Managing BLE Beacons

Instant Access Points (IAPs) support HPE Aruba Networking BLE Bluetooth Low Energy. The BLE functionality is offered by Bluetooth® to enable devices to run for long durations with low power consumption. devices, such as BT-100 and BT-105, which are used for location tracking and proximity detection. The BLE devices can be connected to an IAP and are managed by a cloud-based Beacon Management Console. The BLE Beacon Management feature allows you to configure parameters for managing the BLE beacons and establishing secure communication with the Beacon Management Console.

Support for BLE Asset Tracking

IAP assets can be tracked using BLE tags, IAP beacons scan the network. When a tag is detected, the IAP sends a beacon with information about the tag including the MAC Media Access Control. A MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on a network. address and RSSI Received Signal Strength Indicator. RSSI is a mechanism by which RF energy is measured by the circuitry on a wireless NIC (0-255). The RSSI is not standard across vendors. Each vendor determines its own RSSI scale/values. of the tag to the Virtual Controller.

To manage beacons and configure BLE operation mode, complete the following steps:

1. In the WebUI, set the filter to a group that contains at least one AP. The dashboard context for the group is displayed.
2. Under Manage, click Devices > Access Points.
3. Click the Config icon.
4. The tabs to configure access points is displayed.
5. Click Show Advanced, and click Services tab.
6. The Services page is displayed.
7. Click the Real Time Locating System accordion.
8. Click Aruba.
9. Select Manage BLE Beacons to manage the BLE devices using BMC Beacon Management Console. BMC manages and monitors beacons from the BLE devices. The BLE devices are used for location tracking and proximity detection..
   1. Enter the authorization token in Authorization token. The authorization token is a text string of 1–255 characters used by the BLE devices in the HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is a variant of the HTTP that adds a layer of security on the data in transit through a secure socket layer or transport layer security protocol connection. header when communicating with the BMC. This token is unique for each deployment.
   2. Enter the server URL Uniform Resource Locator. URL is a global address used for locating web resources on the Internet. in Endpoint URL. The BLE data is sent to the server URL for monitoring.
10. Select any of the following options from BLE Operation Mode drop-down list:

    Table 1: BLE Operation Modes

    Mode	Description
    beaconing	The built-in BLE chip in the IAP functions as an iBeacon combined with the beacon management functionality.
    disabled	The built-in BLE chip of the IAP is turned off. The BLE operation mode is set to Disabled by default.
    dynamic-console	The built-in BLE chip of the IAP functions in the beaconing mode and dynamically enables access to IAP console over BLE when the link to LMS Local Management Switch. In multi-controller networks, each controller acts as an LMS and terminates user traffic from the APs, processes, and forwards the traffic to the wired network. is lost.
    persistent-console	The built-in BLE chip of the IAP provides access to the IAP console over BLE and also operates in the Beaconing mode.

11. To configure BLE web socket management server, enter the URL of BLE web socket management server in BLE Asset Tag Mgmt Server(wss).
12. Select BLE Asset Tag Mgmt Server(https) to configure BLE HTTPS management server.
    1. Enter the URL of BLE HTTPS management server in Server URL.
    2. Enter the authorization token in Authorization token.
    3. Enter the location ID in Location ID.
13. Click Save Settings.