

Ask HN: What is a good way to track movement indoors? - dalek2point3

I&#x27;m looking to track the movement of people in an indoor office building (with their permission) over an extended period of time. I would like to know who is meeting whom, at what times, how often etc -- the basic idea is to visualize physical interaction.<p>My thought was to use cellphone signatures, mac addresses etc to make this happen. Can anyone think of a good solution? Do I have to build something myself or is there something out there?
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runjake
MAC addresses won't be good for some Android devices and any Apple iOS device
running iOS 8.0 or later. Some Android devices and all iOS 8 devices randomize
their Wi-Fi interface MAC addresses during polls.

You could do Bluetooth, but some percentage will have it turned off. Since
this is a voluntary deal, you could just have them turn Bluetooth on when they
want to be tracked and run periodic scans.

Trivia: I once ran something like this when I lived next door to a prostitute
and was able to track her customer arrival and departure times (along with BT
MACs, device names, etc).

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mfaggin
We at GiPStech are developing a solution based on anomalies of geomagnetic
field (similar to Indoor Atlas) integrated with RF (wifi and beacons) to get
precise to 1 meter / 3 ft with little or no infrastructure :-) In the
meantime, depending on the localization accuracy you need you can resort to
wifi tracking (10-15 meters) or Low Energy Bluethooth beacons (2-5 meters,
perhaps adopting the Apple protocol called "iBeacons"). Some solutions are
available "off the shelves" in the market, look at Indoo.rs or Estimote or
Loctronix, but there are many others

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boernsj
Thanks for mentioning us. As you said we provide indoor navigation as a mobile
SDK for Android and iOS based on iBeacons, sensors, etc. We do provide a free
plan to test everything out. Just register at my.indoo.rs If you have an
questions I am happy to help. Bernd (co-founder,indoo.rs)

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hakanderyal
There are turn-key RFID solutions for that purpose. Employee/visitor badges
with RFID chips + RFID readers across the building.

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thejay
Navisens does this with a software-only solution, check them out
[http://www.navisens.com/](http://www.navisens.com/)

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bonzoq
You could try iBeacons, though they only work with iPhones.

