We’re happy to announce our newest SDK 2.3. We have improved most parts of the service under the hood but here are the most visible changes:
- Support for beacons
- Improved support for context detection
- Improved multi-floor performance
- Improved overall robustness and accuracy
To get an idea of how well the latest version performs, check out this video, recorded in a shopping centre in Helsinki:
Beacon support
Together with our latest mapping tool MapCreator 2, both Android and iOS SDKs now support beacons. Any venue mapped with MapCreator 2 will automatically start benefiting from existing beacons. For venues mapped with MapCreator 1 you can add support for beacons by performing a light remapping with MapCreator 2. Initially we support iBeacons but Eddystone and other standards will be rolled out from the server, requiring no extra effort from you as a developer.
Beacon support has especially significant impact on iOS where, in environments with beacons, time to first fix has dramatically improved and first fix can be obtained without user movement. On Android beacons provide general robustness and flexibility.
See detailed information beacon support setup information for iOS and Android.
Indoor-outdoor context switching
Several of our customers provide locations both indoors and outdoors. We want to make this handover as easy as possible. In SDK 2.3, we made the following changes:
- Physically entering mapped area is signalled as precisely as possible
- Entering and exiting the venue’s perimeter is signalled as a separate event
- Floor level detection certainty is exposed to the developer
With these tools, application developers are better equipped to decide when to obtain locations from GPS and when to rely on the IndoorAtlas SDK. We will keep working on improving this feature and further freeing our developers to focus on resolving business challenges rather than technical details.
See API example for Android and iOS in GitHub.
Multi-floor Improvements
Navigating through multiple floors inside a venue is now tracked seamlessly by our positioning algorithm. The service can now make smarter and more precise decisions resulting in floor level changes detected the very moment the user enters a new floor level.
What else?
If you missed our SDK 2.3 Alpha newsletter earlier in January, check out this blog article covering changes to our web tools and the new Cordova Plugin.
Our development team also visited Japan recently to test latest upgrades in the busiest train station in the world, the Shinjuku station. See video below.
Best regards,
Jukka Raanamo
Head of R&D
IndoorAtlas SDK 2.3 is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 738580