[HH] Some updates from last night's lectures...

[Stephen Ronan]

Re: GPS-free LoRaWAN geolocation

You may be able to sign up for a free account at Semtech (see
"mySemtech"/login) at top at www.semtech.com (they want
company/institutional domain email addresses). Semtech holds the core
LoRa patent.

Even not signed up and  logged in, you may be able to get to a couple
of videos re: their GPS-free LoRaWAN capacity to use timestamps of
node communications with dispersed gateways to identify location of
the nodes.
https://semtech.force.com/lora/LC_VideoHub?q=Geolocation+-+Part+1
https://semtech.force.com/lora/LC_VideoHub?q=Geolocation+-+Part+2
with accompanying "scripts".

The first of those videos is skippable... focusing on why geolocation
can be helpful.

Unfortunately, I see that the "script" accompanying the second video
states: "The timestamps are transported to the network server, where
Semtech licenses the decryption function to the network server
provider. The network server provider can then decrypt the data
according to the service level subscribed on." So I guess even if
TheThingsNetwork gateways are able to support the geolocation feature,
that capacity may not be available for free using Semtech's decryption
functions.

On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 11:04 AM, Kurt Keville <klk at mit.edu> wrote:
> A-GPS class positioning
>
> We did a study on indoor positioning with Linux dev boards and made an
> instructable out of it... much of it is abandonware now since, at
> least in my case, work was done for the Nokia Research Center in
> Kendall Square and there was no IP entanglement back then so I suspect
> there is even less now... here is the escalator pitch (shorter than an
> elevator pitch)
> You can get decent 2-D positioning from (fast, frequent and many) RSSI
> sampling with a little OBEX pushing and pairing requests thrown in.
> Note that even if a pairing request is rejected you can get some
> physics from it. Get the good USB "long range" dongles ... Bluetooth
> 2.1 + EDR, class 1 with ideally CSR radios... I think ours were cheap
> AZIOs... they will show up in lsusb as Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd
> Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)   CSR radios appear to support every
> feature available in the BLE spec.
>
> Our experience has been that it is fairly simple to implement... and
> as long as you don't move your base stations much you are in pretty
> good shape... code can be gleaned from...
> http://web.archive.org/web/20140220001615/http://www.btessentials.com/   and
> https://github.com/mboyd/BTScan  and
> http://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/Articles/
> and  http://rvsn.csail.mit.edu/location/   (or Waybacked Versions thereof)
>
> There has been tons written on this; and analytics / utility studies
> ... I am interested in seeing if there is a good A-GPS API for the
> LoRa system we discussed last night.
>
> "Minority Report" style UI ...
>
> There are a bunch of DIY versions of the
> http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/  gloves... I suspect
> they perform as well as the expensive ones since, unfortunately, you
> really need hyperprecision in a gestural interface, especially if your
> standoff distance is a couple of inches. You can conduct a virtual
> orchestra with BT gloves because noone notices your error bars at 12
> feet but registration is much harder to get with a 3-pixel wide
> browser window...  I will see if I can find those instructables.
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