Android Question How to Geolocate indoors?

[wonder]

Hey guys,

Does anyone has an idea on how to geolocate someone indoors? For example, how to know if person A is in a specific club or restaurant? How do the social networks do it?

I'm not looking for code or tutorials, just ideas or an explanation on how this works.

 

[TheJinJ]

WiFi triangulation?
Data from the provider? I think location manager library has something along the lines of provider data.
Use last known location, speed, direction to estimate...just an idea

 

[Mark Read]

Indoors is not that easy. GPS will not work. Wifi will only work if there is a wifi connection in the club to log into. I have had a similar problem but outside where I didn't want to use GPS due to battery drain. What seems to work well is GSM triangulation. Also in the location manager library. It gives an accuracy to 20m which might not be enough for you. On the other hand, if you think you know where the person is and gsm pinpoints the street and roughly the number, this is probably okay.

If I understand you correctly you will need a service on the persons phone, to either send their location or intercept an sms and then send. Have done all this. Unfortunately not that easy, especially if they have whatsapp installed.

Having said all this, the library will still only give you the long and lat values. These you can send to google for example to get an address or use the geocode library from warwound.

 

[wonder]

Thanks a lot guys, this gives me a rough idea on how to apply some of the concepts discussed here.