As i said, it will need calibrations, never said its easy/straightforward/fool proof. most of these issues can be handled by a smart app with minor user interaction mainly aimed at getting vital background information (base readings, type of building and etc).
tracking changes in height can have pretty obvious tells of you riding in an elevator (a smart developer might even use the magnetometer and connectivity information to even identify when the user is boarding and departing the elevator), with added user interaction for pinpointing your exact floor after an initial guess can be used to learn the basic heights needed to be accurate. My guess is that after indicating to the app you're at the lobby and then after your first ride indicate which floor you're on, that will be enough information to interpolate all levels of that building. the more you go in the building, the better it can get. Heck, if you'd be really clever, you could even find half-floors by noticing "irregular" information. With some clever engineering and good use of machine learning algorithms, even with minimal interaction you could achieve a pretty accurate guess of which floor you're on. Honestly, it sounds like a pretty fun application to write... see if you could automatically map out a building just by riding its elevator and randomly stopping at floors :) Either way, why just shoot the guy down and say it's impossible? the guy never said this has to be completely autonomous... so it is possible, it just needs some coding harder than calling (BuildingManager)getBuildingManager(). .getCurrentFloor() (An obviously crucial API missed by Google :) ) On Tuesday, November 6, 2012 11:17:08 AM UTC+2, TreKing wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 2:34 AM, Piren <[email protected] <javascript:>>wrote: > >> Actually it is... for devices that have a barometer, its not that hard. >> He'll have to do a bunch of optimizations and calibrations to achieve >> decent accuracy, but unless he's not looking for 100% accuracy, he can get >> an estimate of what floor you're on. > > > Can you elaborate on how you would do this, then? Because I'm thinking > that factors like differing floor heights between buildings and different > concepts of "floors" would render this impossible. For example, you could > be on the 10th* story* of a building, but really be on the 9th *floor* if > they don't count the lobby as the "1st floor". > > And if you're on the 10th floor of a building on Mt. Everest, how does the > device know that's the same floor as the 10th floor of a building at sea > level? > > Unless those are the "calibrations" you spoke of, in which case the time > it would take to calibrate such an app would render it quite useless, I > would think ... > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > TreKing <http://sites.google.com/site/rezmobileapps/treking> - Chicago > transit tracking app for Android-powered devices > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
