To Philhu and other folks shopping for iBeacons:
Here is a great summary of what brands are available
aislelabs.com/reports/beacon-guide/
The Gimbal’s seem to have a pretty bad battery life 
Still would like comparative pricing and info on where to buy…
the Gimbals have very bad life… Batteries last about 25 DAYS.
Maybe thats why they are only $5! 
Wondering if Roomie support has seen this excellent guide to the latest iBeacon hardware devices. In the FAQ you mention that you are looking into recommending a iBeacon solution, this guide may help you. I think i’m going to order 3 beacons from Kontakt.io since they have the longest battery life and none of us care about the extra functionality of iBeacons.
That’s an impressive overview. We have tried a few more and can recommend at least one specific model, and the model we will mention is so new that it was not included in that overview. The Radius Network RadBeacon X2 meets all of the needs we found lacking in prior beacons. The most important problem with early iBeacons was battery life. All of the Estimotes we originally got for instance are now dead. Yes, in principle, we could slice them open with box cutters and perform surgery nearly destroying them to try to ressurect them (we actually did do this, it was quite involved). No thanks. Meanwhile, the RadBeacon X2 uses standard AA batteries for long, long battery life and very easy to open/replace batteries. Both their iOS app and OS X app immediately detected and configured their beacons. It was a good experience. These are brand new though and our experience with them has been brief.
We did also try RadBeacon USB mentioned as untested in the article. These are quite nifty because they will never need a battery change – they use simple USB power adapters which are literally everywhere these days anyway. They were as easy to configure as the new X2. However, we did notice a markedly lower power output of the signal on the USB model, perhaps because they’re so miniature in size. If it works for your environment, we’d recommend the X2. Roomie itself will just no longer care as of 3.1. If you have something that supports the iBeacon standard, it should work fine within the confines of the device’s expected performance.
Thank you.
Is there a timeframe for 3.1?
I ask because the RadBeacon X2 are available today. I might buy one for testing.
BTW, the Gimbals I bought with the guaranteed 6 month lifetime, 3 lasts 20 days, 1 lasted 1 week. All with new batteries. Asking them, they say switching them to use Apple ibeacon protocol, makes them use ALOT of power. So they are gone. They used CR2 technology batteries.