About
Hi
My name is Jimmy Pewtress. I’m co-founder and director at tenthofmarch.co.uk, and have been an iOS developer since early 2010.
For me, the rise of the smartphone use has evolved into four distinct categories:
- Communication/Social – Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc
- Entertainment/Gaming – Angry Birds, YouTube, iPlayer etc
- Getting Stuff Done Quicker/Better – Clear, Amazon, Pingit etc
- Location Based Services – Maps, Directions, Local Information etc
Whilst I certainly fall under all four categories, for me the location aspect of mobile devices has always held the most appeal. Of all the things I’d miss without my trusty iPhone, I think the ability to grab it out of my pocket and instantly see where I am, and where I want to get to would be top of the list. It’s become second nature now to have this information available on demand, and the first step down the road of mobile devices becoming so integrated with our physical environment that the boundaries between the two become less and less distinct.
Early 2012′s smartphone map applications are great at getting you to the building you are interested in, but blocked GPS signals render any meaningful navigation once you get indoors impossible. For now. Lots of companies out there are working hard to solve the problems around indoor positioning and navigation, and slowly but surely software development kits are emerging for developers like me to start playing with.
Indoor location based services will be one of the next frontiers of mobile device functionality. Seeing as each time I go to a shopping mall, supermarket, airport, conference centre etc all I want to do is get my phone out and be shown how to get to where I want to be, I’m going to be right there with the early adopters.
This blog will accompany me as I experiment with all the different indoor positioning and indoor navigation systems out there, and get these phones working out where they are inside buildings.
Might be interested in Grizzly Analytics reports on indoor location:
http://www.grizzlyanalytics.com/report_2011_12_indoor.html
http://www.grizzlyanalytics.com/report_2012_02_indoor_CTO.html
and also:
http://grizzlyanalytics.blogspot.com/2012/03/nokia-indoor-location-positioning.html
http://grizzlyanalytics.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-indoor-mapping-positioning-from.html
http://grizzlyanalytics.blogspot.com/2012/02/predicting-wow-at-mwc-2012.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/12/22/microsoft-motorola-nokia-and-rim-to-battle-google-over-indoor-location-market/
Take care,
–Bruce
Hello Jimmy,
I am currently working on a mobile application for Smartphone (iOS, Androïd) which assist people in their museum visit and we would like to integrate indoor positioning in the application.
I would be very interested to have your feedback on the following : based on your experience have you found a reliable indoor solution working both for iOS and Androïd.
Reliable meaning with weak cellular signal and no wifi scanning, the solution is still able to provide an accurate position (around 10 meters).
So far, the feedback I had from various developpers is that solutions are not reliable enough for building like museum. They told me that the fingerprint used to locate your device might change from day to day, which makes the solutions not reliable enough for commercial use.
Thank you again for sharing your experience on this blog.
Cedric
P.S. Have you heard about the solution from the UK company Sensewhere (crowd source mapping)
Hi Cedric
I’m afraid not so far on both platforms. The SenionLab solution I tested on Android worked quite well as you can see from the videos but it does rely on wifi signal scanning. Without it, you’re going to struggle as the device needs some point of reference to be able to calculate where it is. I was hoping Apple would open up the wifi APIs with iOS6 but it remains closed off unless you jailbreak which isn’t much use if you want to submit to the app store. I have heard of Sensewhere, but not had the time to have a play around with it yet as I’m snowed under with client work. The problem with crowd sourcing is first you need a crowd so I’m not sure how it would perform in your museum environment if nobody’s used it there before.
One thing I did notice the other day – here in the UK until recently GPS repeaters were illegal but the government has now decided it will licence their use. I’m not sure where you’re based, but maybe one idea could be to install a GPS antenna on the roof and beam the signals round the building. Provided you had a floor plan with a known scale to GPS coordinates such as Micello, you could use device’s standard location methods to show the position on it.
Hope this helps
Hi Jimmy,
Thank you for your reply.
Cedric
Hi Jimmy,
I’m wondering what is the latest progress you have made in this field in the past year? I am looking to develop applications for an indoor localization method that does not require mapping ahead of time and was hoping to get your opinion of what’s available on the market today.
Thanks.
Hi Saleem
I’ve been too tied up with client work to do much research in this area of late I’m afraid but the impression I get is that things are moving slowly. Google are adding indoor maps to Google Maps in the US, and Micello are constantly adding to their map database so you could build something that made use of those and would work wherever they have maps. I’m not sure how you would display a location to the user without some kind of map that had been created beforehand though. How would a device know in realtime what it’s surroundings were? All it would know was its GPS coordinates. Some kind of sonar would be the only thing I could think of, and best of luck trying to get that to work! Although Bruce Wayne managed it I suppose…