Demo Abstract: Image Storage and Broadcast via Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons

This demo is an implementation of the first `image beacon' system that can broadcast color images over the years. We developed the system using a set of cheap, low-power, memory-constrained Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon devices. The system integrates an image processing pipeline. In order to achieve the best quality image under a very strict size limit, the pipeline takes into account the background and foreground information of an image and then applies an adaptive encoding method that encodes an image by prioritizing more important regions of the image. We develop a Raspberry Pi application for image writing. It takes an image and user-requirements as inputs, shows previews of different quality output images, writes the encoded image into a set of beacons. We also develop a smartphone application that reads the broadcasted image from beacons. In practice, the system can broadcast image data for years without external power supply.