Bluetooth device to send signals to a smartphone?

Question

Android

I am planning to create an application that should receive information from bluetooth devices (beacon?). First, the application connects (pairing) with 1+ bluetooth devices, then a button is pressed on the device (so far, a device with one or two buttons with different pressing methods is planned - 1 click, 2 clicks, long press), and the application receives this signal and behaves accordingly. Probably, to make it clear, the buttons on bluetooth headphones have approximately the same essence, only I need a compact (hang on a keychain, powered by CR2032 batteries) and a programmable device (buttons must be programmable, available API, protocol support for integration with Android /iOS).
Which way to look? Will iBeacon devices work, or can they not send a signal?

Answer 1

1. iBeacons are just designed to send a signal to everyone around. Another thing is that you need to set up sending in some way - usually, a microcontroller is paired with it, if there is no desire / opportunity / skills to program the iBeacon itself. Here is an overview of how to work with cheap/Chinese iBeacon modules for Arduino.
2. Powered by CR2032 for low power consumption. The button press wait script will require programming the microcontroller - it sleeps, pressing the button generates an interrupt, the microcontroller wakes up, configures the iBeacon and puts itself and the iBeacon to sleep. The latter transmits a signal that the application can pick up.
3. It is not necessary to create your own mobile application. To play around, there is RemoteXY or Blynk (the latter does not work well with Bluetooth from the list of unsupported devices).

Answer 2

For such a task, a SensorTAG device with a CC2650 chip or with any other CC26XX from Texas Instruments is suitable, you can also consider creating your own device based on these chips