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Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

amoses.dev

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Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#71
post #62

One time I worked at a zoom competitor, and our team got to prototype a "detect if these people are in the same room as each other" feature for dealing with echo cancellation etc, where everyone's laptop would emit a unique high frequency, and everyone's laptop would listen for other frequencies. Of course it worked in pristine conditions and fell down in the real world. But it was a fun experiment...

People need to learn manners, nobody should be using video calling without headphones. It's insane whenever someone joins and we hear all their background, feedback of whoever is speaking, etc as if nobody has ever told them to mute or stop using speaker in their life.

... I mean Google meet handles it pretty well

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#72
post #62

One time I worked at a zoom competitor, and our team got to prototype a "detect if these people are in the same room as each other" feature for dealing with echo cancellation etc, where everyone's laptop would emit a unique high frequency, and everyone's laptop would listen for other frequencies. Of course it worked in pristine conditions and fell down in the real world. But it was a fun experiment...

People need to learn manners, nobody should be using video calling without headphones. It's insane whenever someone joins and we hear all their background, feedback of whoever is speaking, etc as if nobody has ever told them to mute or stop using speaker in their life.

This is about 3 people in a meeting room joining with their laptops, without a meeting room audio setup (or it being bad)

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#73
Times are getting so much tougher. I remember my early morning organic chemistry classes using top hat. I never showed up to class, but I had my top hat app open.

The answers were usually kept simple, so I'd guess things like 0 or 1 (the questions were never written in the app). I think I ended up with 60% or so on them, which was nice, since it was a bonus component meant to be a little boost to the grade anyways.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#74
post #69
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SSID (name, like the article mentions) is different than the bSSID (mac address of the access point), so I don't think it would be that easy to spoof.

That would be a fun project. Capture some WiFi geolocation data and rebroadcast it later with an ESP32 that switches its BSSID/SSID/frequency/transmit power to match an existing fingerprint. And then see if you can be magically transported somewhere else.

Already done: https://hackaday.com/2024/11/15/bypassing-airpods-hearing-ai...

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#75

One time I worked at a zoom competitor, and our team got to prototype a "detect if these people are in the same room as each other" feature for dealing with echo cancellation etc, where everyone's laptop would emit a unique high frequency, and everyone's laptop would listen for other frequencies. Of course it worked in pristine conditions and fell down in the real world. But it was a fun experiment...

sounds like how Cisco Teams/Webex could detect if you're in a certain meeting room using an ultrasonic frequency.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#76
I held onto Symbian longer than I should have, but am surprised this practice hadn't crossed my path before now. IMHO it's insidious. It's one thing for a Google Street View car to war scan my WiFi router, but another for my own phone to secretly rat me out. Not that I use Location myself, but I can't stop other members of the household. I assume this is yet another practice that Android forks like GrapheneOS disables?

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question - what's your use case for needing GPS indoors? I generally know where I am when I'm indoors :)

Not OP but navigating large malls, subway terminals, etc is nice

[dead]

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#79

One time I worked at a zoom competitor, and our team got to prototype a "detect if these people are in the same room as each other" feature for dealing with echo cancellation etc, where everyone's laptop would emit a unique high frequency, and everyone's laptop would listen for other frequencies. Of course it worked in pristine conditions and fell down in the real world. But it was a fun experiment...

>where everyone's laptop would emit a unique high frequency,

This sounds like an awful idea.

https://www.science.org/content/article/sounds-you-cant-hear...

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#80
post #54

> Small digression: did you know that, until May 2000, GPS satellites (which are owned and operated by the United States Space Force) provided the general public a signal with intentional error built into it? What the hell? Why?

They wanted to keep accurate global positioning as a US military exclusive capability. It's definitely useful for guided munitions, & alternative satellite positioning systems didn't exist or were less mature at the time, so US GPS was the only system one could realistically use for that. A missile able to hit a target within a 3 meter radius is vastly more effective than one that can only hit within 100m, for instan…

Which is idiotic, because nowadays it is trivial to build your own GPS received compared to the complexity of building a reliable ICBM.
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