Indoor Navigation Positioning System Starter Set w/ Case (915MHz)

erco

Who's got $400 and a bunch of time to evaluate this indoor 'GPS'? Uses ultrasonic+radio beacons. PDF from that site attached here.

http://www.robotshop.com/en/indoor-navigation-positioning-system-starter-set-case-915mhz.html

macrobeak

Thanks for posting this Erco.
I had been thinking and tinkering with this concept, but never got very far with experimentation.
Nice to see someone has taken it through to a working product.
I guess this would work outdoors for small scale localization as well, where their 2cm accuracy is better than normal GPS.

Duane Degn

This does look cool (and expensive).

You can purchase the system directly from Mavelmind Robotics.

I can't bring myself to purchase anything from RobotShop after they destroyed Let's Make Robots.

I recall seeing an location system using sound. Let me see if I can find it.

I thought was on the Dallas Personal Robotics Group's YouTube channel but it took me a while to find it. It was back in 2010!



It's been a while since I've watched the videos but I recall thinking it was interesting.

Beau Schwabe

I contracted with a local hospital using a technology very similar to erco's top post only it uses BT. The system monitors patient and equipment locations throughout the entire hospital. All of the units are pass through PoE modules that can be placed virtually anywhere there is Ethernet access. The accuracy is pretty darn amazing.

xanadu

I would love to have something like this. I also feel it will go out of style soon. With the processing power we have, and laser range getting cheaper by the day, mapping the room is/will be a better option (in most cases).

erco

Agreed. It would be fun to make something like this from scratch.

xanadu

I'd bet a lot of people here could!

erco

I vaguely recall that PhiPi had an experiment using two PING sensors, one transmitting to the other, possibly for a similar application. Hopefully he may chime in.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Wow, that goes back a few years. But yes, here's the link:

http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/120038/ir-augmented-echo-location-with-the-ping

What brings the RobotShop product into the mainstream is the omnidirectional aspect, which my simple app lacked. That's one advantage of using RF vs. IR.

-Phil

KeithE

There's a Japanese indoor GPS system called IMES. I don't know if it's legal to operate in the United States. It doesn't use ranging (is that cheating?) - maybe someone can guess how it works. (Ephemeris we don't need no stinking ephemeris...)

http://gpsworld.com/wirelessindoor-positioningopening-up-indoors-11603/

RS_Jim

I have long been thinking about building an indoor navigation system based upon the concept of the VOR DME system used in aviation. The DME portion would be ultrasonic and the VOR would be a spinning laser diode transmitting a different 9-bit code for each degree of rotation off of magnatic north. The robot would transmit an ultrasonic pair of pulses, the ground station delays the pulses by a fixed amount and sent back. The robot measures the time between pulses to determine if the return pulses belongs to to it. The distance is then determined by the total round trip time less the fixed delay /2.
Never had the time to test my concepts or had the ultrasound devices that could be controlled independently.
Jim

KeithE

A former coworker had good results with his own firmware and UWB for indoor drone location.

https://www.decawave.com

I'm not sure how good his stuff is compared to what Decawave provides. He's definitely a GPS expert.

Bill Henning

Nice work - somehow I missed seeing that in the past.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) wrote: »

Wow, that goes back a few years. But yes, here's the link:

http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/120038/ir-augmented-echo-location-with-the-ping

What brings the RobotShop product into the mainstream is the omnidirectional aspect, which my simple app lacked. That's one advantage of using RF vs. IR.

-Phil