Strawman Proposal: Wireless Access Point Geolocation, and Location-Linked Behaviours

[Andrew Stromme]

A really minor response to a great proposal that deserves more though, just 
not when I'm out of time :)

This would seem to be a great way to set the plasma activity, network 
settings, Nepomuk context and a host of other things. Cool.

Andrew Stromme

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 09:26:51 Andrew Coles wrote:
> Two-point summary:
>
> 1) Exploit geolocation based on visible wireless access points with known
> locations.  Works indoors, works without GPS. 2) An abstraction layer over
> this information into named zones, with zone-linked system behaviour - e.g.
> when I go into lecture theatre zone, switch the power management settings
> onto 'Presentation', get ready for an external display to be plugged in,
> and disable all system-tray notifications.
>
>
> I suppose I should probably preface this with a little background.  By day,
> I'm a research fellow in AI (at the University of Strathclyde, where the
> Glasgow aKademy was held a few year ago), and I'm a few offices away from
> researchers into mobile human--computer interaction.  Through them, I find
> out about some really cool stuff to do with location-aware computing, and
> it's this which led me to think about using location-aware computing in
> slightly-less-mobile devices; i.e. laptops rather than palmtops.
>
> So, to begin.  Wireless access points are everywhere, and one can make some
> pretty basic location deductions from them.  For instance: - if I can see
> 'Hello' with MAC x:y:z, I'm at home;
> - if I can see my parents'/in-laws' neighbours' AP, I'm visiting them;
> - if I can see CIS-WLAN, I'm in the office;
> - if I can see Strathclyde but not CIS-WLAN I'm elsewhere on campus.
>
> So at the very least, this sort of information can be used to do ad-hoc
> geolocation with a bit of user-provided data - rough location markers,
> linked to MACs and/or connection names.
>
> Moving one step beyond this, the PlaceLab toolkit combined with the WiGLE
> database allows rough triangulation of location based on a database of
> fixed-position APs and their current signal strengths.  If memory serves,
> on the streets in Glasgow the resolution is somewhere within the 50-100m
> mark.  That's not bad - not as good as GPS, but for ad-hoc, is pretty good
> going.  Indoors, where GPS falls down, one can do much better.  I could add
> to WiGLE the details of where the access points around the four floors of
> my department are - latitude, longitude, altitude.  With this, it can
> differentiate between my office and the meeting room along the building and
> three floors down.
>
> So, what can one do with this?  With a my bulleted rules, I could tell
> where I am to the level of 'home/parents'/in-laws/office'.  I could tie the
> weather into that, for instance, and that would be useful.  With WiGLE, one
> could cross fingers and hope for 100m accuracy and do something with that;
> or even with 2000m accuracy, it would give a city and country name.  All of
> this is likely more accurate than IP geolocation - which thinks I'm 200
> miles away.
>
> What excites me the most, though, is the room-level wireless AP
> geolocation.  Obviously, the weather won't change when I move around the
> building - the UK has unpredictable weather, but it's not /that/
> unpredictable.  What does change, certainly in my case, is my intention. 
> Using my laptop in my office typically means I'm sat doing work; if I go to
> the meeting room or a lecture theatre, and have my laptop switched on, I'm
> usually about to give a presentation; and so on.  For this, I envisage
> defining `zones' with geolocation-based triggers (GPS, wireless AP, or
> otherwise), and attaching effects to these.  My running example on giving a
> lecture or talk, for instance:
>
> - Zone is active if either:
>   * Lat/Long/Altitude points towards me being in in one of the departmental
> meeting rooms; * Can see Strathclyde but cannot see CIS-WLAN (i.e.
> somewhere else on campus). - On entering the zone:
>   * Battery Monitor to 'Presentation'
>   * krandr to 1024x768, --output VGA --same-as LVDS
>   * Turn off all non-critical notifications (so I don't get MSN messages
> during talks ;) ) - On leaving:
>   * Restore settings to previous values
>
> Even without room-level geolocation, it would be neat to do something
> things as simple as: - Zone is active if either:
>   * Country Code = GB
>   * Reverse Geocoding on Lat/Long gives GB
> - On entering the zone:
>   * Set Time Zone to London
> - On leaving:
>   * Restore Time Zone
>
> PlaceLab exists, WiGLE has data, and it's trivial to add extra or even have
> an offline cache.  The pie-in-the-sky is the glue to hook that in as a Data
> Engine, and then being able to set behaviours triggered by location.
>
> So, now to flame, praise, or be fairly ambivalent - over to you :).
>
> Andrew
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Plasma-devel mailing list
> Plasma-devel at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel