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StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

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Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#11

Post by zizzer »

hmexx wrote: post #10
zizzer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately a gyro and accelerometer would only be able to provide the orientation of the device, not its location relative to the phone.

Yeah, but the gyro/accelerometer could provide short movement measurements, no? IF you combine that with the distance measurement you get from the BT device, you should be able to figure out the direction to the BT device?

For simple dead reckoning you'd need to add a magnetometer into the mix as well, otherwise there's no way to know which direction the sensors are facing relative to anything else.

This would at least give you a compass heading that you could use when integrating the accelerometer data to give some kind of course over time.

It'd be pretty unreliable though and add a lot of cost.

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#12

Post by dave1010uk »

lukeholder wrote: post #4

I have always wanted a 'google' for your house to find things. Search: "ruby on rails book" would return: "Bedroom 1 North Corner." Search: "keys" would return: "Laundry Shelf". Also: "wallet" would return "John's Lounge room, click to see directions" These are one step closer.

Triangulation should be possible with 3 or more Bluetooth sensors. Would be a nice project to re-purpose old Android phones for.

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#13

Post by krembo »

zizzer wrote: post #11
hmexx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the gyro/accelerometer could provide short movement measurements, no? IF you combine that with the distance measurement you get from the BT device, you should be able to figure out the direction to the BT device?

For simple dead reckoning you'd need to add a magnetometer into the mix as well, otherwise there's no way to know which direction the sensors are facing relative to anything else. This would at least give you a compass heading that you could use when integrating the accelerometer data to give some kind of course over time. It'd be pretty unreliable though and add a lot of cost.

Since each sticker is a transmitter and a receiver, isn't it possible to mount 3 stickers with known places around your house like GPS sattelites, which will calculate the cat's sticker (for example) distance from each of them and tell the exact location?

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#16

Post by hmexx »

zizzer wrote: post #11
hmexx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the gyro/accelerometer could provide short movement measurements, no? IF you combine that with the distance measurement you get from the BT device, you should be able to figure out the direction to the BT device?

For simple dead reckoning you'd need to add a magnetometer into the mix as well, otherwise there's no way to know which direction the sensors are facing relative to anything else. This would at least give you a compass heading that you could use when integrating the accelerometer data to give some kind of course over time. It'd be pretty unreliable though and add a lot of cost.

Still not sure why any of this would add cost. it all happens on the iphone which already has these sensors. If you can tell in which direction the iphone is moving thanks to gyro/magno/accelo AND you have a distance from BT device of reasonable resolution, you should be able to figure out the location of the device you are tracking with small movements of the iphone.

I'm not great at geometry but I figure it should be possible. Not sure about accuracy though.

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#17

Post by 54mf »

Love this idea, but as I understand it, their iOS app will be rejected unless they go through the MFi Program licensing process. Apple doesn't allow open access to the Bluetooth stack for anything besides audio hardware. Hope they have someone taking care of that, I don't see any mention of it in their sales pitch.

Also, I really hope some of that money goes towards hiring a designer to polish their apps and branding. They certainly have the tech side covered, but style goes a long way. See: Nest.

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#18

Post by zizzer »

krembo wrote: post #13
zizzer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For simple dead reckoning you'd need to add a magnetometer into the mix as well, otherwise there's no way to know which direction the sensors are facing relative to anything else. This would at least give you a compass heading that you could use when integrating the accelerometer data to give some kind of course over time. It'd be pretty unreliable though and add a lot of cost.

Since each sticker is a transmitter and a receiver, isn't it possible to mount 3 stickers with known places around your house like GPS sattelites, which will calculate the cat's sticker (for example) distance from each of them and tell the exact location?

Getting an exact location would be very tricky as the received signal strength can be affected by so many things (Thick walls, reflections, interference...).

I'd imagine you could get a rough location, but you'd need to go through some kind of calibration process first that involved going into different rooms/zones and telling the software where you were.

You might need extra reference sensors too. Ones that are in known locations that the system can use to scale the signal strength readings. That might help to combat some of the issues I mentioned above.

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#19

Post by frankus »

54mf wrote: post #17

Love this idea, but as I understand it, their iOS app will be rejected unless they go through the MFi Program licensing process. Apple doesn't allow open access to the Bluetooth stack for anything besides audio hardware. Hope they have someone taking care of that, I don't see any mention of it in their sales pitch. Also, I really hope some of that money goes towards hiring a designer to polish their apps and branding…

That's one of the coolest "features" of Bluetooth LE: Apple has decided that the risks to battery life and overall system integrity are low enough with BLE that they've left it quite wide open from an app-developer perspective. There's even an officially-supported background mode.

It remains to be seen exactly how far they are willing to go with unregistered protocols and custom hardware, but this type of "electronic leash" is an officially blessed protocol, so there should be no issues with their app.

Re: StickNFind – Bluetooth Powered ultra small Location Stickers

#20

Post by zizzer »

hmexx wrote: post #16
zizzer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For simple dead reckoning you'd need to add a magnetometer into the mix as well, otherwise there's no way to know which direction the sensors are facing relative to anything else. This would at least give you a compass heading that you could use when integrating the accelerometer data to give some kind of course over time. It'd be pretty unreliable though and add a lot of cost.

Still not sure why any of this would add cost. it all happens on the iphone which already has these sensors. If you can tell in which direction the iphone is moving thanks to gyro/magno/accelo AND you have a distance from BT device of reasonable resolution, you should be able to figure out the location of the device you are tracking with small movements of the iphone. I'm not great at geometry but I figure it should…

I was talking about adding the sensors to the bluetooth sticker device, that's why it'd add cost.

The sensors in your phone won't help to work out where the sticker is. The bluetooth receiver in it is built to detect signals from any direction, so even if you rotate your phone, that doesn't help to work out which direction the signals are arriving from.

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