5 ms·

I'm really curious how accurate this ends up being. Bluetooth location is one thing, but I've never seen bluetooth that can do anything more accurate than "X me

I'm really curious how accurate this ends up being. Bluetooth location is one thing, but I've never seen bluetooth that can do anything more accurate than "X meters away" These UWB chips claim to do "X meters away in Y direction". The direction aspect could be revolutionary if it works well. AirTags is the perfect use for it as well.

andiareso 6y ago
"+/- 30cm" ?
- snailmailman 6y ago
  Compared to a dot on a map that usually just narrows it down to an entire building? If the sound is muffled and you can’t hear it, this sounds like it could narrow it down to a specific room or maybe even area of a room. Which is a huge improvement. I haven’t personally used a Tile before, but my impression was “you get what building it’s in, then have to search everywhere til it’s in earshot”
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    The finding app has an arrow on it, pointing you towards the signal. So maybe the map has only building-level resolution, but once you're in the building you just follow the arrow until it says you're standing on it.
  - slimsag 6y ago
    Tile trackers are accurate within +-90cm based on some empirical tests I did for using them to monitor my cat's activity throughout my house. So Apple's +-30cm does seem to be a fairly major improvement, if true.
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  That’s a 60cm range, which is non trivial. It’s about the length of a human arm. Many desks are 120cm wide, so half of that.
ericklestrange 6y ago
im also super curious of this, i wanted to do a DIY angle of arrival necklace some time ago and last time i checked you required a whole mini antenna to achieve that!
andrewl-hn 6y ago
Our company experiments with indoor location tracking using UWB beacons. We've got a few demo kits from different vendors to test it out. Overall, If you have a UWB receiver devices installed ~ every 4-5 meters (15 feet) you can triangulate beacon's position to a pretty precise degree (around 10 cm / 4 inches accuracy). You can even detect the height of a beacon above the floor. However, triangulation is the key. Often we have to install extra receivers just to deal with big columns and barriers, sources of intense electromagnetism (like big electric engines or microwaves), or some materials (glass doors turned out to be a major problem, wooden doors - not so much). I'm not sure how accurate a positioning can be with your phone acting as a sole UWB receiver. Clearly Apple can make it work sufficiently well for an everyday use, but it won't be as precise as they show in carefully constructed demos.

andiareso 6y ago

"+/- 30cm" ?

snailmailman 6y ago
Compared to a dot on a map that usually just narrows it down to an entire building? If the sound is muffled and you can’t hear it, this sounds like it could narrow it down to a specific room or maybe even area of a room. Which is a huge improvement. I haven’t personally used a Tile before, but my impression was “you get what building it’s in, then have to search everywhere til it’s in earshot”
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  The finding app has an arrow on it, pointing you towards the signal. So maybe the map has only building-level resolution, but once you're in the building you just follow the arrow until it says you're standing on it.
- slimsag 6y ago
  Tile trackers are accurate within +-90cm based on some empirical tests I did for using them to monitor my cat's activity throughout my house. So Apple's +-30cm does seem to be a fairly major improvement, if true.
TechBro8615 6y ago
That’s a 60cm range, which is non trivial. It’s about the length of a human arm. Many desks are 120cm wide, so half of that.

ericklestrange 6y ago

im also super curious of this, i wanted to do a DIY angle of arrival necklace some time ago and last time i checked you required a whole mini antenna to achieve that!

andrewl-hn 6y ago

Our company experiments with indoor location tracking using UWB beacons. We've got a few demo kits from different vendors to test it out. Overall, If you have a UWB receiver devices installed ~ every 4-5 meters (15 feet) you can triangulate beacon's position to a pretty precise degree (around 10 cm / 4 inches accuracy). You can even detect the height of a beacon above the floor. However, triangulation is the key. Often we have to install extra receivers just to deal with big columns and barriers, sources of intense electromagnetism (like big electric engines or microwaves), or some materials (glass doors turned out to be a major problem, wooden doors - not so much). I'm not sure how accurate a positioning can be with your phone acting as a sole UWB receiver. Clearly Apple can make it work sufficiently well for an everyday use, but it won't be as precise as they show in carefully constructed demos.