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Calibrating a beacon

Calibration tells beacbeac how strong this specific beacon's signal is at one metre. Without that reference, the visitor app has to guess the distance — and guesses produce false triggers (wrong story appears) or missed triggers (nothing appears).

When calibration happens

Calibration is a step inside the pairing flow (see Pairing a beacon). beacbeac handles it for you the first time you pair a beacon — you don't open it from a separate menu.

During calibration:

  1. Stand one metre from the beacon, in its final mounted position.
  2. Hold your phone at chest height.
  3. beacbeac samples the signal for about three seconds and averages the readings.
  4. The averaged value is saved as the beacon's measured power.

When to recalibrate

The original calibration is usually fine for the life of the beacon. Recalibrate if:

  • You moved the beacon to a different spot.
  • You changed how it's mounted (e.g. behind glass, into a metal frame).
  • Visitors are reporting the wrong story triggering, or no story triggering, and other causes (see Troubleshooting signal) are ruled out.

To recalibrate, pair the beacon again from the Manage Beacons screen. Repairing replaces the saved measured power with a fresh reading. Your story links and Detection range setting are kept.

Choosing a detection range

The beacon edit screen has a Detection range control with four meter-labeled presets:

  • Touch · ~1 m — the story appears only when a visitor is right at the beacon.
  • Close · ~3 m — the story appears within arm's reach or so.
  • Room · ~8 m — the default. The story appears from most of the way across a typical room.
  • Wide · ~15 m — the story appears from across a large room or hall.

The metre figures are approximate targets, not guarantees: beacbeac computes each beacon's actual trigger floor from its own calibration (the measured power saved during pairing — see above), so two beacons set to the same preset can trigger at slightly different real-world distances if they were calibrated differently. Real range also varies with mounting, walls, and crowds, which is why the edit screen's helper text says to test on site. If a beacon consistently triggers too early or too late for its preset, recalibrate it before changing the preset.

Existing beacons that haven't had this set default to Room. Beacons written by an older app version that still use the old Near/Medium/Far names keep working: Near reads as Touch, Medium reads as Room, and Far reads as Wide.

Changes take effect within about a minute for visitors already standing at the beacon, and immediately for everyone else.

Testing your calibration

After calibrating:

  1. Walk away from the beacon until the story disappears from the visitor app.
  2. Walk back slowly — the story should reappear at the distance you'd expect a visitor to naturally stop and look.
  3. If it's triggering too early or too late, recalibrate (or move the beacon).