How deploy an large number iBeacons

Question

I want deploy a large number of iBeacons with the same UUID because we can't access dynamically to the UUID of the beacons detected. What is the limit number of the maximum Beacons with the same UUID ? I found some discussions with a number of 65000 approximately, is it correct ?
I'm thinking to use a Bluetooth transmitter to wake up the app and check the current location, the API calls return different UUID of the area and I check anyone with the low ranging to check which one is the closest to me.

Answer 1

Bluetooth beacons (iBeacon and AltBeacon) have a three part identifier:

• ProximityUUID (16 bytes)
• Major (2 bytes)
• Minor (2 bytes)

There are 8 bits per byte, so if you give all your beacons the same ProximityUUID, you can have 8*2*2=32 bits worth of combinations. That's 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 combinations.

If you have heard discussions of there only being ~65000 combinations, this was probably referring to the major or minor value by itself. Because the minor field has 16 bits (2 bytes x 8 bits/byte), there can be 2^16 = 65536 combinations in the minor field.