From the old English bēacn 'sign, portent, ensign', of west germanic origin.
A fire or light set up in a high or prominent position as a warning or signal, a beacon!
It was primarily designed and tested for mountain biking, but jogging or walking are also supported
From the moment you press Start, the application begins recording your position as it changes (including timestamp, altitude and velocity), the running time, the total distance and if available: heart rate data.
At the end of each activity you can review and add notes or simply discard it.
Along with map plotting, there's a line chart as well, indicating altitude, speed and heart rate. You can access this information by rotating the iPhone to landscape when viewing an activity.
All the data is locally stored on your iPhone. Privacy is part of the design.
Yes. A feature is provided in the details page of every activity to export as GPX file.
Calories are calculated based on information you provide (weight, gender and age), as well as duration and the average heart rate. It should be considered as a rough estimate on the number of calories burned. Intensity and other aspects such as body fat are not considered.
Yes! Now you can control your activities from the Watch. Start, stop and keep track of your progress just by looking at your Watch app. Beacn becomes even easier to use! We recomend you to enable the last used app when you raise your Watch for easy access.
Bluetooth Latitude HRM V1 and TomTom Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitors
No special configuration needed when using the app except making sure the iPhone has Bluetooth turned on
If correctly connected, Beacn will issue a voice notification: "Heart Rate Monitor Ready!" and the heart rate is displayed on top, as shown bellow
Your current heart rate is included in the voice feedback information, along with the time and distance
You can get a voice warning if your heart rate goes over a certain limit, defined by you in the settings screen
If you don't own a bluetooth heart rate monitor, there's always the option to manually enter the average and maximum heart rate at the end of each activity, allowing you to continue using other monitors or sports computers.
Currently, only TomTom Bluetooth Cadence sensors are supported.
Game Center is optional and acts as another motivation source where you can post your activity duration and distance and challenge your friends!
To enable Game Center, just tap the Leaderboard option from the main menu.
Yes! All you have to do is authorize the app to publish this information to your Fitbit profile.
Yes! All you have to do is authorize Beacn by enabling the UP by JAWBONE option in settings.
Yes! Just enable the option in settings. Notice: You must have a Health ID configured for this feature.
Health App, Fitbit and JAWBONE publishing is done automatically at the end of each activity.
Live Tracking is optional and shows your last known location along with timestamp on the Beacn website. This information is sent via HTTPS and only your position is stored on the server.
Anyone who knows the username / password combination can access your last known location.
If needed, an option to make the page publicly accessible is included.
You can use this feature to let a close friend or a spouse know your location, for example, in case you go exercise alone.
Anyone accessing your live tracking page can send you a message, that Beacn will read to you. NOTE: Depending on the update interval, the message can take up to a minute to get delivered.
You can share https://beacn.me/USERNAME where USERNAME is the one registered within the app.
In the app settings you can easily share your URL with friends via Messages or Mail.
This is what it looks like to watch a live tracking activity: The position can be refreshed every 30 seconds.
You can also send messages from the web live tracking page that will be delivered by the speech synthesizer.
French, German, Portuguese and Spanish are supported as well as English. Voice feedback is also available for the native language.
All the data is locally stored on your device by default. Every feature that causes data to be sent is optional and its uses are described here:
All the above is optional and not enabled by default.
Beacn has the hability do detect an unusual stop in your activity and send your current location by SMS. Service highlights:
You may also want to check iOS's ability to share you location with Friends and Family. Beacn doesn't replace this feature but tries to augment it by trying to decide if something unusual is worth reporting at it happens. In the unlikely event of falling or requiring assistance because of a sudden medical hillness, response time is crutial.
If possible, always exercise in the company of others and avoid dangerous situations.
As with the rest of the app, this feature has been tested in the field:
