Up close and personal with Nearby
summary
Nearby breaks into three concrete APIs: Messages as a publish/subscribe channel (payloads <3 KB, needs API key and network), Notifications tied to beacons via the Google Beacon Platform and dashboard attachments, and Connections for peer‑to‑peer Bluetooth/Wi‑Fi links (payload max ~32 KB, strategies: one‑to‑many or cluster). Demos include an emoji contact app and a confetti app that work, beacon attachments on the Amsterdam network and Schiphol examples, while local Connections often work but prove flaky and require careful permission and error handling.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:26Demo app
- 1:20What is Nearby?
- 5:08Publish a message
- 6:23Receiving messages
- 6:58User consent
- 13:02Beacon console
- 16:14Background subscription
- 17:03Just beacons, no attachments
- 19:29Nearby notifications
- 20:23How do you prove you own a beacon?
- 23:24For beacon owners (proprietary edition)
- 24:48Setup
- 25:23Basic steps
- 26:27Advertising
- 28:39Discovery
- 30:03Transfer data
- 31:01Disconnect
- 33:50Connections
- 35:01Conclusion
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