There are two ways to create a map with Estimote Indoor Location:
- with the iOS app: good for testing and prototyping
- with the SDK: good for building your own app
Before you start, make sure that all the beacons are assigned to your Estimote Account: it’s required to configure them for use with Indoor Location. If you don’t know how to do that, read:
Also, remember that Estimote Indoor Location requires at least one beacon per wall. Triangular rooms are not supported, so you need four UWB Location Beacons if you want to use an automapping feature. Or you can use Estimote Location Beacons, which works perfect with bigger venues.
Your locations will be saved in Estimote Cloud (automatically with the app, using SDK you need to upload them). You can see them at cloud.estimote.com under Locations tab.
Setting up a location with Indoor Location app
To create a location with the iOS app you're going to make two measurements of the room. These are done by walking along the location's perimeter and placing beacons on the walls according to the app's suggestions.
1. Open the Indoor Location app
2. Log into your Estimote Account
3. Tap Add new location and then Let's get started!
4. Define the location's name and privacy settings (What is a public location?)
5. Now we're going to make the first measurement. Go to any corner of the room and when ready tap I'm in the corner
6. Start walking along the perimeter, holding the phone in front of you, around chest height. Continue clockwise around the location and stop at the corner you started in: don't worry if the map doesn't show your avatar in the right position, it's just an approximation. Wait a couple of seconds and confirm you've stopped.
7. The app will show approximate measurements of the location. If they're good enough, tap Ok, proceed. You can later adjust the location size using the tutorial on our Developer Portal, so you don't need to get an inch-perfect map now. If you're not satisfied, tap Walk around once again and go through the measurement steps again.
8. After you accept the location's shape, the app will suggest a number of beacons most suitable to map your location. Put the exact number of beacons close to your phone and tap Go to beacon calibration. Now, wait until the app detects and calibrates settings on all beacons.
9. Attach beacons to the walls according to the suggested placement. You don't need to be perfectly accurate, but the closer the beacons are to the suggested placement, the more precise indoor location you'll get. Beacons should be placed vertically (with the little dot facing upwards) at approximately chest height.
10. After you position the beacons, start the mapping procedure once again. Start from the same corner and walk clockwise along the perimeter, but this time stop next to each beacon. You should see it light up after a few seconds: then you can continue to the next one. Remember that this time you don't finish in the corner but rather with mapping the first beacon a second time (so the first mapped beacon is also the last).
You’ve just created a location! It has been saved in Estimote Cloud and you can now navigate it in Estimote Indoor Location app.
Setting up a location with Indoor Location SDK
Using the SDK, you can ‘draw’ a location manually. You do that by inputting X and Y coordinates of location corners and beacons. The measurement unit is meters.
Beacons should be placed vertically (little dot facing upwards) around chest height. We advise against placing beacons near to room’ corners: the closer to the middle, the better.
You create the location with the EILLocationBuilder class. To get started with Estimote Indoor Location SDK, visit our Developer Portal.
The SDK is public on GitHub.
Navigation modes
In the app and SDK, you can switch between Normal and Light navigation modes. Indoor Light scales to much larger spaces (best to use it with locations larger than 270 square meters) and has a lower battery and CPU usage. It is, however, less responsive than Normal.
To learn more about Indoor Light, read What is Indoor Light?
