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> Is this a type of beacon?

Pretty much. A similar approach of only unsolicited advertisement packets is used by a number of beacons. But that is not the only use case. A decent number of BTLE sensors out there also work exclusively by periodically sending out unsolicited advertisement frames with their data.

As long as you don't need to accept any incoming data, that is really easy to do, and allows completely shutting off the radio in between, so the radio may only be active for a few miliseconds once every few minutes. That helps keep power consumption very low, especially for battery powered devices.

If the primary sensor functions are low power, and support an interrupt signal, and you have a microprocessor with a low power timer interrupt (to allow waking up occasionally even if the sensor state has not changed), and ability to stop the clock to the rest while waiting, you can pretty easily get multiple years on a single disposable AAA or coin cell battery.



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