Navigation Kit

  1. Navigation Kit

Navigation Kit in 4 Easy Steps:

  1. Create your map
  2. Place Your beacons
  3. Configure the system
  4. Build your app

Create Your Map

You will need to get a map for each building and floor where you need to provide indoor location capabilities. The quality of this map should be suitable for displaying within your mobile application. Typically, a map is based off of a simplified floor plan hiding extraneous details like utility closets, or windows, which may be distracting to app users. Feel free to style the map as you desire.

Each map must be put into one of the following electronic formats: SVG, JPG, or PNG. We recommend storing maps in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format so that they won’t look pixelated on zoom. Ensure that during the process of scaling the map to fit on the page, or when simplifying spacial relationships, that there is no distortion on both the horizontal and vertical axes.

Lastly, make sure that the size of each map is not so large that it would consume all of a mobile device’s memory. For SVG files, we recommend a map file no bigger than 1 megabyte.

Place Your Beacons

To determine how many beacons you will need to install in the space where indoor location will be provided follow these guidelines:

  • Each beacon must have a unique identifier.
  • Spacing should be approximately every 10 meters. For example, a space that is 50 meters by 50 meters will require about 25 beacons.
  • Ideally beacons should be placed on physical mounting locations.
  • It is preferable to mount beacons six feet, or higher, off the ground in order to offer a direct line of sight for the radio signal. If you will be using power outlets for the beacons, it may be necessary to place beacons below this height.

We suggest walking the space with a copy of the map looking for good mounting locations roughly every 10 meters. When you find a suitable place mark the location on the map along with your desired beacon’s unique identifier. You’ll need this information later when you configure the system.

Count up how many beacons you marked on the map. Each beacon will need to be Bluetooth Low Energy and either iBeacon or AltBeacon compatible. Radius Networks sells a wide variety of beacons, supplying both battery and wire powered solutions. This enables you to choose the ideal placement locations and adjust the beacon type to fit your locations power and mounting point availability.

Configure the System

To configure your Navigation Kit system, you will need some information for each of your maps regarding how it maps to the world. You will need the following:

  • Scale of the map in pixels per meter
  • Latitude and longitude of a known reference point on the map. (e.g. pixel coordinate 0,0 is at geographical coordinate [38.876133, -76.998614])
  • Rotation angle of the map (this is 0 if north is the top of the map, 90 if north is the right side of the map, etc.)
  • List of each beacon’s unique identifiers and their associated map location using either the pixel of geographic coordinates

Configuring the system means putting all of the above information onto a the Navigation Kit servers. Radius Networks provides a tool that can aid in the collection of this information, but it is currently only available to our enterprise partners. If you would like to become an enterprise partner so you can configure new Navigation Kit sites yourself, please contact support@radiusnetworks.com and we will work with you to get you access to this tool. Alternately, contact us at the same email and we can arrange to do the work for you on a consulting basis.

Build Your App

You can use the Navigation Kit Reference Application (iOS and Android) to get started quickly.

For setting up a new NavigationKit app, Radius Networks will provide two files as a result of configuring the system: a Navigation Kit configuration file and a map-config.json file. You place these files inside the reference app, along with your map files and start it up. You’ll see a blue dot showing your location in no time. This reference app can then be customized as desired, or the code can be copied into your own pre-existing app. In order to get these two files for your setup, please contact support@radiusnetworks.com.

You can read the Mobile SDK documentation for iOS and Android for more details on how to build a mobile app with Navigation Kit.