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I am trying to implement Indoor Navigatiion using Estimote iBeacons Technology. Any help in how to proceed. Looks like there is no direct way in the Indoor Location SDK.

B.V.
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2 Answers2

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Have you taken a look at examples?

There is also Estimote Indoor app on App Store so you can play with it.

Wiktor Gworek
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  • Yes I did. Infact thats the only Indoor location example code which I have. But no where they have mentioned about the navigation. Moreover the accuracy of the user's current position is very bad. Do I need to use more beacons here ? – B.V. Mar 17 '15 at 07:17
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Indoor Location and Navigation can be a complex topic. There are multiple issue you need to cover. Here is a list:

  • The first problem is that you cannot really map accurately received signal power with a reliable distance.
  • Received signal power will fluctuate randomly and widely, mainly because of the receiver (phone). For the same receiver, signals from different beacons tend to correlate very strongly.
  • Every receiver will be different. An iPhone 5 will have much lower received signal power than an iPhone 6 or an iPad. So your distance.
  • Signal will fluctuate because of rotations in the receiver and whether your body is between a beacon and the receiver.
  • Sometimes, different beacons simply have different transmission powers just because.
  • The received signal strength or any filtration of it underpins all "distance" calculations so there is no easy way around it if you want to use crude formulas.

Try one:

4 beacons in one room. Can your algorithm / app "triangulate' reasonably well? Is it reactive to changes of position? How does it respond to changes of rotation? Can you, via an app, check wether all the beacons that you are using give the same accuracy reading for the same distance or set if distances? If not can you increase / decrease the TxPower so that this is the case? You can try and mount the beacons on the ceiling next to the corners of the room.

Obviously if you are dealing with a large installation, putting lots of beacons is not really a walk in the park to manage (batteries, signal power configuration, placing the beacons in a good position etc.).

Try two:

Fingerprinting a room with a couple of beacons mounted on adjacent corner on the ceiling. Fingerprinting is kind of complex, I cannot say that I master it bu I made an open source app that you can check out.

https://github.com/PaoloLongato/open-tagger/blob/github-master/README.md

If useful I can relay here more information regarding this technique with which I had some results.

Try three

Look into multilateration with multiple beacons in one room. There are some SO examples. For example:

Triangulate example for iBeacons

But there are several questions that cover multilateration with beacons and in theory.

Community
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Eppilo
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