Whoa :) This is very clever. I've been working on indoor positioning quite a long time already and might give this a try.
No WiFi -> no extra WiFi hardware costs -> widespread use
This technology might disrupt indoor advertisement.
Pretty cool! Would be cool to add some sort of position sensor on, I guess GPS wouldn't be ideal though. Maybe hack a roomba to map signal strength in your house!
What would be some of the better alternatives for doing indoor location? It'd help me a bunch to see a few examples, as I was previously thinking of beacons for this purpose.
If they can prove it works at scale this tech instantly eliminates the usefulness of beacons.
Wifi has always been the obvious solution to indoor location (lower power than GPS / works indoors / piggybacks on installed hardware / somewhat "open") but fidelity was too low.
Hence the rise of beacons.
Beacons IMO are the least elegant solution to the problem of indoor location because they require (a) a whole separate location framework (b) requires vendors / stores to install & maintain hardware to drive coverage (c) are owned by the OS.
I've been watching this game unfold for years - Apple bought WifiSLAM in 2013 to improve indoor location / wifi (1), and then bought "super accurate GPS" firm coherent NAV last year. (2)
There are also several startups attempting to use sensor data + geomagnetic or inertial navigation to solve this problem. (3)
If these guys actually got Wifi working, and figure out a way around the callibration problem, they in one fell swoop solved one of the major barriers to the hyper-localized advertising / consumer tracking that we've been promised (threatened with?) for years.
A company I worked for was interested in installing these WiFi locators in its buildings to study how people move through them - it turns out it doesn't work that well outside of fully clear spaces (so it can't be crowded, there can't bee too much furniture - although you might be able to deal with the latter if you spend a long time calibrating) + it requires dedicated devices (with faster clocks). Definitely doable though.
Apples approach seems far superior. Medium range stuff tech is already out there. See z wave and zigbee. You can hack that stuff together without much cost.
Precise location indoors has no real equivalent currently
My Senior Design Project, for getting my BS in Computer Engineering, was around indoor positioning. Granted we did it with Bluetooth and not Wi-Fi, but it's awesome that there'll be an API for it.
I've been considering something like this for the smartphone I don't have in the automated home I also don't have.
By mapping the room location by wifi strength and then the direction with an in-built compass it should be possible to 'target' a window on the south wall for instance and with a single press of a button open the blinds. Accelerometers could detect an upward tilt and again with a single press of a button turn on the ceiling light.
As I said at the beginning I have no current need for this sort of technology but it's interesting to think about.
Already exists in prod. At a meetup several years ago, it was demonstrated that you could track a person’s location in an adjacent room by triangulating Wi-Fi interference.
I’m not into RF so this is a bit imprecise, but it took like a RPi with GNU radio, a second router, and some code to diff the signals into a location.
The demos were compelling, you could see a heatmap of a user waving and so on. This is a product already sold.
Wow, very cool! I would have used WiFi but unfortunately our beacons either separate or merge devices (so you either get just the users on the nearest beacon, which is not a set range of distance, or every user on that region's subnet, which could be entire dorm complexes). But that seems like a really good solution!
There's a whole bunch of indoor positioning methods, having different precision/simplicity/cost profiles, so you might need to shop around. Probably cheapest and closest to my sensor is ultrasound sensors like http://www.marvelmind.com
Afaik these guys have a very well working solution based on WiFi signals http://www.walkbase.com
They started with the "indoor location app for people" idea, but later found a business when the phones are just being tracked for store etc. layout optimization.
This technology might disrupt indoor advertisement.
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