Indoor GPS

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  • toscal
    Moderator
    • Oct 2005
    • 2061

    Indoor GPS

    This looks interesting for your HA system to know where you are.
    Seems to be an improvement over standard RFID technologies.
    IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU'VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.
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  • Andrew Millne
    Automated Home Ninja
    • Nov 2007
    • 269

    #2
    Old topic bump but this is very interesting. I'm looking forward to mainstream products that will allow accurate indoor tracking like this. There are so many increased applications for HA when specific people/things can be located.
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    • Andrew Millne
      Automated Home Ninja
      • Nov 2007
      • 269

      #4
      Thanks Chris, I had missed that. Exciting times. I can see these included in the likes of the galaxy gear and fitbits being quite usable.
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      • Andrew Millne
        Automated Home Ninja
        • Nov 2007
        • 269

        #5
        Think I'm going to order a developer kit from estimote.com to have a play with this.
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        • chris_j_hunter
          Automated Home Legend
          • Dec 2007
          • 1713

          #6
          Hi Andrew -

          ISTR you saying it had arrived - so, how'd it go ?? !

          Chris
          Our self-build - going further with HA...

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          • Andrew Millne
            Automated Home Ninja
            • Nov 2007
            • 269

            #7
            First impressions were pretty disappointing and with 3 beacons indoor location accuracy was poor to the point of not really useful for anything. Adding a 4th beacon considerably improves accuracy in a single room however and the SDK now includes a utility to calibrate for this purpose.



            I'm yet to attempt anything practical but getting usable x,y coordinates for HA is definitely possible
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            • chris_j_hunter
              Automated Home Legend
              • Dec 2007
              • 1713

              #8
              interesting, thanks - the GPS in our car has problems when it sees less than four satellites, and seems better if there are at least five, six, even seven ...

              is battery-life an issue - presumably they'd be best powered of a convenient local module ?
              Our self-build - going further with HA...

              Comment

              • hanya
                • Nov 2014
                • 1

                #9
                Wow very interesting application, very useful for all of us.

                Comment

                • kaivalagi
                  Automated Home Jr Member
                  • Nov 2014
                  • 16

                  #10
                  I've been thinking about tracking people around the house to know where anyone is at one time...surely by sensing presence in the hall and then in the living room straight after the living room could have a occupancy counter incremented and the hall decremented for example? There would probably be some fine tuning of the process though otherwise you may get unrelated movement in two area conflicting with the logic....

                  I am going through the motions of preparing to buy some heating related z-wave bits right now, with nothing in place yet and lighting will be coming later so am not sure on how this could be implemented but by following PIR triggers that are in quick succession you have a fairly good understanding of where people are right? Unless you have a party going on, then you'd just get disco lights lol

                  I plan on running Domoticz on my NAS to start with (got it working ready via linux chroot to debian) but I haven't looked at underneath...I'm assuming a decent script could be created to populate a database entry of where people are at any given time though and this data could feed more scenes? Not sure how this presence data could be captured and reused but as it's a time based thing it may need to be catered for through seperate scenes to then provide (via a dummy device maybe?) the info needed for other scenes.

                  Until I get into the nuts and bolts of scenes and custom scripting I have no idea how this ought to be implemented, all just assumptions for now....would it be do-able do you think?


                  edit: Had a quick look at Lua scripting in Domoticz and you can access the database files for read/write from them, you can also check all device states...so in theory a table of associations for before and after PIR devices for entering any given space could be setup and used in a lua script to determine any given rooms occupancy, which in turn could be stored in the database too. Then all the basic lighting scripts could use this occupancy data to decide if lights need to be on or not. Would take some work but sounds like fun to me....I need to get this hardware ordered!!
                  Last edited by kaivalagi; 26 November 2014, 01:08 PM.

                  Comment

                  • chris_j_hunter
                    Automated Home Legend
                    • Dec 2007
                    • 1713

                    #11
                    >no one want to post ...

                    OK, some thoughts ...

                    >tracking people around the house ...

                    certainly possible - more sensors the better, especially if open-plan ... PIRs good, but other sensors useful, too - eg: reed-switches on doors & windows give strong indications, too, as do button-presses & switchings, especially when taken in-context (depending on the button / switch is for) ...

                    successful tracking is only the start, much depends on how it’s used, too, which brings in lots of other issues & challenges ...

                    tracking & making use of it can seem simple, but reality can be very complex, and people can get very bad-tempered if responses are slow with poor context-sensitivity ...

                    wireless approaches can have timeliness & reliability issues ...

                    two-way comm’s (between app' & sensors, actuators, whatever) is more than a nice-to-have - ie: essential, mostly, really - plus independent feedback, too … if are to get something that really works ...

                    from what we’ve seen, very few off the shelf automation systems offer much more than simple automation / smart-remote type control ... in going further, people tracking is an important first step ...

                    it’s easy to underestimate the time & effort involved ... perhaps uniquely, Idratek do it v.well already, with flexibility & plenty of ways to take things further reliably (behaviour, connections, additional logic, real & virtual sensors, fall-back approaches, etc) ... so have a look, at least ...

                    >Apple ...

                    we use both Windows & Mac, each has pros & cons - the Apple approach is all about user-focus & discipline (for UI consistency), which for the user is more than welcome (saves a lot of time & frustration) … but for HA there seem to be more & better options with Windows (iHouse / HomeKit seems quite limited in its ambitions, ISTM) ...

                    Chris
                    Last edited by chris_j_hunter; 26 November 2014, 10:08 PM.
                    Our self-build - going further with HA...

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