Fun with Wifi & Bluetooth
We are now 75% percent on our way to our goal of having a Quad-Sensor location back-end (see pretty greenery below).
A short while ago we decided our beacon patterning system works quite ok with GSM/CDMA/3G cell towers, so we opened up the floodgates to let it have a go at WIFI access points (man are there lots of those about). A few tweaks were necessary, some still needs to be made, but it seems to behave quite nicely already.
And while we were wearing our mad genius overcoats we decided to throw in Bluetooth MACs as well. Unlike Cell and WIFI beacons however, they are not used to recognise places, but rather to recognise other people at the same place so that a "place synch" can be performed: If our butler (the location server, don't ask...) can't figure out where you are, but he knows where someone else within Bluetooth range are, he will deduce that you are there too. Yay!
The remaining 25%? GPS! We save the easy stuff for last :-)