CBPeripheralManager startAdvertising not working on OS X yosemite

Question

does anyone notice any issues when using your mac (running OS X 10.10 yosemite DP 6) as an iBeacon? I tried several tools and I also developed it myself (using the CBPeripheralManager startAdvertising) but without any luck.

When running those apps (+ the the code I developed myself) on a mac running OS X 10.9 Mavericks, it works like a charm.

Is there anything specific required for OS X 10.10 yosemite or is this a bug?

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

EDIT: Radius Networks has confirmed this issue has shown up on subsequent pre-releases of Yosemite. This OS veesion blocks sending an iBeacon transmission with the internal interface, but allows it with external interfaces. So you can add an external Bluetooth dongle like the GBU521 and transmission works again.

It's gotta be a bug in the code or something specific to your machine. We have tested our MacBeacon OSX app on Yosemite and have not noticed any problems.

Answer 2

In fact you can indeed advertise your Mac running Yosemite as an iBeacon with an external compatible Bluetooth 4.0 (USB).
I wrote a simple iBeacon transmitter for Yosemite written in Swift, look here https://updatemycode.com/2014/11/29/yosemite-as-an-ibeacon-swift/.

Answer 3

This does seem to be a problem with Yosemite 10.10. This is acknowledged now on the radius network website: http://www.radiusnetworks.com/ibeacon/macbeacon/

I'm having to buy usb beacons that I can easily power on and off for testing because of this issue.