

Indoor mapping with Estimote Beacons - calvin_c
http://estimote.com/indoor/

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linkeex
From my experience as someone who has already implemented an complete iBeacon
based iOS App that is used as an art gallery guide I don't believe that this
indoor location tracking you're advertising is working when there is more than
one person in the room.

As my academic advisor always said: Every human is an 80kg water bag thats
disturbing the signal.

Did you test this with multiple persons in the room and if so, what was your
result concerning accuracy.

~~~
jimiasty
You are right that people and their bodies might absorb Bluetooth radiowaves,
but our solution does combine several different techniques to minimize that
effect.

This is the first version of our SDK and we encourage developers in our
community to test different setup with more beacons or beacons located a bit
higher, so there is always a line-of-sight between phone and beacons.

~~~
linkeex
> [...] but our solution does combine several different techniques to minimize
> that effect.

Can you elaborate on this techniques? What is it exactly that you're using?

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stevedc3
We have a team of data engineers in data science and PhD's measuring all the
signals we receive from the beacons and performing algorithms (e.g.
trilateration, least squared etc) and combining this with positioning signals
we can process based on positioning of the device. The trick is to account for
different devices, different antenna placement on models etc. So over time we
build a database that improves accuracy based on usage. Regarding people being
present, we can account for that if we predict that signals are reflecting
differently based on estimated density. These are super challenging problems
so we have a team dedicated to it, and iterate quickly.

~~~
linkeex
Cool, thanks for answering.

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akent
Low energy bluetooth is neat technology and I'm impressed with Estimote too.

My question is what happens when the batteries die in these beacons if you
have set many of them them up in a constellation like this for intra-room
location? Do you have to replace all together and reconfigure or is there some
easier way to replace individual beacons that have gone flat and reconfigure
them to act exactly like the one they are replacing?

~~~
jimiasty
This Jakub from Estimote again. Few months ago we have released "Power
management" for beacons you can read more here:
[http://blog.estimote.com/post/91749152580/estimote-rolls-
out...](http://blog.estimote.com/post/91749152580/estimote-rolls-out-the-
worlds-first-power-management)

Thanks to these features our beacons can save energy when not used, so if you
enable "smart mode" they should last more than 2-3 years.

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tashoecraft
It says it doesn't support their stickers because they are intended to be
placed on moveable objects. That sounds like it is a hardware limitation,
otherwise why would they be restricting their developer community? Still very
excited about this.

~~~
jimiasty
Hi there, this is Jakub, Co-Founder of Estimote (YC S13). Our Indoor Location
SDK was designed specifically for Estimote Beacons (the bigger one with bigger
battery, not the stickers). Estimote Beacons with their adhesive layer were
designed to be sticked to walls vertically. Thanks to their position and
antenna orientation we are able to "estimate" position of the user inside the
building. Indoor location is also power-consuming for beacons while they
broadcast a bit more often, so we can do better math while analyzing data.
Stickers were designed for movable objects with much shorter range and a bit
longer advertising intervals.

~~~
fdezjose
Very cool SDK Jakub, congrats! Lots of possibilities.

What is the coverage area of 1 beacons? If I want to map a big hall, how far
should each beacon be placed one from another?

~~~
stevedc3
Hey this is Steve Cheney from Estimote. We encourage you to experiment.
Basically you can cover a fairly large venue (100 feet or more on a side) with
just 4 beacons. It depends on some of the variables of the venue -- walls,
surfaces, existence of metal and glass for instance. But the point of the SDK
is to provide smoothing and consistency and have the phone itself help resolve
user location while beacons also continually reduce error propagation of
signals. We have a team of PhD's building this product and taking into account
tons of smart data science. The ultimate goal is to have a venue covered
without requiring an entire "cell network" of beacons. You can get greater
accuracy by testing with multiple beacons per wall though. We would love your
feedback on what works best for you as you iterate so we can also put these
improvements into the SDK.

Thanks for the support!

~~~
kxr
Would a space with multiple aisles (think grocery store) be hard to map with
your current algorithm? Or if I add beacons to each aisle I should be good to
go?

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lstamour
No connection with Estimate personally, but given what I've observed about
their beacons' signal strength and what they said earlier focusing on mapping
the four walls of a room, I would place the beacons along the store's four
edge walls, and for better coverage in isles, I'd place beacons at the far
walls of each isle end. If the device can't see both beacons, one on each
end's facing wall (the outer wall, that is) then I'd consider placing more in
the middle, perhaps one every 3-5 isles? It's tricky, because if the signal
strength is uneven, I expect the algorithm might get confused, unless the
calibration or additional beacons can help. It's possible that they'll also
release an update (if it doesn't already work this way) that will support
beacons "in the middle of the room" but I expect the initial release was to
map rooms with the fewest number of beacons possible. In a grocery store, you
might even want a beacon per "section", so if you approach frozen pizzas, you
can offer those deals, or whatnot. Detecting one beacon is a lot less work
than trying to locate someone using every beacon within range.

The biggest sticking point for me, seeing this release, is remote management
if you deploy that many beacons (how do you know if the battery died in one?)
and/or powering the beacons from other sources at some point to ensure they
last longer? Oh and it said iPhone, so does this mean Android is excluded, or
this is simply a first release, and as iBeacons, you can't really advertise
for Android these days? :)

Finally, it would be very interesting if you were also able to use WiFi and
any other signal strength indicators to assist in triangulating where a user
happens to be, including perhaps M7/M8 motion. I'm sure you've thought of
this. Bravo for the work so far!

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joshvm
Any reason why the devkit is three beacons and not four? If you need a minimum
of four.. it seems a bit daft not to have that as the default size and then
sell single addon beacons as necessary.

~~~
jimiasty
This was a historical reason. When we started shipping last year we decided
for 3 beacons since it was more fun with three than one prototyping beacon
apps.

Since most of the typical rooms have 4+ walls we require at least four bacons
to work with indoor.

Adding more beacons does improve accuracy.

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uptown
Is the reason you cannot simply use a software/cell phone GPS solution to
accomplish the same thing that there's poor granularity and potentially also
poor indoor GPS reception indoors?

~~~
lstamour
Yes. Wifi triangulation can work, but it's not precise enough unless you have
quite a few routers. You end up having to use other signals that you're
nearby, and track the device's own movement, I expect. In a way, what you have
here is "indoor GPS", it's just tricky to get things as accurate as we expect
right now. Ultimately, I expect we'll have to rely on lots of signals,
including (for some use cases) cameras or Kinect-style tracking.

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ende
Can this help me find my cat? He's lost somewhere in my house. And before you
ask, yes, he has a smart phone strapped to him.

