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"Beacon", as in "attracts attention to a specific location"? No, not necessarily.

You could use this to broadcast GPS coordinates (and you can always try to triangulate the location of a BTLE transmitter), but the author is showing what he believes to be the simplest way for an embedded project to transmit arbitrary digital data over the air - to, for example, an iPhone.

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Beacon has a pretty specific meaning in the BLE world. A BLE beacon sends a broadcast out every now and then* that says “hey I exist, here’s my ID”. Another device can scan for these “advertisement” and do something when a particular kind of device is detected.

An example use case is a museum app displaying info to a user when they walk up to a particular exhibit.

* the interval can be set from 10ms to ~10s. The radio can be turned off in between advertisements, which is where the “LE” part comes from.

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