There are a number of options to get the GPS coordinates: 1) Lower confidence (but probably good enough). Use [Goolge Maps, etc] to get the GPS coordinates of the corners of buildings. Record those so whenever you re-import a plan (due to remodels) you are using the same coordinates for the building. Its not as accurate, but I expect everything would stay relative -- which would be good enough for these purposes. I expect this would work for mass product adoption when vendors support this. I believe the grad students started with this method before we borrowed a survey GPS (geography department).
2) Highest confidence. Many facilities/construction/property groups maintain these coordinates for their own purposes and have done extensive surveys cross checking multiple sources to the centimeter (check with one of those groups). 3) High confidence. GPS survey units are not that expensive in the grand scheme of what we spend on Wi-Fi. I purchased a survey GPS with the RTK subscriptions for my staff to keep track of our growing outdoor fleet that isn't associated with a building. Without the subscription, our dense building environment caused reflections would move things around too much-- still much better than a phone. Bonus, we're improving location information for all our outdoor facilities (call boxes, fiber for media event trucks, remote security cameras, radio antennas (non-wifi), etc) -- its surprising what one can lose. For larger campuses outdoor areas may not be named consistently, whereas GPS coordinate are consistent and specific (no interpretation needed). 4) Not an option: using a phone. Accuracy too coarse, especially in dense environments and with tree cover. Since one typically knows the dimensions of the building from plans or direct measurement, the vendor should be able to use that to modify GPS coordinates slightly, if desired, to line up with the dimensions. Although I expect things would still be matched well enough for relative placement since most users are just looking for consistent visual placement of APs. ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
