detecting presence of mobile devices

General Discussion Other

cedrickie..

detecting presence of mobile devices

in General Discussion • Other • 1 year ago

I am currently thinking about different approaches that could be easily used to detect the presence of different people based on their mobile devices. two things are important, they have to be distinguishable by an unique ID or device name, and the signal strength or distance of the device has to be trackable.

As it is just for prototyping i am actually looking for an easy to use solution that doesn't require any expensive hardware or setup.

I was thinking about Bluetooth and checked out the old bluetoothDesktop ( http://www.extrapixel.ch/processing/bluetoothDesktop/) library that doesn't work with processing 1.x anymore, but as it is based on http://code.google.com/p/bluecove/ and the src is available it shouldnt be a problem to make it work again. but it only detects devices but sadly doesn't tell you anything about the signal strength.

Second idea was to use wireless connections, for example iPhone could also create a hotspot itself that could be detected. Does anybody has experience with detecting mobile devices via WiFi?

So i am actually looking for some suggestions and thoughts, any idea is welcome.

Thx!
Cedric

Replies(3)

Jesse Sco..

Re: detecting presence of mobile devices

1 year ago

Hi Cedric,

I think you might want to check out the Ketai library - the new version has classes that support Bluetooth and WifiDirect connectivity...

Of course, that's only for Android devices. For iPhone, I'm not sure if any of the Processing > iOS ports can give you access to the sensors ...??

Question - are you looking to detect the device with or without their acknowledgement (ie. could you have them launch an app that expressly sends their location/name/etc to a server ?) ??

~ J

cedrickie..

Re: detecting presence of mobile devices

1 year ago

yes, it wouldnt be a problem do start some kind of app as it is for prototyping purpose at this point. but how would you do it in this case?

but it would definitely be better if it doesnt requite any changes on the phone and would work with any kind of device not limited to one brand or OS.

Jesse Sco..

Re: Re: detecting presence of mobile devices

1 year ago

I guess I would have some method to either get the IP, MAC Address, or whatever the user enters into a custom text field (their name, etc), then point that and whatever else you need (Lat/Lon ?) to a servlet that communicates with a host application on site, sending it new 'users' as they come into range ?