FIND is a Framework for Internal Navigation and Discovery developed at Hypercube Platforms. It is fairly new open source Python framework for internal positioning. FIND allows you to monitor your location within home or office using only smartphone or laptop. There are different ways to apply this position information, for example, for home automation, way-finding, or tracking.
Internal positioning could be provided by various technologies, like Bluetooth dots, magnetic fields, iBeacons, or a big number of motion sensors. But FIND ensures high geolocation precision (less than 10 sq ft, depending on the surrounding location) for pinpointing whether you are in the living room, the kitchen or the bedroom with a single smartphone. This system really offers alternative to motion sensors together with such advantages as automatically provided user and position/time information.
FIND’s two main components are: a fingerprinting device and a program that runs on a server. The fingerprinting device (app that runs on a smartphone or laptop) discovers signals of the wireless local area networks and their strengths, then sends the collected information (fingerprints) to the machine learning server. There these fingertips are stored and analyzed to determine your current location. After running calculations the server program returns the result to the device. The stored results can be accessed via a web browser or triggered via hooks.
FIND can be used within one of these plans:
- Personal (free) - simple to setup and easy to use, especially for demos and trials. Among the available features are: real time tracking and home automation integration.
- Home (free) - can be used in larger number of applications. Available features include also built-in security, automatic networking, peer-to-peer way-finding, floor-plan building, and real time GIS tracking.
- Business (commercial) - provides unlimited users and groups as well as 24/7 support.
FIND is suited for anything from small-scale home applications to large-scale business applications. It does not have dependency on external resources like Wi-Fi location databases. System’s information can be used in the same way as GPS information would be. Even better. Unlike GPS, this app utilizes pre-existing operations and does not take much battery time. Moreover, FIND offers very precise internal positioning capabilities, so you can distinguish not only particular room you are in, but even different pieces of furniture in this room.
This Python system is open source, fully configurable, and easy to set up. Code is stored on Github. All Android devices are supported. Also it runs on a Raspberry Pi model B+. More information can be found on the FIND website.