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Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

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Re: Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

#41

Post by navpatel »

0x0 wrote: post #40
darintay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The floorplans are definitely transferable! Once you’ve mapped a location once, it works automatically on all devices. In fact, if you walk into a location that someone else has already mapped, the “Where Am I” will automatically load that map up on your device and start showing your position. If you’d like to do more advanced stuff with your floorplans, make a WiFiSLAM SDK account here (access.wifislam.com) and we c…

What's in the SDK? I looked around and there was not even a mention of ios versus android. Is it a set of armv7 ndk android libraries? Or something else? Can I use it on simulators running on OS X?

The current WiFiSLAM SDK is an Android java library, available as an Eclipse project with sample code snippets that allow you to add your location to any existing Android app.

We have an iOS SDK that works, unfortunately since Apple disabled WiFi scanning in iOS 5 we can no longer publish it. It still works on jailbroken devices, but not a big target audience. We have a workaround in the works that will incorporate iOS devices

Re: Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

#42

Post by navpatel »

leishulang wrote: post #25
navpatel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No specific requirements for wifi at all. Which part didn't work exactly?

when I was walking the cursor does not move along. I think my campus wifis are using signal repeaters.

it should still work with signal repeaters. Did you map the location first? If this is a new location (i.e. someone else hasn't mapped it yet), then what you want to do is select the floorplan in "Browse Floorplans". You should see a button to start mapping, hit it & follow the on-screen instructions (basically walk around and hit the "mark point" button or the volume up/down button after positioning yourself on the map). once you are done, hit stop mapping & hit yes to upload it to our servers for processing. after some time (maybe 2-5 minutes depending on load) you should be able to hit "Where Am I?" on the home screen to have it track your position.

Let us know if it's still not working for you.

Re: Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

#43

Post by angry-hacker »

jdhuang wrote: post #12
sray wrote: post #10

Constructive criticism: After reading the description, I don't understand what this application does. I am not initmately familiar with indoor mapping/positioning or WiFiSLAM. The term "indoor mapping showcase" is vague to me. I think it lets me build maps of indoor locations? Somehow? Based on the screenshots, maybe by walking around my room? It seems like it could be neat, but I don't want to go through the trouble…

Fair enough. We have a 90 second video on YouTube that should give you a sense of what you'll get: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_GdXp_Swjs But basically, yes. It lets you build indoor positioning by walking around my room.

You can add that video to your App description on Google Play also...

Re: Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

#44

Post by navpatel »

groundshop wrote: post #39
jdhuang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@untog: It's actually a sensor fusion approach that combines both accelerometers and Wi-Fi signals.

Can you guys give any insight into how you're combining the sensor data? I'm a newb on the topic, but I was trying to do something similar in a different domain and got stuck trying to make a kalman filter. I tried to get an EE friend to explain them to me, but I couldn't get it.

Multiple fields actually invented Kalman filters independently and it turns out they are all actually the same thing, they just have widely varying derivations. My personal favourite explanation comes from the textbook: Probabilistic Robotics (2005) by Thrun, Burgard, and Fox.

Re: Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

#46

Post by FrojoS »

Sounds really great! I appreciate you put an App out there so we can try it out ourself and not just read a paper or watch a video. I tried it, but unfortunately my old HTC Wildfire is so slow that it becomes unusable. I was able to take a picture but I can't even place the cursor on the map. Of course I don't expect you to support such an old and crappy phone. I will try to get hold of a faster Android phone.

I also downloaded the SDK. Is it possible to use it on a Laptop, too? Maybe, by emulating Android? I have no clue but I would have a few ideas on how to use it with a Laptop.

As Gee has pointed out, there is also http://www.indooratlas.com/ which uses the magnetic field for indoor SLAM. Do you have any info on how your system compares to theirs?

Anyway, thanks for sharing this!

Re: Show HN: Indoor Location you can try yourself

#47

Post by nantes »

darintay wrote: post #36
nantes wrote: post #31

Crashes on startup. HTC Evo V 4G, Android 4.0.3. Reported via Google Play.

Thanks for the report and sorry about the crash! Any chance your sdcard/external storage is mounted or otherwise unavailable? We're supposed to have a popup to prompt you for that, but it looks like some code slipped in before the prompt :(.

Sorry, missed this for a couple of days. Hmm, I may have been charging via USB to the computer at the time. Will try again later.
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