I want to develop an indoor positioning-based iOS app intended to help users to find the different rooms in an offices building. I've seen here that Apple now offers a way to get indoor positions for iOS 8 devices. It takes me to Maps Connect, and asks me to sign up there and provide some information about the venue where I want to enable indoor positioning.
I don't find more Apple's documentation dealing with this feature far from an example code (Indoor Positioning with Core Location). I don't understand the procedure to create an iOS 8 app that provides indoor positioning:
1) What does Apple exactly mean with "venue"? Is the indoor positioning feature only allowed to be used in public buildings such as museums or stadiums? It is not possible to use it in a private building?
2) If I can't make an indoor positioning-based app this way, what the alternatives could be? ASFAIK, the iOS SDK does not provide an API to get WiFi signals strength as Android does... The same problem if I want it to work in iOS 7.
This is the first time, that I've wanted to develop an app for indoor positioning and I'm a bit lost. I've read some related posts (a bit old ones) such as these:
Indoor navigation hardware/software requirements for iOS
iPhone indoor location based app
But I haven`t a clear idea of which the starting point to start developing this should be or the options I actually have. I'll appreciate some guidence and/or some opinions from someone who has already developed something like this.
EDIT: At least I'd like to know some more details about the Apple's indoor feature for iOS 8: if it could be used for any building, private or public, if it is more or less accurate, and some kind of tutorial or guidelines providing some steps to follow to develop this kind of system, since Apple itself does not seem to provide further prior explanations...
Thanks in advance.
The WWDC session "Taking Core Location Indoors" will get you up to speed.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/?id=708
Related
We are looking for a way to send GPS location to iPhone or iPad through bluetooth. The benefits of doing so is that an external GPS device could produce more accurate location than the build-in GPS device in iOS. For our testing purposes, it would also be nice to be able to produce GPS manually by QAs.
We are pretty sure this is possible but we don't know how. We heard about this kind of external GPS device from one of our customers. Simple googling we found this one this device, which does exactly what we are looking for.
We know that it is possible to generate fake GPS location using GPX file through Xcode. Please refer to this SO for more details. But this is not what we are looking for. We don't want to teach the QA how to build and debug with Xcode.
In a nutshell, we want to know how to send GPS location to iOS device via bluetooth. Eventually, we would like to build a simple app (maybe on Mac) and we can set up some GPS locations for testing.
P.S.: A similar question was asked a couple of years ago but it seems very much outdated. This link explains the supported supported bluetooth profiles by Apple. But I don't see anything related.
Any link to sample code or documentation will be very much appreciated. Thank you!
As far as we know, we are not able to send GPS location to our device via Bluetooth. Apple only allow pairing with a small set of known Bluetooth GPS manufactures.
As far as I know it's not possible to scan for hotspots in range and read their bssid and signal strengths. This was possible on iOS 4 by using private APIs and not longer possible on iOS 5 without jailbreak. Even if it were possible, the app would be rejected on the App Store. Is that right?
One company that has an indoor positioning system is claiming they can develop this system in iOS. I know for a fact they are scanning for hotspots and signal strengths and then triangulating the signal on their current Android app.
Are there any alternatives I am missing? Their claiming sounds impossible to me but I would love to hear from the people here. I would like to be ready when they demo (although I am expecting a jailbreak or some kind of mock up)
As far as i know this can still be done (using private APIs, of course) by MobileApple80211 framework.
Stumbler code is a good source of information on how to use this framework.
For iOS 5 you'll need a jailbroken iPhone. Guvener Gokce has a very educational blog post on this: iPhone Wireless Scanner iOS5
Just to update the answer: The MobileApple80211 framework has been replaced by MobileWifi.framework. You will need a jailbroken device (supposedly it can't be done using just private API's, hence on a development/enterprise non-jailbroken device).
My team and I are students and we are currently embarking on a final year project to develop an Indoor positioning system (IPS) mobile application on IOS (IPhones only). Would like to clarify our doubts on certain areas.
1)Is it true that IPhones Apps that calculates the wifi signal strength from access points is still not allowed in app stores?
2) I have seen quite a number of SDKs using Wi-fi triangulation to create IPS for android. Other than redpin which provides open source SDK for IOS, is there other SDKs available to develop IPS on IOS?
Thank you so much.
1) True 2) AFAIK No.
See this SO answer on outdoor positioning and another SO answer on the Apple80211 private framework to access the WiFi (app rejection if you use it ofc). There are also hardware solutions like Cisco Mobility Services Engine.
WiFiSlam used signal strength + SSID + inertia. They claim to use signal integration with a better algorithm than Kalman. See http://youtu.be/OGdvjvla1Tc#t=1033s They were bought by Apple and now are gone from the Internet, but it seems possible, although complicated, to develop a software only solution for indoor positioning.
Another thing, even when you set kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation but the position is still all over the place when compared to a GPS unit. See http://web.archive.org/web/20110912081330/http://rnr.davidlokshin.com/post/825290568
You can only access Wi-Fi-signals from your app if you jailbreak your device. This is not a good solution of course. We at indoo.rs eventually decided to go for Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi.
We provide an SDK for that, by the way. ;)
1) True. There are no public APIs that supply signal strength. (The only info that can be gathered with public APIs is the SSID of the currently connected Wi-Fi network.)
2) I don't know.
I'm looking for an old copy of the Livescribe SDK. Livescribe have discontinued their developer program, and I've searched far and wide for it, only finding others asking for the same:
http://www.kellbot.com/2011/06/livescribe-developer-community-huge-f-you/
I'm envisioning new ways the smartpen could be extended with extra functionality (bluetooth / wifi) for extra scenarios (it could do your expenses automatically, or work with musical staff / stave paper).
I'm trying to get as close to working prototypes as possible, and interested in anyone who is developing with Anoto dot paper, or any other smartpen manufacturer.
I haven't found an SDK for Livescribe, but you might want to take a look at this link: livescribe.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1/kw/sdk
Livescribe has developed an SDK for Apple iOS 7 (or later) that
enables the Livescribe 3 smartpen to connect directly to a tablet or
smartphone using Bluetooth® LE (Low Energy) 4.0+. With the Livescribe
3 SDK, specific partner developers will be able to quickly and easily
add support for the Livescribe 3 smartpen and enhance their
note-taking, drawing, annotation, and collaboration applications. For
an example of the SDK working in a developer app, please see their
blog post on Outline/Outline+ . If you would like to get involved with
the Livescribe SDK, please email developer#livescribe.com.
Does somebody know soft for better using online maps in off-line mode?
Because, you know, now you have to do several printscreens and then glue them.
But I'm pretty sure that there is tool at least for gluing overlapping images
MapsWithMe provides free offline maps for iPhone, iPad and Android. iOS version is available at the AppStore. Android is in beta, just ask for it at info#mapswithme.com
in Russia, there are Yandex maps and the collection of cache maps (http://ymm.sytes.net/) which you can load in your cell phone. Unfortunately, as I know, there is only Russian interface.