Thinking about web apps and handling notifications from Bluetooth
For my hydroponics setup there are a bunch of reasons why I would want to be notified of an issue, e.g.:
- Temperature of range
- Lights on/off outside of schedule
- Water overflow
- Humidity out of range
- Water level too low
Since my setup is based around using Bluetooth LE for wireless communication, that means I need to think about how to get notified about these issues on my mobile device.
It used to super simple to get mobile notifications in Android from Bluetooth using Eddystone-URLs, but Google disabled this in 2018 due to abuse by marketers. Eddystone and iBeacons are now only supported in native apps.
It is possible to send web push notifications from a PWA, but this requires service worker support, which is not supported by Web Bluetooth yet.
This leaves having a web server somewhere within range of the Bluetooth device, that can subscribe to Bluetooth notifications an send send these out as web push notifications to your mobile device.
Edit: There is also another option: The Physical Web Association now provides an unbranded native app that can be used to interact with Eddystone-URL beacons. Maybe this app can then launch the PWA?
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