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Indoor lab


Rustynails

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1 hour ago, rustynails. said:

Are phone coordinates accurate indoors? I've heard of different versions of phone gps. 1. Triangulation using cell towers. 2. Direct signals from gps satellites. Has anyone created an indoor lab?

I will probably never complete a local indoor restaurant tour AL. I hate it. I completed a couple stages just by guessing the answer from standing outside. One of the reviews mentioned that the owner of the restaurant was very unhappy that people were coming in but not staying to eat. 

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13 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

I will probably never complete a local indoor restaurant tour AL. I hate it. I completed a couple stages just by guessing the answer from standing outside. One of the reviews mentioned that the owner of the restaurant was very unhappy that people were coming in but not staying to eat. 

You quote my question. Do you have answers?

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19 hours ago, Rustynails said:

Are phone coordinates accurate indoors? I've heard of different versions of phone gps. 1. Triangulation using cell towers. 2. Direct signals from gps satellites. Has anyone created an indoor lab?

My AL is indoor, in a location with public WiFi. I set the geofencing to 100 m, and never had any complaints whatsoever.

 

I'm not an expert, but AFAIK a smartphone's location service has 3 basic methods to determine your location:

- Global satellite navigation systems, like GPS, GLONASS, Galileo: Accuracy mainly depends on how many satellites are "visible"; not available indoors (except very close to a window)

- WiFi location data: Accuracy depends on how many WiFis are in range; I've been told that this can be surprisingly accurate, down to ~10 m e.g. in a residential block with dozens of private WiFis

- Cell tower data; not very accurate, but you know the general area you're in ;).

 

That said, I think that in most indoor locations the phone can determine its location well enough for an AL.

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33 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

- WiFi location data: Accuracy depends on how many WiFis are in range; I've been told that this can be surprisingly accurate, down to ~10 m e.g. in a residential block with dozens of private WiFis

 

Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't this require the wifi sources knowing fairly accurately where they are? If I try to use location information on my home internet, it tells me I'm either in western Sydney where my service provider has their offices or, scarily, Rookwood Cemetery which is the geographic centre of Sydney. I can't find anywhere in my modem's wifi settings where I can tell it where it is.

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9 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't this require the wifi sources knowing fairly accurately where they are? If I try to use location information on my home internet, it tells me I'm either in western Sydney where my service provider has their offices or, scarily, Rookwood Cemetery which is the geographic centre of Sydney. I can't find anywhere in my modem's wifi settings where I can tell it where it is.

As far as I understand it, smartphones "learn" the location of wifis themselves. A typical private household wifi can be detected outside the house to some extent. Smartphones there know where they are (with GPS) and therefore know that this wifi is rather close to this location. Unless you actively deactivate it, an Android phone sends its location data to Google Service (which is e.g. how Google Maps generates its traffic info). So Google now knows that wifi XY is close to a certain location. Now info like that comes in from several phones, in different directions from the wifi's exact location. In the end, Google's location services know pretty well where wifi XY sits. Now you come along, and you have never been in the area before. Your phone detects wifi XY (+ a few others more), asks Google to interpolate a location from this data, and Bingo - it knows where you are quite accurately without a single GPS signal.

 

I hope that I'm not totally wrong about this. If so, somebody should come forward and say so as soon as possible ;) .

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6 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

As far as I understand it, smartphones "learn" the location of wifis themselves. A typical private household wifi can be detected outside the house to some extent. Smartphones there know where they are (with GPS) and therefore know that this wifi is rather close to this location. Unless you actively deactivate it, an Android phone sends its location data to Google Service (which is e.g. how Google Maps generates its traffic info). So Google now knows that wifi XY is close to a certain location. Now info like that comes in from several phones, in different directions from the wifi's exact location. In the end, Google's location services know pretty well where wifi XY sits. Now you come along, and you have never been in the area before. Your phone detects wifi XY (+ a few others more), asks Google to interpolate a location from this data, and Bingo - it knows where you are quite accurately without a single GPS signal.

 

I hope that I'm not totally wrong about this. If so, somebody should come forward and say so as soon as possible ;) .

 

Thanks, that makes sense now. Out of curiosity, I just tried using the location services via wifi on my laptop, which previously put me in Rookwood Cemetry, but it's now showing my actual location. But if I use the hardwired ethernet connection to my desktop PC from the same modem, the location service still puts me in western Sydney.

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21 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

But if I use the hardwired ethernet connection to my desktop PC from the same modem, the location service still puts me in western Sydney.

The PC may be defaulting to reverse location determination from your IP rather than looking up the recorded location of your wifi.  I don't think I've seen a PC actually ever provide an accurate 'gps' location; general area perhaps... dunno. But bear's info has prompted me to look up smartphone wifi triangulation a bit more :omnomnom:

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We have created an AL guided tour of National Museum for our Mega in a 19th century building (that has very thick walls). Even in the mummy crypt in the basement (a very small room in the centre of the building - lots of walls all around) the phones knew well enough where they are and we have been able to obtain the coordinates that placed the stages on the map with acceptable accuracy. The museum is in the city centre with lots of wifi's and base stations around. But we didn't rely just on location services for navigation. The adventure was sequential and followed the direction of the visit of the museum, and people were given visual and verbal instructions at the completion of each location where to go next. And we have put geofencing wide enough to make sure stages would open even with less location accuracy. We ran into the issues with sequential adventure, unrelated to location services (see Adventure Play forum), but for players that had no such issues, it worked well and it worked as intended. So in my experience, indoor setting is OK, but you need to provide more than just location services for navigation.

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11 hours ago, icabrian said:

So in my experience, indoor setting is OK, but you need to provide more than just location services for navigation.

 

Right, it will pose less of an issue with phones that use more than merely GPS reception for location services. Most phones use wifi signals to aid in location determination. If there's no wireless signal at the indoor location at all, there really is zero chance a person's location will be even be near accurate.  It's always prudent for indoor locations to provide descriptive instructions about where to go. Even if as the creator you had no problem with being located, others' phones may not be so fortunate... :)

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1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

descriptive instructions about where to go. Even if as the creator you had no problem with being located, others' phones may not be so fortunate... :)

 

Almost 450 people completed the adventure in one day: we didn't hear of any location related issues that would significantly affect the play.

Edited by icabrian
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Right, I'm not saying there were definitely location related issues, but I know that if I had no problems doing an indoor location-based experience that provided additional instruction so I didn't need to rely solely on location services, I likely wouldn't say I had issues with location services... as above, most phones these days have alternative location determination when gps reception is unavailable.  The point was, as you described earlier, when creating an indoor location experience, provide instructions for those who may otherwise have difficulty with their device determining a physical location indoors.

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11 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

The point was, as you described earlier, when creating an indoor location experience, provide instructions for those who may otherwise have difficulty with their device determining a physical location indoors.

 

That's what I'm saying. If geofencing is large enough and people are instructed where to go by the app, no one has location problems. Accuracy isn't an issue anymore. Your phone might think you are on the lawn outside, and you can still play. But it turned out most phones did much better than that. Still, navigating just by location would have been tough. It depends very much on the type of the building, I guess.

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Yep, for an adventure if the proximity covers a wide enough area to cover the possible error factor in location determination, then as long as the device is in the general vicinity of the building, even if the location 'pin' never moves, then following text instructions can still allow the AL to be completed (as long as there's data reception of course).

Similarly I have an AL which is outside in a cemetery but is entirely reliant on instructions (sequential locations) with every location pinned to the center of the cemetery and proximity covering the whole area. A different meaning to 'location services is irrelevant' = )  Same construction, but gps is available. 

 

For indoor I'd do the same thing. Or visually move the pins to give a visual indicator of where in the building/underground to go, even though the pin won't reflect their actual location. Instructions need to be clear though, as you said.

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