Can a Windows PC act as a Bluetooth beacon?

Question

Does a normal Windows (8.1) PC have the ability to act as a Bluetooth LE beacon? If so, is there any software to enable that?

Update

More current answers here:

Answer 1

Pre-Windows 10, Windows 8.1 in your case, doesn't support scanning or acting as iBeacon(s) nativly. However, you have some options:

• Use the WinBeacon managed library (yes, I'm the owner). Replace the driver of the Bluetooth 4.0 dongle with a libusb/WinUSB driver and you're all set
• Use a VM that runs linux with BlueZ stack
• Use a RaspberryPI as 'detector' that hosts a WebAPI interface to your Windows machine
• Switch to Windows 10