Get Ready for Location-Aware Wi-Fi

Several companies have their eye on this Wi-Fi technology, but Mobbra in the UK seems to be the farthest along in implementation. The technology can locate, send information or manipulate your phone and another 1K phones simultaneously within an area the size of a football stadium.

It's sort of a scary thought that some unseen hand can control your phone from a hidden location in the stadium like some futuristic Wizard of Oz.

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So where can we buy the Wi-Fi blocking devices?

We already have them for GPS and Cell Phones, legality pending, but I think it's time we start converging technology inside a single device blocking multiple wireless signals.

Fuck da poh-lees

Just turn off WIFI? Problems solved? It is amazing how many people willingly connect to unsecured public WIFI and think they are safe...

You would have to connect to their Wi-Fi, PLUS ran a special app. So you would know this is happening.

I would like to know how well they can actually pin point your location though with only 2 APs. Normally you use 3 or more points.

Overall I can see this being possible, but almost worthless at the same time. Over half of what they posted there is pointless as they are saying that you need to run an app in the first place, so it already knows that you are at the location. so if you run an app off of their network, what does playing a video, sending you a message or anything else there have to do with actually figuring out exactly what seat you are in? Pretty sure the band plays the same song no matter what you sit and are at the same point in the song no matter the location. the no more beer part could be done based off of which access point you connect to. Each one is a different network, only send the message to network on AP 3 or where ever you want the message directed at.

Now if / when they can pin point a single person and have you hold up your phone and causing a line to go across the stadium or whatever that would be neat. but everything they listed there is already possible and doesn't require anything special to be able to do that.

Exavior said:

You would have to connect to their Wi-Fi, PLUS ran a special app. So you would know this is happening.

I would like to know how well they can actually pin point your location though with only 2 APs. Normally you use 3 or more points.

Overall I can see this being possible, but almost worthless at the same time. Over half of what they posted there is pointless as they are saying that you need to run an app in the first place, so it already knows that you are at the location. so if you run an app off of their network, what does playing a video, sending you a message or anything else there have to do with actually figuring out exactly what seat you are in? Pretty sure the band plays the same song no matter what you sit and are at the same point in the song no matter the location. the no more beer part could be done based off of which access point you connect to. Each one is a different network, only send the message to network on AP 3 or where ever you want the message directed at.

Now if / when they can pin point a single person and have you hold up your phone and causing a line to go across the stadium or whatever that would be neat. but everything they listed there is already possible and doesn't require anything special to be able to do that.

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My guess is that you'll have to run the app to connect to their "free" WiFi. By doing so, they can send you advertisements.

That's usually the bottomline to most technology.

Spidey329 said:

My guess is that you'll have to run the app to connect to their "free" WiFi. By doing so, they can send you advertisements.

That's usually the bottomline to most technology.

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I wouldn't be surprised either, but still that isn't anything special and doesn't have anything to do with your location.

My point was that nothing they listed was anything special. The article talks about how this company and others are working on technology that when using their APs can tell exactly where you are and control your phone. Then they list a bunch of examples which have nothing to do with your actual location just the requirement that you are running the program. The examples were you are at a concert and don't know what song they are singing but then look at your phone and see that when the song started it had started to play the music video for the song. Or when a song gets to a certain point starting a digital lighter starts up since you can't use a real one. Both of those just need to know that you are connected to the AP, but don't matter where you are sitting. The closest thing was if your section ran out of beer and you would have to go to a different section. But even then if an AP can only support 200 people, that is going to cover small areas so if you know what AP somebody is connected to that basically gives you the section information that you would want for giving messages to only a set section.

What would make use of something like this is being able to pin point what seat somebody was sitting in so that they could just press a button to call a food vender over to them. Or a winning seat could be picked and they send the message to that person's phone. But that wasn't anything close to what they gave as examples of how a location aware service worked.

Exavior said:

I would like to know how well they can actually pin point your location though with only 2 APs. Normally you use 3 or more points.

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Good question. Most APs have multiple antennas, I'd guess that they figured out how to sense some directionality based on the difference in signal strength to each antenna.

IDK if this has made it into any official wifi specs, but I remember reading about how some new 5-element antenna arrays could be used to form a directional signal beam to greatly increase signal strength at range. If the've figured out how to do this here, then the only thing needed to get coordinates of the connected clients is an accurate RTT to judge the distance from the ap compared against the known orientation of the AP.

Somewhat related to the topic at hand:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/super-microphone-picks-out-single-voice-in-a-crowded-stadium/

Don't own a cellphone if you care about this kinda stuff. Really not a super huge problem, I think.