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I want to develop an indoor positioning-based iOS app intended to help users to find the different rooms in an offices building. I've seen here that Apple now offers a way to get indoor positions for iOS 8 devices. It takes me to Maps Connect, and asks me to sign up there and provide some information about the venue where I want to enable indoor positioning.

I don't find more Apple's documentation dealing with this feature far from an example code (Indoor Positioning with Core Location). I don't understand the procedure to create an iOS 8 app that provides indoor positioning:

1) What does Apple exactly mean with "venue"? Is the indoor positioning feature only allowed to be used in public buildings such as museums or stadiums? It is not possible to use it in a private building?

2) If I can't make an indoor positioning-based app this way, what the alternatives could be? ASFAIK, the iOS SDK does not provide an API to get WiFi signals strength as Android does... The same problem if I want it to work in iOS 7.

This is the first time, that I've wanted to develop an app for indoor positioning and I'm a bit lost. I've read some related posts (a bit old ones) such as these:

Indoor navigation hardware/software requirements for iOS

iPhone indoor location based app

But I haven`t a clear idea of which the starting point to start developing this should be or the options I actually have. I'll appreciate some guidence and/or some opinions from someone who has already developed something like this.

EDIT: At least I'd like to know some more details about the Apple's indoor feature for iOS 8: if it could be used for any building, private or public, if it is more or less accurate, and some kind of tutorial or guidelines providing some steps to follow to develop this kind of system, since Apple itself does not seem to provide further prior explanations...

Thanks in advance.

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AppsDev
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  • Interesting question. Start a bounty? – David Oct 30 '14 at 15:28
  • Have you looked into iBeacons? https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/ If you can place an iBeacon in each room this would be an accurate way to detect the users location. – Onato Nov 11 '14 at 19:16
  • @Onato Yes, I think that would be a good starting point... nevertheless, I'd also need to know how to work with WiFi signals for indoor positioning, and I'm not even sure if you need any kind of permission from Apple to enable that. I sent a request through `Apple Maps Connect` almost a month ago, and I have no response yet.. – AppsDev Nov 27 '14 at 07:08
  • @AppsDev hi, do you get any way to integrate indoor map function in ios 8.? – Diken Shah Feb 12 '15 at 06:51
  • @DikenShah hi, I'm currently making tests with iBeacons... let's see if it meets my needs – AppsDev Feb 12 '15 at 09:49
  • @AppsDev, Thanks for reply. If you find any solution please share it to help community. – Diken Shah Feb 13 '15 at 05:24

1 Answers1

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The WWDC session "Taking Core Location Indoors" will get you up to speed.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/?id=708

Onato
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