#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

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

#Registering a Beacon

When you see an unregistered beacon in the list:

  1. Tap the beacon entry
  2. Give it a name that describes its location (e.g., "Kitchen Counter", "Front Door", "Workshop Bench")
  3. Configure the alert mode:
    • Sound — plays a notification sound when you enter the beacon's range
    • Silent — detects the beacon quietly, no audio interruption
  4. Set a snooze duration if you don't want repeated alerts (e.g., "Don't alert me again for 30 minutes")
  5. Tap Save

Once registered, the beacon's name appears in your chat context whenever you're nearby. The AI stops saying "you're near beacon Minor 7832" and starts saying "you're in the kitchen."

#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.

#Managing Beacon Settings

  1. Go to Account > Beacon Settings
  2. Here you can:
    • Toggle beacon monitoring on or off
    • View all registered beacons
    • Edit beacon names and alert preferences
    • Remove beacons you no longer use

#Searching the Global Registry

ambientChat maintains a global registry of known beacon identifiers — beacons deployed in museums, retail stores, and other public venues.

  1. From the beacon list, tap Search Registry
  2. Enter a UUID, Major, or Minor value, or search by location name
  3. If a match is found, you can import the beacon's name and metadata into your personal registry

#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.

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.

Staff can also use link_beacon to point a 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. Kind none clears them all — to drop just one, clear and re-link the rest, or edit the list in the beacon editor.

#Teaching the App Your Zones (Walk & Teach)

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

  1. Open Settings → Bluetooth Walk & Teach
  2. You'll see every zone (live beacon) deployed at your location, each with a calibration chip — calibrated, needs work, or never verified
  3. Tap Start a teaching walk, then simply walk your space, tapping the zone you're in each time you arrive
  4. Watch the live ticker — each "app agreed in 4.2s ✓" is the app confirming it followed you
  5. 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.

Politeness rules, in order:

  1. 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.
  2. "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. 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 — returning within 4 hours never re-invites. 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.

#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.

#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 Duration How long to suppress repeated alerts for the same beacon 15 minutes
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. When a beacon stops appearing, check the battery 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
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
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