HoloLens Geolocation Scenarios - hololens

I have a number of required business cases for HoloLens that require the device to understand a general geolocation, such as the current wearer longitude and latitude within 10 meters or so, as well as sending location information to and from an endpoint during various processes. Users WILL have a mobile device with geolocation capabilities that could assist in the process if necessary, and could also be used as a WiFi hotspot.
Is this a reasonable and reliable use case for HoloLens? Can apps be created that use geolocation and maintain connectivity during an experience, either on their own or with real-time communication to and from a mobile device that has these capabilities?

Yes - definitely is a realistic scenario. I've done some integration between a blue-tooth GPS and the Hololens. Let me know the particular device you're looking at and I'll see if I can get it working with the Hololens. //Lance Larsen (Microsoft MVP) - www.lancelarsen.com

Related

Is there way to detect a certain phone from a few feet away

I am trying to build a system with a raspberry pi that allows clients access into a building depending on their membership status. Right now, it uses QR codes, but I want to know if it is possible to add a feature where it uses some technology like NFC or RFID or Bluetooth to detect their phone or RFID card from at least a foot away and confirm they have a membership.
Someone told me I could use RFID, but I am only aware of that being used in short-distance applications, like a card on a hotel door. I am not sure about Bluetooth either, because the phone would have to connect to the pi first, right? Maybe there is something I don't know about. So please offer any suggestions. Thanks
I think bluetooth does good work for tracking user. Since it's the best to handle large distances than NFC and RFID these two technologies are used for low range scenarios, check this link.
In addition, you can check distance(using Proximity and RSSI) and membership status as well. but you need to know how to handle bluetooth connectivity with raspberry pi check this link. as well create an app on that mobile phone to use Bluetooth (depending which OS you're using for Android, iOS).
Regards,

Progressive web app beacon search

Is it possible to search for beacon data (uuid, url, ...) with a progressive web application using just web technologies that is without using native mobile technologies (Android, ios, ...)?
Thanks in advance.
Unfortunately, this is not possible as of July 2020. While Google has been working on the WebBluetooth project to bring support for many bluetooth operations to the browser, at least in Google Chrome implementations on Android 6+, Mac or ChromeOS.
Scanning for beacons is not yet possible as of this writing. The API requires that the OS scan for devices matching a requested criteria, and then let the user choose a device to connect to using a user interface. This essentially rules out beacon detection.
Bluetooth scanning APIs are still in draft form here.
EDIT: The APIs mentioned by #zurfyx in the answer below allow you to scan for and connect to an advertised GATT service, but do not allow you to read the data in the advertisement. This is a critical distinction, as reading the data in the advertisement is the key capability required for actual bluetooth beacon detection. That capability is missing from that API. Without that capability, it is impossible to detect a beacon, it is only possible to connect to a BLE device that might be an Eddystone or other service advertisement-based beacon.
UPDATE July 2020: Safari will not be getting any WebBluetooth APIs at all due to privacy concerns, according to a June 2020 announcement by Apple This makes Bluetooth scanning impossible on iOS we apps for the foreseeable future.
As of July 2020, Chrome does not support scanning arbitrary advertisements. See status here: https://github.com/WebBluetoothCG/web-bluetooth/blob/master/implementation-status.md
Disclaimer: I wrote eddystone-web-bluetooth (a library which makes it easy to read and write to an Eddystone device). github#eddystone-web-bluetooth npm#eddystone-web-bluetooth
It is possible to scan for Bluetooth devices by using the Web Bluetooth API (currently supported only by Chrome).
By using Bluetooth GATT service, you can connect to Eddystone devices and send/receive data by communicating following their public specifications (which are basically a list of request codes, and the format in which to send and expect their responses).
These services include information such as:
URL
Advertising interval
Lock state
and more
By using the Bluetooth standard information you can get to know the most generic device information, such as its id and name:
navigator.bluetooth.requestDevice
#beaufortfrancois wrote the probably first Eddystone Web Bluetooth configuration code (source code / demo), so it is probably worth a read if you want to dig more into this. I learned a lot from it.

Multiple Eddystone-URL/UID's from same Bluetooth Beacon?

Is it possible to program a BT beacon to advertise a sequence of different Eddystone-URL/UID's in sequence? I imagine I could from something like a Raspberry Pi3 with a BT adapter, but I was wondering about something like an actual beacon.
Yes, this is possible. This technique is called "interleaving", and it is possible to do with both software beacons and hardware beacons.
Eddystone actually relies on this technique in order to match its multiple frames. When a receiver sees an Eddystone-TLM frame coming from the same device as Eddystone-URL or Eddystone-UID, it knows that the telemetry is for that beacon frame.
Using the same technique, it is possible to send out multiple URL or UID frames from the same device using different identifiers for each frame. Some commercial manufacturers such as Radius Networks support doing this in some of their products.
I dont think so. Im pretty sure you would need to have some smart device nearby that is running a program that is periodically changing the UIDs. The micro-controllers that power these beacons are pretty bare bones and are really optimized for transmitting bluetooth signals.
Here's how to do it.
EddyStone supports four types of payloads/frame-formats i.e, UID, URL, TLM, and EID.
Eddystone UID/EID are the frame-formats to use for this purpose.
As far as using the 'NordicSemiconductor NRF line' of beacons just make sure that these are fully Eddystone compliant i.e, support the EID frame-format.
Freely available Google Beacon Cloud platform is great for trying this out (called 'registering and provisioning your beacon').
It can be implemented w/o building or requiring any custom app at the client end.
On the client-side.
Use 'Google Nearby Notifications' & 'Google Nearby Messages'
On the server/cloud-side.
Google Proximity API for 'registering and provisioning your beacon'
Use 'Google Nearby Messages' API
Good luck with your project .

Wireless protocol for accelerometer data

I'm building an application where a mobile phone with an accelerometer is used to control an app on a computer in a similar way you would use a mouse. So I need to send the movement from the phone to the computer over some wireless protocol. I am thinking about using Bluetooth but I am not sure what transfer delay to expect. Another possibility is using 802.11g. What do you think? What delay could I expect given that I don’t hit the bandwidth limit?
I worked with a group at Motorola who linked up an external accelerometer pack to a mobile phone using Bluetooth. This work supported a mobile games development class at USC's GamePipe Laboratory, and the speed was sufficient to control the mobile games developed by the students. You'll need to make sure your handset's Bluetooth stack has the correct profile enabled to allow data communication.
Another advantage of Bluetooth over 802.11g is that the frequency hopping Bluetooth uses will make it less vulnerable to interference by all the other 802.11 devices in the vicinity, which sit on one frequency.
I wouldn't expect the amount of data sent by an accelerometer would give Bluetooth any problems.

Midlet connectivity via broadband or GPRS

Midlet using HttpConnection to connect a webservice application.
A mobile can use a wireless broadband to connect to internet or can use internet facility provided by the network provider i.e. Vodafone or Virgin which is I think known as GPRS. Correct me if my understanding is wrong.
Now my question is when the midlet will run which connectivity it will use? Secondly do I need to code differently for midlet to use GPRS or it doesn't matter?
I deployed my application on Nokia E65 and it asked me which connection to use. The mobile had both wireless lan and provider GPRS active.
On IPhone the preference is for wireless lan. (Not related to J2me)
There is no standard Access Point Selection APi in J2ME.
That means the MIDlet itself can't decide whether to use Wi-Fi or GPRS.
Some phones will allow the user to change application settings in order to force a MIDlet to use a specific network when it is available (and maybe prompt the user for an alternative when the preferred network is not available).
This is mostly because there is no standard way to describe a wireless network that contains enough information : QoS, cost per byte downloaded and uploaded, average bitrate, ping time...
In most cases, the logic to automatically choose a network without those information would be too complicated and not reliable enough.
Manual Access Point selection is the only way to put the user in charge of the cost of data transfer, so far.
It depends on the client mobile phone. On some models, there is only one GPRS configuration that is used by all applications including midlets, On some others the configuration used for browsing can be different than the one used by midlets.

Resources