What are my options for an Indoor Positioning System?

[JoeyDaniel]

I would like to collect fairly precise (1m) data inside a facility using Survey123. Am I required to use Indoo.rs' products to leverage an IPS for ArcGIS Indoors? Or can I set up my own network of iBeacons and integrate them with Indoors on my own? 

[TomSöderberg]

Hi,

ArcGIS Indoors (nor Indoo.rs) doesn't provide by itself an IPS, so you'll always need a separate IPS. ArcGIS Indoors is compatible with different IPS providers products and protocols, so you may use for example BLE Beacons with iBeacon protocol. Precice depends a lot of the BLE Network setup, calibration and facility.

ArcGIS Indoors is integrated with Indoor.rs, but if you need more customized behaviour for mobile side than ArcGIS Indoors application can offer you should use the SDK provided by Indoo.rs. 

I assume Indoo.rs and ArcGIS will become more and more integrated in the future. Survey123 can be used with ArcGIS Indoors just fine (you need to specify the service address in ArcGIS Indoors configuration).

BR,

-Tom

[JeffreyOwen]

Tom,

Not sure if this is part of what the original question was asking, but can you incorporate IPS with Survey123 (and other GIS systems) without using ArcGIS Indoors at all? Say for instance you wanted to collect asset information indoors and wanted to get an accurate X/Y location but had the user input the floor manually, would an IPS be able to get that information in the Survey123 app or would you need a full-blown Indoors setup to incorporate the IPS data? I realize that IPS is separate than the Indoors applications but I was curious if the IPS was able to be used with a "vanilla" GIS application setup.

Thanks!

[TomSöderberg]

Hi,

You must understand that BLE Beacons (or WiFi access points) just sends RSSI "level" information from which ArcGIS Indoors creates a fingerprint map that is used for location detection "related" to the Beacons or AP locations. You'll always need something or some part to do this work - RSSI itself doesn't contain any location information, and Survey123 itself doesn't contain such functionality either.

Location information can be catch from the mobile phone GPS in Survey123, but as you mentioned this is not at the required precision when you're inside (inside your location is detected based on the mobile operator access points).

BR,

-Tom