I'm sure this is thrilling to folks interested in tracking their sports performance; it does seem like a somewhat new and useful product for that field. It's not my area of expertise at all, I just looked at it due to general gadget/sensors/tracking interests triggering.
I found the campaign page lacking in technical detail, it repeatedly states that it's "accurate", but never becomes more specific than saying "inch-accurate". What does that mean? That the position of the device is tracked with an accuracy of +/- 1 inch? Globally? Without extra hardware "in the field" (such as that used by the tractors discussed here just a few days ago)? The title here uses the word "centimetric", but that's not repeated on the campaign page.
Also, $200 feels expensive to me, but again I'm not in the market, perhaps it's magically cheap if you simply could not do this before, but now you can.
It sounds like they are tracking acceleration and integrating to get speed - then integrating again to get location. If that is what they are doing then position will drift over time. If the battery life only lasts 12 hours then maybe position only drifts an inch or so by the time you put it back in the charger and re-zero the location
For example the fact that the HW as well as the SW has been entirely developed from scratch by the same startup which is competing in a market where usually the software is deployed on a workstation as a custom windows executable connected to SQLServer backend and clumsy communicating with the HW through USB or, worse COMM ports.
RTLS companies are very conservative with technology. We are trying to modify the trend and use something a little cooler
I understand your concerns and in facts the system has been designed for 1) UK universities and it generates statistics based on 2) anonymous positioning traces.
Point 1) is important because due to the legislation in UK, students are obliged to scan their ID card at the barcode scanner in class to certify their presence at lesson. Just like employees at the supermarket. I feel that our system frees them to have to do that. The student positions are not visible unless there is an emergency and even in that case realtime viewer does not show any data on whom the student (or lecturer) is. It just shows to the firefighter that there is someone at the second floor in room 3A.
For what concerns point 2) you can think that we used anonymized positions as GPS navigators backend use the device traces to generate data about traffic jams, map corrections and so on. This data is used to improve campus life as it gives an idea how to distribute resources optimally. I remember that I was very frustrated as a student when I never seemed to find room in a computer lab while the classes adjacent where always very busy.
'This data is used to improve campus life as it gives an idea how to distribute resources optimally'. My university really needs this; just today I wasn't able to get a seat in the lab for an originally 2-hour session. We were split in two groups and each group got 1 hour in the lab instead of 2. This is a real problem and I would agree to carry a beacon-card if you could guarantee that my data sent is anonymous. And given the fact that attendance certification is law in the UK, I think that the safety and security use cases for this technology are completely invaluable. The firefighter example shows that you could actually end up saving lives.
As CEO, you should note that your comment completely repositioned my attitude towards your product. This is because your website is clearly aimed at decision makers at universities, whereas all I (a student) saw was a system conducive to draconian monitoring system. You should probably make your site more clearly demarcated. At http://beestar.eu/insight/learning-analytics it seems as if about half the points are targeted at students while the other half at educators. It seems slightly mismatched. And you also don't mention how this system could improve safety (I see the benefits of the firefighter case now that it's been explained)
I have to thank you a lot for your feedback, I really appreciate it. I will modify the website so that it will be clearer where we stand with our product
You have a point about using 3D in the attendance monitoring for universities. In facts this is why the viewer employed there is gonna be 2D and used only in case of emergencies ( privacy is a big concerns for education institutions and we do not want to show where people are exactly, but monitor their attendance and gather anonymous stats).
What we are trying to accomplish with the stack we are currently using is a generic multipurpose demo IP platform that anybody can extend with their own applications. In this case the 3rd dimension is something that might be very useful to show case.
For what concerns the rest of your (very valid) comments, Unity3D can export to WEBGL and other engines, not only flash. We will consider our options but right now for this initial beta release, flash sounds good enough.
The article is the first part of a series that will highlight our technology stack as we are developing it. The HW for indoor positioning, the algorithm, the twisted server and the chef recipes will all be highlighted in the incoming posts.
For what concerns the rest, you are totally right. I have been googling around to see how to hack a tcp channel to connect our Unity client to the twisted tcp server and I could not find anything. The documentation is kinda lacking, so I put together a naive prototype with the intention of sharing it for whom might have similar needs.
I will polish the code and post the highlights of the rest of the stack soon enough
You're right, for simple indoor positioning, reading the socket 5 times per second is a good enough rate. For sport applications we'll probably have to increase it a bit.
Your 3D application sounds awesome, d'you have any link?
I do understand your position and I share it completely. After working for 5 years at Tomtom, I had an idea. It took me half a year to refine it, hire the right people and basically be ready for some round of funding. Thus I found myself stuck with the usual hassle of producing the right material to convince eventual investors to bet on my company.
I spent precious time and efforts in doing useless stuff like business plans, investor packages, etc. And I was also really skeptic about giving away equities. All in all you seek investors for... what? Counseling? Money? Contacts?
Not being able to give myself a clear answer to this question I decided to become the owner of my future and I fully funded my startup with roughly $300000: beestar.eu (shamelessly self promoting here :)).
I am perfectly conscious that I might lose a lot of money, but I do need to worry about the technology I am trying to ship rather than inheriting the compromise burden that comes with investor's money (not to mention the usual equity's hemorrhage).
If everything fails, this will still be the most exciting adventure of my life.
