3 ms·

Do any of the whole-house Wifi systems have this built in? That would be very cool to have the triangulation be part of the product.

paxys 7y ago
Mesh networking is just starting to get mainstream, so I am sure that this will become a standard feature in a few years.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
chipperyman573 7y ago
Maybe, but the point of mesh networks is that each AP only has to see one other AP to work, and a device only has to be in the range of one AP. Because mesh APs generally take efforts to not talk over each other, they usually end up less powerful than other routers, leading to mesh setups like this: |--a------| |---------| |--a------| |------j--| |--a---i--| where a are the mesh APs and i is the item you're trying to find. If i can only be seen by the third/bottom AP, it wouldn't be any more useful than a traditional router (because from the perspective of i, it is a traditional router). Even if it could be seen by two APs (like j, for example), you generally need three sources to accurately trilaterate things so unless you have a minimum of three APs covering every single point of your entire house (which will lead to slightly worse performance and way higher spending, probably around three times the price), this probably won't work very well. Or you could buy mesh routers that can all be seen from anywhere in your house... which would kill the point of making your network mesh anyway because then you could just use a single AP from that setup to cover your whole house.
- fulafel 7y ago
  They use less powerful TX but it doesn't matter if the location tracking is passive, no? For triangulation, 2 measurement points are good enough if you only need the 2D location: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_range_multilateration#Two_Cartesian_dimensions,_two_measured_slant_ranges_(Trilateration) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_range_multilateration#Two... - but of course home wifi environment is full of reflections and attenuations caused by the surrounding structures so straight triangulation doesn't work anyway.

paxys 7y ago

Mesh networking is just starting to get mainstream, so I am sure that this will become a standard feature in a few years.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

chipperyman573 7y ago

Maybe, but the point of mesh networks is that each AP only has to see one other AP to work, and a device only has to be in the range of one AP. Because mesh APs generally take efforts to not talk over each other, they usually end up less powerful than other routers, leading to mesh setups like this: |--a------| |---------| |--a------| |------j--| |--a---i--| where a are the mesh APs and i is the item you're trying to find. If i can only be seen by the third/bottom AP, it wouldn't be any more useful than a traditional router (because from the perspective of i, it is a traditional router). Even if it could be seen by two APs (like j, for example), you generally need three sources to accurately trilaterate things so unless you have a minimum of three APs covering every single point of your entire house (which will lead to slightly worse performance and way higher spending, probably around three times the price), this probably won't work very well. Or you could buy mesh routers that can all be seen from anywhere in your house... which would kill the point of making your network mesh anyway because then you could just use a single AP from that setup to cover your whole house.

fulafel 7y ago
They use less powerful TX but it doesn't matter if the location tracking is passive, no? For triangulation, 2 measurement points are good enough if you only need the 2D location: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_range_multilateration#Two_Cartesian_dimensions,_two_measured_slant_ranges_(Trilateration) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_range_multilateration#Two... - but of course home wifi environment is full of reflections and attenuations caused by the surrounding structures so straight triangulation doesn't work anyway.