How long does it take to detect an iBeacon while region monitoring?

Question

Take this scenario: user has an iPhone in the pocket passing by an iBeacon. Her phone is region monitoring for it. How much time is needed in real world to from entering the region to the moment app is woken up? I have found an excellent article on the subject by David G. Young (http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/11/13/ibeacon-monitoring-in-the-background-and-foreground.html) but I can't believe it can really take up to 15 minutes. That would mean that all iBeacon home automation scenarios are simply unusable because you won't neither wait 15 mitutes in dark room for lights to switch on neither you would switch on the lights by actively using an app. Door opening and locking is another situation where iBeacon would be unusable (and NFC would work much better here). Or am I missing something?

Answer 1

I have an app that ranges for an iBeacons. It first grabs a list of couple proximityUUIDs and registers them as monitored regions. When the device enters that region, it takes just 1 to several seconds (iPhone 5S) to post me a local notification on didEnterRegion: event. When the app is in front, it starts ranging the beacon immediately in current region (if any) and updates happen in about one-second intervals. When the app is in background, ranging is not enabled, otherwise it would immediately report that the beacon is gone (if you leave its range). HOWEVER, It can really take up to 15 minutes (I've experienced this) for the device to post the didExitRegion: when in background in the worst case, when there is just significant location monitoring enabled combined with bad or no network. Otherwise it happens until about a minute.

Sorry, this didn't fit into a comment.