We are very excited to announce Launch Here 1.2. It’s an update packed with new features. Our main focus was to reduce the steps involved to setup iBeacons and make the notification system more powerful.

Auto Detect

Auto Detect! This enables you to add iBeacons of known vendors without entering long iBeacon IDs manually. However please note that only a short list of known vendors is currently supported – it’s a first step.

• Estimotes
• Air Locate App
• Radius Networks (experimental)

Launch Here aims to work seamlessly across all iBeacon vendors. If the detection doesn’t work for your iBeacon you can still add it manually, too.

Trigger Distance

It is now possible to adjust the trigger radius for each iBeacon. To avoid unintended use and uncontrolled notification triggers this is limited to distances ranging from 0.1m to 5m.

All new Features

• Auto Detect for supported beacon vendors – currently: Estimote, Radius Networks, Air Locate iOS App
• Distance slider to adjust the radius for app shortcut notifications
• Interface Tightened up layout, landscape mode, new transitions
• Notification system improved – less flickering
• App/action selection New picker (it turned out using a data picker on a scrollable table view is a terrible idea. Sorry for that)
• Preset App List – added Day One

Launch Here 1.2 is a free update. Get it on the App Store now and let us know what you think about it. Find more information about the app here.

First of all a big thank you to everybody who downloaded Placed Launch Here recently. We did feel like touching a promising idea when we released the app but really thought of the current state being rather a crazy niche experiment than something that might appeal to a broader range of people. Well, we were wrong. Looks like iBeacon is a thing at moment and people are craving for good use cases. Happy to help.

New Features and Updates

Going forward we’ll stay committed to the original idea, but focus on making the setup process and usage more accessible. Here’s the news for Version 1.1.

• New Name! We had to re-name the app. It’s now called Launch Here. If this caused any confusion we feel sorry, we didn’t mean to.
• On/Off Switch To provide an easy way to control notifications we added a simple On/Off switch – it’s important to us that the user stays in full control all the time.
• Auto Beacon Validation We added little indicators to the iBeacon identifier fields. They show if the iBeacon currently being entered is around or not. This makes the setup a bit less error-prone.
• One tap iBeacon Entry We added a “Paste” button that appears when a text entry is selected and empty. ☆ Goodie ☆ Besides the obvious paste functionality for a single field this can also be used to populate all three iBeacon identifiers at once. It will recognize the UUID, Major ID, Minor ID in your clipboard if they where separated by lines in the copied text.
• New Icon A small update to be inline with our other iBeacon app Travel Radar. If you see both apps next to each other on your lock screen you will feel warm and fuzzy now.

Launch Here Version 1.1 is a free update, available on the App Store now. Find more information about the app here.

Since releasing Placed and Travel Radar there are some questions we get asked a lot:

Which iBeacon do you recommend?

We don’t have a good answer to this. We just build apps and we have no direct affiliation with any iBeacon manufacturer. We don’t use vendor specific code or frameworks to handle iBeacon signals. Our apps communicate with iBeacons solely by the standards defined by Apple. So, we really do recommend any kind of iBeacon. But wait …

Why is it so hard to find iBeacons for casual use at home?

There are in deed a lot of iBeacons already available. However most of them are developer kits targeting retail environments and large deployments.

And here’s the shocking truth: From our perspective iBeacons are not even conceived being used as separate consumer products. At least no at the moment.

Their only purpose is to make specific apps be aware of specific places or things. In fact as a user you don’t even need to know that such a thing as an “iBeacon” exists. All you do is install an app that happens to act in smart context-sensitive ways – at the right spot, at the right time. No setup process or manual linking required. iBeacons? An implementation detail. Rainbows.

Going forward the most appealing cases for iBeacons can be made being integrated in existing products. Appliances, computers, furniture, Apple TVs, etc. - basically all things whose usage can be enhanced or accompanied by companion apps are great potential hosts for iBeacon emitters. Use cases and applications will drive iBeacon deployments not vice versa.

Apps like ours working across different iBeacons are outside of this mainstream scope. Although we’d like to stress that our apps work across iBeacon vendors this always will be to the detriment of a manual linking process between apps and iBeacons. And if you ever pasted a long UUID you know that this really feels like something that is not supposed to be done by normal users. Therefore if it really is for pure casual use, we cannot wholeheartedly recommend getting iBeacons just yet … at the moment an iBeacon really is a gadget that doesn’t want to be one.