I am thinking about a web app to detect the presence of the other iPads/iPhones. This is purely theoretical at the moment, i have no idea how to do this.
My question is what is my best technology/language method of doing this?
Is it going to be bluetooth or gps? How does the App Bump work?
Thanks for any suggestions posted...
Bump's FAQs: http://bu.mp/faq
According to their FAQs, when your phone has the Bump app up and ready, the app listens to the accelerometer for a sharp stop (your hand with your phone in it stopping when it hits the other person's hand with their phone in it), at this point, exact date time information as well as GPS position and characteristics of the bump are sent off to Bump's servers to compare other information from other bump users to see what other bump account shares most of that information. Bluetooth is not used in any capacity to make this happen, not for the transfer or the recognition of who to transfer to.
Your website may have to do the same thing. Have every instance report to your server, and then report back from the server where other people are.
Of course this goes without saying that I'm sure you were thinking about privacy settings and other layers of personal security.
Options I'd explore:
Bonjour discovery. In principle devices that can see each other via Bonjour could actually be in different continents, but usually it means 'same wireless network' and therefore at least 'same building'.
Game kit. Actually, this either uses Bluetooth or the local network, so is probably going to have similar results to Bonjour discovery but in less code.
I wouldn't try location services like Core Location (actually I would, but only if the above don't work), as the results probably aren't going to be fine enough. Especially indoors: the Maps app on my phone places me in a circle of about 50 metres radius with my actual location being on the outer edge of said circle. Someone on the next street with similar resolution could, as far as the app is concerned, be adjacent to me.
Related
I am researching how to create an app for my work that allows clients to download the app (preferably via the app store) and using some sort of wifi triangulation/fingerprints be able to determine their location for essentially an interactive tour.
Now, my question specifically is what is the best route to take for the iPhone? None of the clients will be expected to have jail broken iPhones.
To my understanding this requires the use of the wifi data which is a private api therefore not meeting the app store requirements. The biggest question I have is how does American Museum of Natural History get away with using the same technology, but still available on the app store?
if you're unfamiliar with American Museum of Natural History interactive tour app, see here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amnh-explorer/id381227123?mt=8
Thank you for any clarification you can provide.
I'm one of the developers of the AMNH Explorer app you're referencing.
Explorer uses the Cisco "Mobility Services Engine" (MSE) behind the scenes to determine its location. This is part of their Cisco wifi installation. The network itself listens for devices in the museum and estimates their position via Wifi triangulation. We do a bit of work in the app to "ask" the MSE for our current location.
Doing this work on the network side was (and still is) the only available option for iOS since, as you've found, the wifi scanning functions are considered to be private APIs.
If you'd like to build your own system and mobile app for doing something similar, you might start with the MSE.
Alternatively, we've built the same tech from Explorer into a new platform called Meridian which provides location-based services on both iOS and Android. Definitely get in touch with us via the website if you're interested in building on that.
Update 6/1/2017
Thought I would update this old answer - AMNH is no longer using the Wifi-based system I describe above, as of a few years ago. They now use an installation of a few hundred battery-powered Bluetooth Beacons (also provided by Meridian). The device (iOS or Android) scans for nearby beacons and, based on their known locations and RSSI values, triangulates a position. You can read more about it in this article.
Navizon offers an indoor positioning solution that works for iOS as well as any other platform. You can check it out here:
http://www.navizon.com/product-navizon-indoor-triangulation-system
It works by triangulating the WiFi signals transmitted by the device. Since it doesn't require an app to run on the phone, it bypasses the iOS limitations and can locate any other WiFi device for that matter.
Google recently launched an API called Maps Geolocation API. You can use it for indoor tracking of devices, which essentially can be used to achieve something similar to what AMNH's app does.
I would do this using Augmented Reality. There is a system sort of in place for this, the idea being that you place physical markers that have virtual information associated with them. I believe the system I saw was a type of bar code. When a user holds up the phone with the app, the app uses the camera to read the code and then display information. This could easily be used to make a virtual tour type app distributable through the app store and not even require a WIFI or 3/4G connection. This assumes that you simply load your information and store it locally with your app. Then to update it you simply push an update through the app store. Another solution is to use a SOAP/REST service and provide the information in that way, and this does not use private API's, though it does require some form of internet connection. For this you can see a question I asked about this topic a little bit ago:
SOAP/XML Tutorials Question
In addition, you could load a map of your tour location, and based on what code is scanned you can locate the user on the map and give suggested routes based on interests etc.
I found this tutorial recently on augmented reality, I haven't gone through it, but if its anything like the rest of Ray's tutorials, it will be extremely helpful.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/3997/introduction-to-augmented-reality-on-the-iphone
I'll stick around to clarify any questions or other concerns you may have with your app.
To augment the original answer for devs who were using Cisco MSE for indoor location - now they have an iOS and Android SDK which enables you to do indoor location using the MSE. A simulator can be used as well to develop the app without implementing the infrastructure to start with : https://developer.cisco.com/site/cmx-mobility-services/downloads/
For indoor location you can use Bluetooth LE beacons since it's a very accessible technology nowadays, there are several methods:
Trilateration: it uses 3 beacons, but with the noise and attenuation of Bluetooth signals, it gets quite difficult to determine the exact position and also it's not easy to use more than 3 beacons to increase accuracy.
Levenberg Marquadt method: used to solve non-linear squares problems showed good results on indoor positioning.
Dead Reckoning method: using the motion co-processor of the device, giving an initial position you can calculate the moving path of the device. Not that easy to implement anyway.
I wrote a post on the topic, you can find more info here: http://bits.citrusbyte.com/indoor-positioning-with-beacons/
And you can use this iOS app for your own indoor positioning experiments: https://github.com/citrusbyte/beacons-positioning
I doubt the American Museum is actually using private APIS; you'll probably find the routers that have been setup serve different responses to each other, so the app can detect it's position in the museum.
If you are looking for a cheaper to way to do the same task, you could have signs with QR codes, and use an open source library to let users scan these barcodes as they move through the museum, and update the onscreen content accordingly. On an even more low tech level, you can just tag each area with unique numbers, and distinguish that way.
I was wondering if it was possible to get the location of the iPhone with an app that isnt running, or at least running in the background. What I want to do is have the iPhone send a push notification when it arrives at a certain coordinate. Is this possible? If so, could someone put me in the right direction?
Thanks,
Ben
Yes, it is possible. Your application can ask to be notified of significant location changes or to simply continue using the GPS while executing in the background. The former—the approach recommended by Apple—uses less power at the cost of accuracy (this blog post indicates that the updates are accurate to roughly 500m), while the latter is as accurate as the device can manage. This is all detailed in the iOS Application Programming Guide and and the Location Awareness Programming Guide.
If you simply want your application to be notified when the device moves into a particular region, you may want to look into CLLocationManager's startMonitoringForRegion:desiredAccuracy:. If the device moves into a particular geographical region, your app is launched (even if it's not running!).
We are developing an enterprise application .The phones are connected to a Wifi router. The objective is to trigger an alarm if the phone moves out of the secure area .. (outside the building)
What is the best way to check if the iPhone is always inside the building .
some of the options we tried are
1.using Wifi(continous ping to wifi network),if not trigger an alarm .
2.if coordinates change (using GPS)
Are there any other means to achieve this .
You can use Location Services in iOS 4 (with the background location feature) to determine when the phone has moved to a different location.
#indragie's idea of using Location Services is a good one. If you can be sure that the WIFI SID isn't going to change, you could probe to see which access point the iPhone is currently associated to. If you are going to ping, then a better approach is to make the system service agnostic, and simply issue an HTTP query on a regular basis to your enterprise server. The server can then have a policy language on it declaring acceptable access points (from a variety of metrics). This might be set up to allow people to take their iPhones home.
Your best bet is GPS as the phone will not be able to find its location if you rely on WiFi and the device is not connected to a WiFi network.
Check out Apple's documentation for Location Awareness capabilities here http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/LocationAwarenessPG/CoreLocation/CoreLocation.html
You will be able to track "significant" or standard location changes in the background, details can be found here http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072-CH5
[edit to include]
This might be of interest to you too - http://longweekendmobile.com/2010/07/22/iphone-background-gps-accurate-to-500-meters-not-enough-for-foot-traffic/
It depends on what you want to do. Just to let the iPhone user know that he/she is moving away, using Location Services is good enough.
However, if you want to have a server that makes sure all the devices are within range, then it's more complex because your application may get suspended without a notice from a background state; in other words, you may not be able to catch the moment when your application terminates and take appropriate actions. Therefore you are going to need a heartbeat system like pinging to the server in this case.
I'm looking into the new background location service options in the iPhone 4 SDK. It allows an app to run in the background and receive location updates from the device.
There are two methods offered. One is a battery intensive mode that continuously gets location updates. The second recommended method sends the app location updates when there has been a "significant location change".
Does anyone know what a significant location change might be? Is a 30 foot walk considered significant, or is a 10 block walk considered significant? I imagine it also depends on the accuracy of the location mechanism being used at the time.
I've recently done some field testing of the new background location service to get an idea of what constitutes a significant location update, what kind of accuracy to expect for the location hits and our general experiences using it.
The results are detailed in a fairly lengthy blog post:
iPhone Background GPS: Accurate to 500 meters, not enough for foot traffic
As Steve Jobs mentioned in the OS 4 introduction, the low power mode uses cell tower triangulation and does not activate GPS unit. Since the iPhone phone module needs to keep a connection to the cell network anyway, there should be no impact on battery life.
Since the precision of a location fix with cell tower triangulation is anywhere between a few dozen meters (in dense city locations) and a few miles, I think 30 ft is not a significant location change. I don't know the specifics, though (and as mentioned by the commenters, the Apple dev forums are the right place to talk about those).
A coworker displayed the route he used to commute to/from work on Google Earth
but won't tell me how he did it. I have a laptop with GE installed.
Can you tell me how to do this. I guess I need something to collect the coordinates,
and then create somesort of tracks but any pointers would be helpful.
Also, can this be done in real time. I nother words, can I update my location on
GE while driving?
You can drag and drop xml-files with coordinates onto GE. These files can be created with most GPS software/systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_eXchange_Format
I just figured out how to do this. You will need a USB GPS Receiver. I also got a program called "Earth-Bridge" which allows generic USB GPS units to send their data in realtime to Google Earth.
Just install Earth Bridge, and then Install your Drivers for the USB receiver, and then plug in your Receiver and start Earth Bridge. The GPS will take about 45-60 seconds the first time to get a lock on your position but after that it is pretty good at staying up to date.
Since the GPS uses an internal serial to USB you have to deal with a virtual com port, just make sure you check your instructions on the USB and configure it correctly in Earth Bridge to use the right com Port, baud rate, etc...
Sometimes, the GPS shows me out in the ocean (or somewhere completely different from where I am) and I wait about a minute for it to lock on but it won't get a lock. Then there is a button on Earth Bridge "Reload in Google Earth" and it will usually fix it right away.
A good GPS receiver (the one I bought and love) is here on Amazon for about 38USD.
Google Earth speaks KML, or keyhole markup language. It is nothing more than an XML file with a specific schema.
from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language
You don't need an XML package to build it. you can just write out to a text file if you want to. You will still obviously need a GPS to pull the coords from.
you could even go so far as to write a blackberry app. to use its on-board GPS to do this. i've been contemplating doing this for a while to track my walks. my plan is to then automatically upload the tracklog to the web where i can view it later or my wife can view it real-time.
This is an old post, but I have been doing this with the MotionX-GPS iPhone app for years. You record & save a track on the app, and then email it to yourself. The email has an .KMZ attachment, which can open directly in Google Earth to display your track in glorious detail. I have a friend who has tracked all of his flight training with this. It's way Cool!