
`no reading`	Nothing heard yet. It will appear the first time a device passes it — for a beacon of a brand that never broadcasts its own address, once it has an Eddystone-UID broadcast (see Using a non-Minew beacon below)
`no reading — no MAC`	This beacon can never report. Its record has no MAC address, and readings are matched by MAC. Add it from the device label
`no reading — bad MAC`	The address on file isn't a full six-byte address, so nothing matches it. It looks filled in but identifies nothing — retype it

The last two are the ones worth acting on: they don't mean the place has no temperature, they mean the record can't receive one.

Not yet: a beacon's temperature history. Tags have a graph (see below) because a tag is attached to a thing, and a thing has a history of what it's been through. A place doesn't work that way, so for now a beacon shows its current reading only. A history graph per Zone is planned.

#Using a non-Minew beacon (e.g. Blue Charm)

Any iBeacon detects a Zone. Battery and temperature need one more thing: the phone has to know which beacon a reading came from, and an iPhone never reveals a Bluetooth device's address. So the beacon has to say it.

Blue Charm (KKM) beacons work as they are. Alongside its iBeacon, a Blue Charm broadcasts a small status message carrying its own address and, on most models, its true battery level, and the app reads it — no setup. All you need:

The beacon's record has its MAC in the MAC field (admin console), as for any beacon.
Its TLM broadcast is on in KBeaconPro — TLM is what carries the temperature.

Minew beacons work as they are too: their own status broadcast does the same job.

Other brands that never broadcast their own address can name themselves with a standard Eddystone-UID broadcast, if their app can add one:

Keep the iBeacon broadcast (it detects the Zone) and turn TLM on.
Add an Eddystone UID broadcast.
Namespace: your network's iBeacon UUID (shown on the beacon's record) in Eddystone's 10-byte form — its first 8 and last 12 characters, dashes removed. For the ambientChat network 34C1E779-FB68-4EF8-8501-CAB296118F6E that is 34C1E779CAB296118F6E.
Instance: the beacon's own MAC address without the colons — AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF becomes AABBCCDDEEFF.

A UID broadcast whose namespace isn't one of your networks is ignored, so a neighbour's beacon can never be mistaken for yours.

Once a phone walks past, the battery and temperature show on the admin console's beacon list and in chat; the phone's Ranging screen shows the battery.

#The tag's battery

Minew tags broadcast their battery level passively, and any of your devices that hears one reports it (coalesced — never a flood of writes). The TRACKING card shows a battery state, not a jumpy percentage — tag batteries read "100% for years, then a cliff", so a state is the honest signal:

OK — nothing to do.
Low (amber) — order batteries.
Replace (red) — act now, or detection degrades.
— — no recent reading: the tag may be new here, out of range for a month, or already dead.

The card also says when a tag was last heard by any of your devices. Ask chat: "which of my tags need batteries?" Staff can see the raw percentage (and filter tags by Critical / Low / OK) in the admin console's beacon list.

#The tag's temperature

The same telemetry broadcast (Eddystone TLM) that carries battery also carries the tag's temperature — so a tag on a toolbox, a guitar case, or a cool-box quietly becomes a thermometer on that thing:

Live reading: while the tag is in range, the TRACKING row shows the current temperature (e.g. 22.5°) next to the battery state. No reading? The slot simply isn't there — some tags don't broadcast temperature, and the app never shows a made-up number.
History graph: tap the TRACKING row and the manage sheet opens with a temperature graph above the location list — pinch to zoom, drag sideways to pan. It records at most one point per minute (readings in between are collapsed), shows minute detail for the last 48 hours and hourly beyond, and marks location changes as dots on the line — so "it moved to the car and warmed up" is one picture. The web interface shows the same graph with 48h / 7d / All range buttons.
Chat knows: ask "what temperature is my tape measure at?" or "temperature history for the cool-box — did it get warm?"
Recording needs the tag linked to an item (the readings land on the item's history log) and, like battery, a registration that carries the tag's MAC.
Tag setup tip: in the tag vendor's app (e.g. BeaconSET+), enable a TLM slot and give it a 3–5 second advertising interval — that comfortably feeds the one-a-minute recording while sparing the tag's battery; faster intervals buy nothing here.

#In range, last heard, and the MAC address

A tag can be registered two ways, and the card is honest about what each can know:

Registered by identity (UUID/Major/Minor) only — the card's live Here now dot and last-heard work: the phone hears these tags in short listening bursts (the same ones that power Zone detection), and the liveness window above keeps the dot steady between bursts, with the honest "heard X ago" fallback after it lapses. Battery, though, stays "—" forever: the battery broadcast is matched by the tag's MAC address, which this kind of registration doesn't have.
Registered with its MAC (printed on the Minew label — the admin beacon form reminds you when a tag is missing one): everything above plus battery reporting.

So if a tag shows a live dot but a permanent "—" battery, nothing is broken — add its MAC in the admin console's beacon form, or wait for QR provisioning, which writes it automatically at setup.

The card tells you this itself. When a tag can never report — no MAC on file, or one that isn't a full six-byte address — the battery's "—" carries a small ⓘ and becomes tappable. Tap it and the app names the cause and the fix in a sentence, so you needn't know any of the above to act on it. The web interface shows the same explanation, opened by clicking the same spot. A tag whose MAC is fine shows no ⓘ: there, "—" just means "not heard lately", and there is nothing to fix.

#How the phone listens

There is nothing to set. The app tunes its own radio, so you never have to choose between finding your things and keeping your battery:

Everyday — while the app is open and you are signed in, on any screen, the phone listens for tags at a light duty (a fifth of the time) and for beacons whenever you move. (The first time, iOS asks you to allow Bluetooth — that happens once you have signed in, not on the sign-in screen.) That is what feeds the nearby-tags chip, the item follows the tag, and a tag's temperature and battery.
Attending — on the screens that exist to hear things, it listens with everything it has: Radar, the camera with a tag's label in view, a tag being set up, and the Ranging screen's Always Range.
In the background — the radio is off; iOS still wakes the app when you enter a place you have beacons in.

The header's scan-wave arcs show what the radio is actually doing right now — mustard while it is listening at the everyday duty, red while a screen has it fully on, nothing when it is off. (Until September 2026 there was a Settings → Bluetooth page with an Off / Eco / Normal / Turbo scan rate and a handful of tuning fields. It governed only the everyday listening — every attending screen ignored it — and its default was Off, so most people had never turned it on. It is gone; the app owns the tuning.)

#The Bluetooth chip in the header

Whenever at least one of your tags is nearby, a small Bluetooth mark with a count appears in the app's header, next to the Inventory and Documents counts — on every screen, chat included. The count is tags only (your fixed Zone beacons never inflate it), and it follows the same honest liveness window as the TRACKING card's dot, so the chip and the cards always agree. No tags around? The chip simply isn't there — no zero.

Tap the chip and you land on your Inventory with a Nearby filter pill applied: just the items whose tag is currently in range, shown as their normal cards — tap one to open its full item view. The pill sits beside "Shared with me" in the filter row; tap it again (or after the tags move away) to dismiss it and see everything. This replaces the old purple "Bluetooth Tags" banner that used to appear in chat.

Every tag the chip counts shows up in that list. A nearby tag that isn't on an item yet — a new one, or one you've just taken off something — appears above the items under Tags nearby with no item attached, with when it was last heard and an Attach to an item button. The button opens the tag with its item picker already up: search, tap the item, done, and when you come back the tag row has turned into that item's card. A tag that is registered but isn't one of yours is listed by name and marked Not one of your tags, with nothing to attach.

#One debug screen for the whole radio

Debugging a deployment — beacons or tags — happens in one place: Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons → Ranging. (It used to be called "Bluetooth Ranging", and before that "Bluetooth Beacon Ranging"; it now sits under a heading that already says Bluetooth.) Fixed Zone beacons fill the table at the top; below it, a Tags section lists every tag your phone is hearing right now, live: signal strength, a liveness dot that follows the same honest window as the TRACKING card, when it was last heard, battery (staff band plus the raw percentage), and temperature when the tag reports one. The rows come from the same live radio memory the TRACKING card and the header chip read, so all three always agree. The old Bluetooth Tag Registry screen — which read a slower, colder copy and could claim a tag was silent while it sat inches from the phone — is retired.

#Tags that go by their address, not a UUID

Not every tag broadcasts an iBeacon identity. Some — Identiv tags among them — identify themselves by their MAC address, the radio's own hardware address. A tag announces that address one of two ways: inside its manufacturer data, or simply by using the address as its Bluetooth name. Both are now recognised, in any of the spellings a MAC gets written in, so these tags register properly, and the things you attach to them show on Radar just like any other registered tag's.

If you register one of these yourself, pick Bluetooth Local Name as the format rather than Apple iBeacon — that's what tells the app to identify it by its address. A tag registered this way needs no Major or Minor at all.

These are heard only by the Bluetooth scanning radio, not by the iBeacon ranging radio — so for a while they reached Radar tours but appeared nowhere on the Ranging screen. They do now: once your phone hears one and the registry recognises it, it joins the beacons list on that screen with its address where a UUID would be, and its signal updates live while the screen is open. Fixed things stay in the beacons list; the Tags section below it keeps meaning tags you carry around.

Where they differ is what you'll see written under the name. A record shows the identity that actually identifies it: a MAC-identified tag shows its MAC, an iBeacon shows its UUID and Major/Minor. That is the format's identity, not a guess from whether the record is filed as a beacon or a tag — so a fixed MAC-identified exhibit shows its MAC too. The same rule now applies in the web interface's registry list, which used to show some of these records a UUID that identified nothing.

#Tips & Tricks

Place beacons at fixed locations, not on things that move. A beacon on your kitchen shelf is reliable context. A beacon in your pocket is just confusing.
Do a teaching walk after moving furniture or beacons. Radio shadows shift when the physical world does. Walk & Teach takes three minutes and tells you exactly which zones need attention.
The app detects beacons even when backgrounded. iOS region monitoring works in the background, so you'll get beacon context even if ambientChat isn't in the foreground. The app wakes briefly to note the beacon, then goes back to sleep. Very efficient, very polite.
Beacon names flow directly into chat context. The more descriptive your beacon names, the better the AI's location-aware answers. "Kitchen Pantry Shelf 2" beats "Beacon 1" every time.
The beacon list shows the present, not the past. The app's local beacon cache starts empty at every launch and fills back in — within a second or two — from what the radio actually hears right now. Each entry lives for one hour and is then removed until the beacon is heard again, so a beacon list full of yesterday's locations is a thing of the past. The Refresh button on the ranging screen empties the cache the same way and lets it refill from live sightings.

#Making Your Own Places

A venue is a place — your house, your office, a store. A zone is a room or area inside one: Kitchen, Garage, Meeting Room 2. Beacons live in zones, and zones live in venues, which is how "what's in the garage?" has an answer.

Until now only staff could create one. Now anyone can, from the app or just by asking in chat:

"Add my house as a place, and put a Kitchen zone in it."

A place you create is yours alone. Nobody else can see it, search it, or stumble across it — not other ambientChat users, not visitors to your home with the app. That matters more than it sounds: a venue carries an address, and your home is not something to publish by accident.

Three kinds of place:

Kind	Who can see it	Who can make one
Personal (what you get by default)	Only you	Anyone
Group	Everyone in that group	Anyone in the group
Public — a museum, a shop, somewhere strangers should find	Everyone	Staff only (brand-admin or superuser)

#Two people, one building

If you and a colleague both add "3M HQ", you each get your own — and neither of you ever sees the other's. That isn't a bug being tolerated; it's the design. Your place is 3M HQ as you know it, with your zones and your things in it, and there is no argument to have because there is no shared record to argue over.

The one duplicate that is refused is a duplicate of your own: two places both called "Home" would be indistinguishable in every picker, and a beacon attached to the wrong one fails silently. You'll be told which existing place clashes so you can use it instead — or rename one to "Home" and "Beach House".

#What you can change afterwards

Rename a place you created, or move its coordinates — from the app, admin web, or chat. Editing never changes who can see it.

Making a personal place public isn't possible yet, and won't be until there's a way to prove you speak for the place — a verified email at the company's domain, or a beacon we can actually see deployed there. Without that, anyone could claim anyone's building. Until then, personal and group places cover everything except listing somewhere for strangers.

#Options

Setting	What It Does	Default
Beacon Monitoring	Master toggle for all beacon detection	On
Alert Mode	Sound or silent notification when entering a beacon zone	Silent
Snooze	Silence one beacon's alerts for you: 1 hour or 24 hours from its notification or its settings, any time you like by asking the assistant	Not snoozed
Beacon Name	Friendly name displayed in beacon list and chat context	Unnamed (shows UUID/Major/Minor)
Venue Invitations	Master toggle for venue arrival invitations (notification + in-app welcome)	On
Don't show again (per venue)	Permanently silences one venue's invitation; saved to your account	Off

#Known Limitations

Bluetooth must be enabled. If Bluetooth is off, no beacons are detected. The app cannot force Bluetooth on — that's between you and your Settings app.
Detection range varies wildly. Depending on walls, furniture, humidity, and the general mood of radio waves, a beacon might be detected from 1 meter or 30 meters away. Don't expect Zone-level precision in an open-plan loft.
Battery-powered beacons need replacement. Most beacons run on coin cell batteries that last 1-3 years. You no longer have to guess: a beacon's battery is shown wherever the beacon is listed — see A beacon's battery below. When a beacon stops appearing, check that first before blaming the app.
iOS limits simultaneous beacon monitoring. The system can monitor up to 20 beacon regions at once. If you've deployed an army of beacons, some may not be tracked simultaneously.
Signal strength fluctuates. RSSI values bounce around due to interference, body position, and whether Mercury is in retrograde. Distance estimates are approximate — treat them as "near," "medium," or "far" rather than precise measurements.

#Version History

Version	Date	What Changed
67	2026-10-06	Minew and Blue Charm beacons now report their temperature, not just their battery — the temperature section says which broadcast carries it. AMB-1733
66	2026-10-08	Rename or delete your own beacons and tags — on the phone's beacon editor, in web Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons, and from chat. A tag's new name shows on the item it tracks; deleting a tag stops tracking its item, and the tag can be set up again by scanning its label (AMB-1741)
65	2026-10-07	Unlink one thing from a beacon in chat. Your AI assistant can now remove one linked item or document from a beacon or tag and leave the others, as the Unlink button on the phone and web does, and can tell you what a beacon is linked to. It used to be able only to clear every link
64	2026-10-07	Snooze a beacon with one tap. A beacon's notification has Snooze 1h and Snooze 24h buttons, and so do its settings on the phone and on the web. Until now a snooze could only be started by asking your AI assistant. The Options table's "Snooze Duration — 15 minutes" row described a setting that never existed; it now describes the snooze you actually get
63	2026-10-07	A tag holds one item in the web admin console too. Choosing an item for a tag there now replaces the one it had, and a tag offers no Add document, as on the phone and in Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons; it used to add a second item. Registering an Exhibit in the console now makes a fixed beacon, so an exhibit can carry several items and documents
62	2026-10-07	You can write a beacon's or tag's AI context yourself. The Context string (for LLM) box in the beacon's settings on the phone, and in Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons on the web, is now editable, with a hint saying what it does: the text is added to the start of your question whenever the beacon or tag is detected. It used to be shown read-only and could only be changed in the admin console
61	2026-10-07	Choose the items with Select: Journey joins the selection's actions on the phone and the web, and the folder's Journey opens Select with its tracked items ticked — untouched it shares the folder's live page, edited it shares exactly the ticked items; the 25-item limit shows before the tap
60	2026-10-06	Corrected how to snooze a beacon: you ask your AI assistant. Version 59 also said you could snooze from the alert itself or from the beacon's settings, but no screen sets a snooze; the beacon's settings show one and clear it
59	2026-10-05	A snoozed beacon stays snoozed. Snoozing a beacon's alert (from the alert itself, or the beacon's settings) is kept on your account: it lasts as long as you asked even if you close the app, holds on your other devices, and never silences the beacon for anyone else. It used to last only until the app was next opened. You can also ask your AI assistant to snooze or un-snooze a beacon
58	2026-10-05	New subsection: Using a non-Minew beacon (e.g. Blue Charm) — a Blue Charm beacon's battery and temperature, heard and dropped until now, reach its record with no setup (the app reads the address and battery the beacon already broadcasts). Other brands that never broadcast their address can add an Eddystone-UID broadcast (namespace = your network's UUID in Eddystone form, instance = the MAC without colons)
57	2026-10-03	The header's Bluetooth count and the Nearby list now always agree: a nearby tag with no item attached is listed under Tags nearby with no item attached with an Attach to an item button, instead of the list saying Nothing nearby while the header counted it
43	2026-09-25	A tag's label in Scan → AR is a card at once, with no network needed — it used to wait on a server answer that a bad connection could hold forever, leaving a spinner on the tag. Any other code the server can't answer within fifteen seconds shows what the phone can read by itself (the site's name, or No info), and a dropped request is asked again the next time the code is in view rather than sticking until the app restarts
42	2026-09-22	Walking into a new Zone on Radar is a change of scene: the new Zone slides in from the side you walked and pushes the last one off, then its exhibits drop in one after another (it simply appears with Reduce Motion on)
41	2026-09-22	Items and documents attached to a Zone's own beacon now show as Radar cards while you're in that Zone — the Pantry's corkscrew used to leave the Radar blank — and a card like that is narrated from the thing's own words, never the Zone's description
40	2026-09-23	Setting a tag up speaks inside the tag card — each step and the result replace the card's own status line, with the button greyed out while it runs — instead of in a pop-up over it; the tag's address sits beside the title, so the docked card keeps its usual height; the Set it up again? question stands for fifteen seconds and then lapses, so a late tap asks again rather than overwriting on old numbers. The same card on AR and AI Lookup shows the same progress, whichever one started it
39	2026-09-22	Radar's cards move visibly when the order changes: a card that overtakes springs up past the one it beat, the effect the tag list had earlier this year, instead of jumping (not with Reduce Motion on)
38	2026-09-23	A tag that refuses the app's secure connection now says so — "The tag didn't accept the app's handshake" — instead of "That didn't work. Try again", which would only fail the same way
37	2026-09-22	An assistant connected to your context (Claude Desktop and others) now reads a tag's printed label the way the phone does — a Tag with its address in the standard spelling — instead of calling it an unrecognised code
36	2026-09-22	The tag card keeps its identity when you dock it: the card you tap in AR and the card that lands in the tray both wear the tag icon and both show the tag's address under the title (the docked one used to show a camera and no address, so two tags looked alike)
35	2026-09-21	The Settings → Bluetooth page is gone; the app owns the radio tuning. New subsection How the phone listens: everyday listening on every screen at a light duty (on for everyone now — the old page's default was Off), everything-on while a screen is attending (Radar, a tag label in the camera, a set-up, Always Range), off in the background; the header arcs show what the radio is really doing. Radar's cadence no longer follows a setting — it listens without a break while open. The "here now" window is one value (~90 s)
34	2026-09-21	Setting up a Minew tag now says what it is doing at every step (looking, reserving, programming, checking the air, recording) instead of one five-second Setting up… toast followed by silence; the result stays on screen for ten seconds; a tag the app could not reach in time says so, and the app waits twice as long for a shelf-mode tag that speaks only every ten seconds
33	2026-09-21	Show me around Radar now actually appears. It draws over the whole screen (the way the venue invitation does), with its own ✕ Exit Radar in the top-left where Radar's usual one sits — tap that and you leave Radar without the walkthrough counting as seen. If the walkthrough can't get itself onto the screen, it lets go by itself within two seconds instead of silently holding the Zone still
32	2026-09-21	New subsection: The nearest exhibit floats to the top — and keeps moving — Radar's order follows a smoothed signal with an overtake margin, moves while you stand still (the phone listens continuously while Radar is open and on screen, and rests again when you leave it), and a dismissed card stays dismissed for the visit
31	2026-09-19	Show me around Radar holds still: it waits for the Zone to settle before starting, starts on the first named card (a shimmer above it no longer blocks it), and while it runs the cards hold still with the header even as you walk. The same holds for the manual location override (⏮/⏭): the cards now match the Zone the header names, not the one the beacons are electing right now
29	2026-09-18	A venue visit ends by silence — once the app hasn't heard the venue's beacons for four hours you're invited again on your next visit, whether or not your phone noticed you leave (a missed exit used to mean never being invited there again). Turning a muted venue back on starts it fresh: the next beacon it hears invites you, no four-hour wait
27	2026-09-18	New subsection: Show me around Radar — the first exhibit card your account ever sees in Radar comes with six speech bubbles on the real buttons (the card, AI, Listen, Info, Save, hands-free Listen); the buttons stay off while it runs, ✕ arms a second after each bubble, and once finished or skipped it stays away across devices. "Show me around Radar again" in chat brings it back
22	2026-09-02	New subsection: A beacon's battery — a fixed beacon's battery level, which the app has been recording all along, is now shown on the mobile registry rows, on the admin beacon list (with the Critical/Low/OK filter working in the Beacons view, not tags only), and in chat via a new `list_beacons` tool. A beacon that reported once and then went quiet now reads `stale` rather than being indistinguishable from one never heard from
1	2026-03-01	Initial guide
2	2026-08-12	Added Walk & Teach — teaching walks, calibration chips, report card
3	2026-08-13	Linked things: beacons point at inventory items/documents; link_beacon MCP tool
4	2026-08-16	One beacon carries several linked things: `link_beacon` adds to the list instead of replacing it, and every linked thing reaches AI context on sighting (not just the first)
6	2026-08-17	New section: Where You Are, at the Top of Every Screen. The header now shows the Zone name plainly (no "Near", no brackets), and unregistered hardware can no longer appear there as a place
7	2026-08-18	The beacon cache is now truly a cache: empty at launch and on Refresh, entries live one hour and are actively removed when they lapse — the list shows what the radio hears now, not where you were this morning
10	2026-08-22	New section: Track an Item with a Bluetooth Tag — the TRACKING card on item detail, the tags-only picker, link-time Last-seen stamping, the Asset Tracker category, and the always-private visibility rule
11	2026-08-25	New subsection: The tag's battery — the TRACKING card's battery slot now shows a real state (OK / Low / Replace / —) read passively from the tag's broadcasts, plus when the tag was last heard by any of your devices; staff keep the raw percentage and a Critical/Low/OK filter in the admin beacon list
12	2026-08-25	New subsection: In range, last heard, and the MAC address — tags registered by identity alone (no MAC) now show live presence and last-heard on the TRACKING card (burst-cadenced, honest fallback to any-device last-heard); battery still needs the MAC, and the admin form now says so
13	2026-08-25	New subsections: The item follows the tag — a heard tag now moves its item's Last seen (coalesced: on zone change or hourly), with current-sighting-wins on the card; and Here now, heard a while ago — the presence dot uses scan-rate-derived liveness windows instead of a binary flip, ending the "out of range" flicker next to the tag
15	2026-08-26	New subsection: Where has it been? — tapping a tracked item's TRACKING row now opens the item's location history (sightings and manual sets, newest first) scrolling above the pinned Stop-tracking / Use-a-different-tag controls, on mobile and the web interface; chat answers "where has my tape measure been?"
16	2026-08-26	New subsection: The tag's temperature — Eddystone TLM temperature on the TRACKING row (live reading, minute-bucketed pinch/pan history graph with location-change dots, 48h/7d/All on web); needs an item link and a MAC-carrying registration. (Row added retroactively — the subsection shipped with the v16 bump but its history row was missed)
17	2026-08-26	New subsection: One debug screen for the whole radio — the Beacon Ranging screen gains a live Tags section (signal, liveness, last heard, battery band + raw %, temperature when reported) fed from the same live store as the TRACKING card and header chip; the Bluetooth Tag Registry screen, which read a cold copy that ranged sightings never reached, is retired
19	2026-08-28	Venue Invitations: the in-app welcome now counts as delivered only when it actually appears on screen, and for its first few seconds only its buttons respond — a tap already in flight when it pops up no longer silently declines the visit's one invitation
23	2026-09-05	You can create your own places. New Making Your Own Places section: venues and zones no longer need a staff role, and a place you create is personal — visible only to you. Two people can each have a place called "3M HQ" without either seeing the other's; only a duplicate among your own places is refused, and it names the one that clashes. Making a personal place public needs a verification step that does not exist yet, so it is not offered rather than half-offered
21	2026-08-29	MAC-identified tags and beacons now appear in the beacons list of the Bluetooth Ranging screen, with their address where a UUID would be and live signal while the screen is open — previously they were heard by the scanning radio but shown nowhere on that screen
20	2026-08-29	Settings → Bluetooth Beacon Ranging is now Settings → Bluetooth Ranging (it ranges tags as much as beacons). New subsection: Tags that go by their address, not a UUID — MAC-identified tags (Identiv and the like) are recognised again whether they announce their address in their manufacturer data or as their Bluetooth name, so they register and count as Radar exhibits (they do not yet appear in the Bluetooth Ranging lists, which are built from the ranging radio); and every list now shows the identity that actually identifies a record (MAC for MAC-identified formats, UUID + Major/Minor for iBeacons) instead of deciding from whether it is filed as a beacon or a tag
18	2026-08-26	New subsection: Left behind — walking away no longer drags the item with you. Crossing Zones now checks whether the tag moved WITH you (its signal against the departed Zone's own beacons); a left-behind item keeps its location and the card affirms "Left in ⟨Zone⟩ · Nm ago" (chat answers "did I leave my X?"); unclear evidence keeps the stored location; following resumes automatically on reunion
5	2026-08-16	Linked documents now reach AI context (they were silently dropped before, so only linked items ever showed up). Beacon details always come from the central registry, so the same beacon reads the same for everyone; the beacon editor saves alerts, prominence and pause/snooze on your device, and Remove takes a beacon off this device without touching the registry
8	2026-08-19	Fixed a regression that could briefly show an internal identifier (`beacon-local-undefined`) as your current place and stop Zones resolving. The header now shows a real Zone or beacon name or nothing at all — never an internal identifier — and the diagnostics timeline distinguishes "the registry said this beacon isn't registered" from "the registry couldn't be reached"
9	2026-08-20	New section: Venue Invitations — Straight Into the Tour. Invitations are venue-level now (every beacon triggers one shared welcome), arrive as a notification in the background or a full-screen in-app welcome on arrival, and "Don't show this again" is saved to your account
26	2026-09-09	"How warm is it in here?" now works without tapping the beacon first. Standing in a Zone was supposed to put its temperature and battery into the conversation, and in the app it usually did — because walking into a Zone quietly taps the beacon for you. In the web interface and on the connector, where nothing taps it, you got the place's description and nothing else: the assistant would say no beacon at your location was reporting a temperature, in a Zone whose beacon had one. Simply being there is now enough, everywhere, and the reading still says when it was taken
25	2026-09-09	A beacon's battery and temperature now reach other AI apps too. Asking an outside assistant on the ambientChat connector about the beacon you're focused on used to get the place's description and nothing about the hardware — so "is the lobby beacon dead?" and "how warm is the gallery?" only worked in the app. Both readings now travel with the beacon, each stamped with WHEN it was taken, and the connector is told in so many words that a temperature is a moment rather than a standing fact
24	2026-09-09	New subsection: A beacon's temperature — a fixed beacon marks a place, so its broadcast reading is the ROOM's temperature. Now shown on the mobile registry rows, the admin beacon list and in chat (`list_beacons`, and the beacon you are standing next to), always with when it was taken. A blank names its cause (`no MAC` / `bad MAC`) rather than reading as "this room has no temperature". There is no refresh schedule: a beacon is heard when a device with Bluetooth on passes it, so the timestamp is the only honest answer to "how current is this?". Temperature HISTORY stays tags-only for now
29	2026-09-18	The tag card now knows what a tag is to you: Already set up (yours — with Set up again on a Minew), Someone already set this tag up, Yours — not set up yet, Set-up didn't finish / Set-up failed — try again. Setting a tag up again shows what it broadcasts now beside what it would get, and waits for you to say so; a tag that already holds the standard profile is simply written afresh. After any set-up the card, the tag picker and the tag list read the new state within a second or two
28	2026-09-18	New subsection: Setting up a new tag by scanning its label — Set up on the tag card now programs a Minew tag over Bluetooth (identity, the standard 900 ms / −20 dBm profile, temperature on TLM), reads it back, listens to the air, and only then marks it live; an Identiv tag is claimed as before. Every failure says which field disagreed. The scan card hears a Minew under its own Bluetooth key, where before a Minew label read "move closer" over a tag broadcasting in your hand
26	2026-09-18	New subsection: The page a beacon points at — a beacon's web address no longer has to be typed with `https://`. `demo.wiliot.com` now opens from the Info button and is read by the AI, where before the button appeared and did nothing and the assistant was told the exhibit had no page at all. A value that isn't an address offers no Info button rather than a dead one, and the admin editor fills the scheme in as you leave the field so the stored value is never a surprise
56	2026-10-03	My Beacons & Tags on the web. Web Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons lists the beacons and tags you own, pauses or resumes each from its row, and opens a row in place to link items and documents and change its alerts — the same list and rules as the phone. New tags are still set up by scanning their label on the phone
55	2026-10-02	Minew tags on firmware 1.3.06 (the Beacon Plus-BL) can be set up: they answer the app's secure connection without the checksum the vendor's spec describes, and the app now recognises them by their own address instead of refusing them. A tag that hangs up partway through that connection says so — "The tag hung up during the handshake. Hold it close and try again", and is never mistaken for a tag with a password we don't know
54	2026-10-01	Pause from the list. Each row in My Beacons & Tags shows Live or Paused and has a switch, so you can pause or resume a beacon or tag in one tap without opening it
53	2026-09-30	Beacon settings save to the beacon itself. Alert mode, alert text, prominence and live/paused are part of the beacon's registry record: changing them on the phone, on the web or through your AI assistant changes them for every app and device, and they no longer reset when the app restarts (they used to be kept only on the phone, and were lost at the next launch). A beacon's prominence now also reaches the phone, which had been treating every beacon as medium
52	2026-09-29	My Beacons & Tags (Settings → Bluetooth Tags & Beacons) lists the beacons and tags you own and opens each one, where you link it to your items and documents — including a tag your phone isn't hearing right now
51	2026-09-29	New: Beacons and tags that are yours. Anything you set up is yours, and chat links it to your items and documents; `link_beacon` is no longer staff-only for a beacon you own. You add a tag by scanning its label, never by typing its identity. Your personal beacons, tags, Zones and places are deleted with your account. The last three mentions of the "Bluetooth Ranging screen" now say Ranging, its name since v50
50	2026-09-29	Settings has a Bluetooth Tags & Beacons section: Walk & Teach and Ranging moved there from Location, and dropped "Bluetooth" from their names since the heading says it
49	2026-09-29	Inside an open folder, Journey beside Share publishes that folder's journey page, on the phone and the web
48	2026-09-28	The journey page fits the screen: a dashboard on a laptop (numbers and map side by side, each site's stops beside its chart), compact two-line stops and a folded table on a phone; headline numbers up front
47	2026-09-28	Share journey report on a folder — the folder's long-press menu (phone) and ⋯ menu (web) publish the folder's live journey page; a folder over 25 items, or an empty one, says why
46	2026-09-28	Several items on one journey page — up to 25 items, named or as a folder the page follows live: one row per item on a shared clock, a temperature line per item at each venue, each item's route on the map, and an Item column in the table. From chat for now
45	2026-09-28	New subsection: Share where it's been — the journey report. The tracking sheet (phone) and TRACKING card (web) gain Share journey report: a live, no-account page of the item's last seven days — venues, zones sized by time spent, temperature with every move marked, and how each stop is known — with positions rounded to about 10 km by default. Chat can make one too
43	2026-09-25	Corrected three passages that described a phone flow retired with the mobile registry screens. Registering a Beacon: it described naming a beacon by tapping it on the phone, which has not been possible since the mobile registry screens were retired — beacon details are set in the web admin console, and the phone decides only this device's alerts, prominence and pause/snooze (plus linking your own items and documents, which does travel). Managing Beacon Settings and Searching the Global Registry described an Account menu entry and a registry search screen that no longer exist; they are replaced by Seeing What the Phone Can Hear, which describes the Bluetooth Ranging read-out that is actually there. The mobile beacon editor now shows the registry's fields as read-only rather than accepting edits it discarded