Trying to Smart[UN]lock via iBeacon/Eddystone bluetooth beacon. is it possible?

[d4005]

I have my phone auto-unlocking the Smartlock (bypassing the Screen lock) when my phone connects to my car's Bluetooth for Hands Free. So I'm used to how Smartlock works ... adding a bluetooth device to the Trusted Devices. I've also managed to make it work when it connects to my Mac Mini, Windows 10 NUC PC, and Windows 7 Laptop.

BUT ... I can't get it to unlock via a Bluetooth beacon that I bought (specifically for this purpose). I don't want to have to connect to any of my 3 computers, I thought the beacon was a better idea. I connected the bluetooth beacon to a PC via USB and ran the configuration tool to enable iBeacon, enable Eddystone, and renamed the id of the device from SHA-11 to BEECON (deliberate mis-spelling).

I can connect to the BEECON device via bluetooth from my phone from anywhere in my home, the range is great. The problem is that it won't go onto my trusted devices list. It gives the error "Can't add device: Make sure Bluetooth device BEECON is on and close enough to connect to this device.". It says this despite being actually connected to it. Connection is fine, adding to trusted devices is the problem.

 

[chanchan05]

From my Google search, this seems related to the reason why Fitbit's can't be used as Trusted devices. Both your beacon and the Fitbit are not constantly sending data back and forth. The Smart Unlock apparently only works when the the devices is capable of data transfer between them. Since a beacon does not send data, it can't be added to the built in Smart Lock.

There are two possible work arounds here that I can think of:

Use another parameter for Smart Lock, like GPS location.

Use Tasker in place of Smart Lock. Tasker can be set up like Smart Lock so that the lockscreen is disabled when connected to your home WiFi network. You can set it up like that, or use the Beacon as the trigger. Unlike Smart Lock which needs data transfer for the unlock handshake to occur, AFAIK Tasker just looks at connection status. One downside here is that it's less secure. I am not sure if this could happen, but if you encounter another Bluetooth device which has the same name as your Beacon, it may cause the device to unlock as well.

 

[d4005]

I tried GPS location and found it to be incredibly unreliable. Too many deflected signals from other buildings making you appear to be in a different place.

Thanks for the explanation on what constitutes a usable [trusted] bluetooth device in Smartlock.

I wonder whether Tasker will have the same issue that Llama (which I use for other things). When you try to use it to influence Smart Lock, it just fails miserably, and admits it probably will. I wonder why Tasker can do a better job. Hopefully it's not because it's needing the phone to be rooted. I was a Tasker users a few years ago but that was before the days of Smartlock. If Tasker does manage to turn Smartlock Off/On successfully, I've got a bunch of NFC tags I could make use of also (which would have been nice to use but Google doesn't want that anymore).

 

[chanchan05]

Tasker does not affect Smartlock, but rather does it on its own to trigger the lockscreeb. No the unlock doesn't need root based on tutorials on the web. The phone doesn't even need to have the Smart Lock feature for Tasker to work the options to disable lockscreen.

 

[d4005]

Do you have any links to these tutorials that say Tasker can do it without root? I'm using the Display->Keyguard (from an older (2012) tutorial I found on youtube. I imagine it worked back then.

 

[chanchan05]

Here you go

https://www.google.com.ph/amp/s/for...rshmallow-unlock-when-connected-wifi.html?amp

 

[d4005]

Here you go

https://www.google.com.ph/amp/s/for...rshmallow-unlock-when-connected-wifi.html?amp

Yeah, I'd seen that one. At the end of it they closed/locked the thread because it doesn't work anymore ;-)

 

[chanchan05]

Yeah, I'd seen that one. At the end of it they closed/locked the thread because it doesn't work anymore ;-)

Oh. Hmm. That's the one I used last and it worked. Oh well.