Hello,
I wonder if multicast is possible on the third-party device side.
If I understand correctly, all devices in a multicast session have the same session ID. As the iPhone decides this parameter, I will never be able to use this feature on my third-party device.
Am I correct ? Is it possible to connect more than 5 iPhone to a third-party UWB device ?
Thanks for reading me!
@Red13: yes, this is totally possible and one UWB device e.g. U1-compatible UWB Beacon can establish connection with several iPhones at the same time. This require the UWB device to has capable SoC, e.g. Bluetooth chip with the right stack to simply handle several open Bluetooth connections at the same time and then perform UWB ranging.
However this might not be practical since constant UWB ranging will drain battery for both iPhone and UWB device (e.g. UWB beacon).
What will be a better approach is to allow 5 iPhones to quickly range one by one to UWB Beacon and after the distance/angle vector is established disconnect and continue with the position vector using ARKit. This was demonstrated with on the iO16 during the last WWDC Nearby Interaction sessions here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10008/
That approach drains less energy from the UWB beacon since you only connect from time to time to correct the vector rather that keep constant UWB connection.
Hello @estimote
Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer me.
Your idea is totally what is planned in our team. It is true that doing some scheduling over those 5 sessions would allow us to have more iPhones connected (and will drain much less battery).
However, my question was really related to the multicasting possibility of the UWB protocol, which allows to have 8 devices per session, for a total of 40 devices receiving UWB ranging data. It would be useful in very busy places.
Thanks!
