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Beacons and buttons
What a tag actually broadcasts, which parts Omaya uses, and how to make the button on it do something. Written for whoever configures the tags — usually with the manufacturer's phone app in one hand. For MOKO tags and buttons, how often and how strongly each slot broadcasts can also be changed later from Omaya, without going to the tag — see Configuring devices from Omaya.
What a tag broadcasts
A BLE tag does not "connect" to anything. It shouts a short message a few times a second, and every gateway within range writes down what it heard and how loud. That message is made of slots, each in a standard format, and most tags can have several on at once. These are the ones you will meet:
| Slot | Who defined it | What it says | What Omaya does with it |
|---|---|---|---|
| iBeacon | Apple | "I am UUID X, major Y, minor Z." An identity and nothing else. | Identity only — unless the major/minor is one of the button-trigger pairs below, in which case it is a press. |
| Eddystone-TLM | Telemetry: battery voltage, the tag's own board temperature, adverts sent, seconds since power-on. | Battery. This is the slot worth having on. The board temperature is the tag's electronics, not the room, so it is kept out of the temperature reports on purpose. | |
| Eddystone-UID | A namespace + instance id. Another identity. | Nothing. | |
| Eddystone-URL | A compressed web address (https://minew.com out of the box). Built for a phone feature that was switched off in 2018. | Nothing. Turn it off — it is airtime and battery for no reading. | |
| Vendor frames | Minew, MOKO… | Whatever the maker added: a battery %, the device name, an accelerometer, a button state. | Decoded per model — see Devices and what they report. |
Presence and position need none of these. Omaya locates a tag by its MAC address and how loudly each gateway hears it. A tag with every slot switched off but one would still be tracked; the slots are about what else it can tell you.
What to switch on
For an asset or personnel tag: iBeacon + Eddystone-TLM, and whatever vendor frame carries the battery. Everything else off. Every extra slot shortens battery life and adds frames the gateways have to forward, and none of the identifier slots adds anything Omaya does not already know from the MAC.
Advertising interval: 1 second is plenty for presence; 300–500 ms if the tag is used for positioning and you want it to follow a walking pace.
On a MOKO BeaconX Pro tag (H2–H5, M2, M3 mini, MK B5, BXP-C/D/DH), the interval and signal strength of each slot can be changed afterwards from the tag's Configure page in Omaya. Which slots are on, and what each one broadcasts, stays a job for the BeaconX Pro app: switching a slot off from a distance could silently stop the readings Omaya gets from it. Minew tags are set with BeaconSET+ only, because Minew does not publish its command format.
Where the readings go
- Battery → the device's page, and the Battery report, which forecasts the replacement date from the tag's own drain rate.
- Board temperature, accelerometer axes and the other vendor fields → not a report, but available to rules on any sensor reading under their field names.
Making the button do something
Tags with a button come in two families, and they work differently on the air.
Minew tags — a press changes the iBeacon
Minew tags (MWC01, MWL01 wristband, MBS02, MBM01, E-series…) do not send a "pressed" message. Instead, in BeaconSet+ you set a trigger: on double-click, broadcast slot N for 10 seconds, where slot N is an iBeacon with a major/minor of your choosing. For those 10 seconds the tag's iBeacon carries that major/minor instead of its usual one, and Omaya reads the change as a press.
Which major/minor means which press is a table Omaya keeps per model:
| Press | Major | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| Double-click | 1000 | 2000 |
| Triple-click | 1000 | 3000 |
| Motion (tag shaken or picked up) | 1000 | 4000 |
Set the trigger in BeaconSet+ to exactly those values and the press is recognised — the MBM01 below was configured that way and its first double-click appeared in the Trigger Event report within the second.
Steps in BeaconSet+
Connect to the tag → Trigger → choose the event (double-click, triple-click, or motion) → pick the iBeacon slot it should broadcast → set that slot's major and minor from the table → duration 10 s → save. Then press it and check the Trigger Event report.
Two things to know. A single click on a Minew tag is usually the power toggle and cannot be a trigger. And leave the tag's UUID at Minew's default unless you have a reason — Omaya matches on major/minor either way, but the default UUID is what the platform has been tested against.
MOKO buttons — a press is its own message
MOKO's button range (B2, H8, H3 Pro — the "MK Button" firmware) is the other way round: a press is a message. The tag broadcasts an alarm frame saying which kind of press it was, with a counter so the platform can tell one press from the next. Nothing to map; enable the trigger in the MK Button app and the press types arrive named:
| Press | Recorded as |
|---|---|
| Single click | single_click |
| Double click | double_click |
| Long press | long_press |
| No movement for the configured time (man-down) | inactivity_alarm |
Steps in the MK Button app
Connect → Trigger → enable the press types you want → set the alarm advertising duration (10–30 s is sensible; it is how long the button keeps saying "pressed" so a gateway is sure to hear it) → save.
Some things about these buttons that are not obvious:
- Battery and the accelerometer arrive only on a strong signal. MOKO puts them in a second message a gateway has to ask for, and the ask only succeeds within roughly −75 dBm. A button worn around the building reports battery through the day; one left in a drawer at the far end of the floor never will.
- The man-down alarm re-fires every few minutes for as long as the button is still. On a wrist that is the point. On a desk it is noise, which is why Omaya only treats it as an alarm from a button you have registered as a panic button (below).
- Power saving. Some units ship set to stop advertising after being still for a while, and wake on movement or a press. If a button vanishes from the platform and reappears when picked up, that is the setting.
- Changing it from Omaya. On the button's Configure page you can change how often and how strongly each press type is broadcast, the double-press window and the broadcast name. A press type is never switched off from Omaya, so a panic alarm cannot be disabled by mistake. Buttons accept a connection only for a while after a press: press it, then apply.
What happens after a press
Every recognised press is one row in Reports → Trigger Event: which button, which press, where it was heard, when. A button advertises the same press for several seconds and several gateways may hear it — Omaya keeps one row per press.
From there, three things can pick it up:
- Rules. The Button pressed condition — any press, or one kind such as a double press — can open a work order, send a message, or fire a webhook. See Your first rule. The button's panel on Devices shows every rule that reacts to it.
- Panic buttons. A panic button is a rule whose action is Page these people: admins by email and in-app, app users by email, SMS, WhatsApp and push (SMS and WhatsApp use the phone number on their app account and your messaging connector). A matching press pages them within seconds. Make it under Devices → Panic Buttons — it is listed under Rules too — for one button, every button under a label, or every button in a place; the Trigger Event report shows which presses paged and whom.
- Security Watch. With the app on, a press on a registered panic button anywhere, or on any button heard by a gateway in a monitored zone, opens a critical incident on the guards' board. A tag being moved is not a press, and a man-down alarm counts only from a registered panic button — a button on a desk timing out should not send a guard to a meeting room.
A cellular badge's alarms (SOS, Alert, man-down on the PS101-M) take the same three routes, as press types sos, alert and man_down, with one difference: each alarm is one row and one page from start to end, however many reports the badge sends while it lasts.
When it does not work
- Nothing in the Trigger Event report. For a Minew tag: the major/minor in BeaconSet+ does not match the table, or the trigger duration is too short for a gateway to catch it — set 10 s. For a MOKO button: the press type is not enabled in the MK Button app.
- Presses recorded but nobody paged. No panic button covers it, the panic button is set to a different press, or it is switched off.
- The button tracks but never shows a battery. MOKO button, weak link — see above. It is not broken.
- A press you did not make. Roughly one advertisement in three hundred off a gateway is corrupted in transit. Omaya checks every button frame against what its maker's own software would accept and discards the ones that fail; if one still gets through, the Trigger Event row will show an implausible press count. Tell your administrator — it is the one thing worth reporting.