Hi, I'm sorry to revive such an old thread, but I had the same need as you guys for doing just this very thing: using BLE beacons for location and presence detection.
I made my own solution to it using an ESP8266 dev kit and a Nordic-based BLE module. You check out the project here: https://www.happybubbles.tech/presence/ where I have the beacon gateways for sale. But I've also made all the work open-source and open-hardware as well. I hope this helps you guys out if you're still looking for something like it.