
A free and open Indoor Navigation Service with superb accuracy - ENadyr
https://anyplace.cs.ucy.ac.cy/
======
qaute
> World-class accuracy of 1.96 meters

Good for WiFi/IMU-based indoor (phone-based) position tracking, I believe. For
more accuracy, especially for robotics, etc., Pozyx [1] claims resolution of
"a few centimeters" (indoor rooms/outdoor) by using some custom trilateration
circuitry, and then there are attempts to use VR (esp. Vive) methods [2],
which are even better (albeit more limited range).

[1] [https://www.pozyx.io/](https://www.pozyx.io/) [2]
[https://hackaday.com/2018/09/04/this-is-your-solution-for-
op...](https://hackaday.com/2018/09/04/this-is-your-solution-for-open-source-
motion-tracking/)

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beamatronic
Has anyone used the in-store navigation feature in the Target app? It works on
items that are in stock - it shows you the aisle number. Tap on that and it
shows a store map (with the correct floor you are on) and the location of the
item and your location. It’s scarily accurate. I’m not sure of the technology
behind it.

Edit: a word, and also this was on iOS.

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coolspot
I was curious about their technology too. From my brief research it works
using Bluetooth beacons accessible for app via iBeacon API -
[https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/](https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/)

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lozaning
Does anyone know how this differs from
[https://www.internalpositioning.com/](https://www.internalpositioning.com/) ?
So far as I can tell the idea is almost exactly the same.

I've been using that with quite a bit of success in automating my smart home
as I move around it.

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TomMckenny
Am I correct in seeing that neither is available on Apple products? Is this
because of some technical difference or is Apple putting up barriers or some
sort of open source issue or something?

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lozaning
Apple doesn't give apps the ability to read raw rssi values from seen list of
ssid(s). Also their WiFi Mac randomizing can cause issues depending on how
you've got things setup.

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hashhar
I have had really good experience with a Microsoft Research project called
Path. The main usecase I had was navigating places like shopping malls without
proper shop numbers or any addressing scheme.

You can find it discussed here [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/blog/path-guide-new...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/blog/path-guide-new-approach-indoor-navigation/)

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stabbles
I think it is discontinued (the link to the app is broken). Any idea why?

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tellarin
The team is aware of the website outage and it should be back online soon.

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vxxzy
Very interesting. Indoor mapping is a great project to take on. I started
mapping my house using Wifi Signal. By capturing signal strength, noise, and
connected AP for each device for every second. I can manage to turn lights off
and on as I enter certain rooms. I can also tell the "occupancy level" of each
room and "Who's where".

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0xb100db1ade
How do you tell the occupancy level of each room via WiFi signal?

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vxxzy
I know the location of every WiFi device connected to my network. In general,
I, and other occupants carry a device that has WiFi (Phone, watch, etc). Since
I know the location of the device, I can infer/assume the location of the
person.

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deforciant
Cool :) I have done my bachelor's project around wifi location fingerprinting
back in the day. Took a year but with a bit of tweaks we did manage to
calculate pretty accurate models of signal propagation by just having a wall
model. The only downside at that time was the lack of development tools for
Android (we had to use netbeans which was being horrifying experience). I
guess it would be a lot easier to do the project with modern development
environments + Flutter & Dart and using a bit more modern versions of OS :)

Really nice to see that this area is still active and being worked on!

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sl1ck731
I did the same for my bachelors but we basically pushed a cart with a wifi
sampler around the building and built a machine learning model in matlab based
on the signal strength to access points.

It would have worked waaaay better if we had some sort of surveying equipment
to accurately capture each few steps of the cart.

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thsowers
Bike-shedding: What kind of domain name is ap.cs.ucy.ac.cy?

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adrianmonk
Not sure whether to interpret your comment as "this is not the best usability
choice" or "what does this mean?", but here's my answer to the latter.

.ac.cy is the Cyprus equivalent of .edu in the US. Or, more similarly, of
.ac.uk in the UK.

ucy is University of Cyprus.

cs is their Computer Science department.

ap is Anyplace, the name of the app.

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ENadyr
Any other open Indoor Navigation Services I should be looking at for inventory
tracking?

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flossball
This isn't that. This is like google maps indoors for walking around malls and
is no where near accurate for anything else.

For inventory you could use decawave, but it would be pricey.

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ENadyr
That's what they claim on their website, but you are right, I think Indoor
Positioning System would be a better description of what Anyplace offers. <2m
accuracy is good enough for me though, just wondering if there are any
alternatives. And thanks for the Decawave suggestion, good to be aware of it
but it is waaay too pricey as you mentioned

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Geee
There's also [https://www.indooratlas.com/](https://www.indooratlas.com/)
which does indoor positioning based on magnetic signatures.

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Joeri
From what I’ve heard they require regular recalibration, which is a pain
because someone has to walk the floor.

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_underflow_
Didn't Portlandia do this a few seasons ago?

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ElijahLynn
tldr: Watch this demo video,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-473oWSfE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-473oWSfE)

It is the Navigator Video on the far right column of the homepage.

