A really minor response to a great proposal that deserves more though, just not when I'm out of time :)
This would seem to be a great way to set the plasma activity, network settings, Nepomuk context and a host of other things. Cool. Andrew Stromme On Tuesday 14 April 2009 09:26:51 Andrew Coles wrote: > Two-point summary: > > 1) Exploit geolocation based on visible wireless access points with known > locations. Works indoors, works without GPS. 2) An abstraction layer over > this information into named zones, with zone-linked system behaviour - e.g. > when I go into lecture theatre zone, switch the power management settings > onto 'Presentation', get ready for an external display to be plugged in, > and disable all system-tray notifications. > > > I suppose I should probably preface this with a little background. By day, > I'm a research fellow in AI (at the University of Strathclyde, where the > Glasgow aKademy was held a few year ago), and I'm a few offices away from > researchers into mobile human--computer interaction. Through them, I find > out about some really cool stuff to do with location-aware computing, and > it's this which led me to think about using location-aware computing in > slightly-less-mobile devices; i.e. laptops rather than palmtops. > > So, to begin. Wireless access points are everywhere, and one can make some > pretty basic location deductions from them. For instance: - if I can see > 'Hello' with MAC x:y:z, I'm at home; > - if I can see my parents'/in-laws' neighbours' AP, I'm visiting them; > - if I can see CIS-WLAN, I'm in the office; > - if I can see Strathclyde but not CIS-WLAN I'm elsewhere on campus. > > So at the very least, this sort of information can be used to do ad-hoc > geolocation with a bit of user-provided data - rough location markers, > linked to MACs and/or connection names. > > Moving one step beyond this, the PlaceLab toolkit combined with the WiGLE > database allows rough triangulation of location based on a database of > fixed-position APs and their current signal strengths. If memory serves, > on the streets in Glasgow the resolution is somewhere within the 50-100m > mark. That's not bad - not as good as GPS, but for ad-hoc, is pretty good > going. Indoors, where GPS falls down, one can do much better. I could add > to WiGLE the details of where the access points around the four floors of > my department are - latitude, longitude, altitude. With this, it can > differentiate between my office and the meeting room along the building and > three floors down. > > So, what can one do with this? With a my bulleted rules, I could tell > where I am to the level of 'home/parents'/in-laws/office'. I could tie the > weather into that, for instance, and that would be useful. With WiGLE, one > could cross fingers and hope for 100m accuracy and do something with that; > or even with 2000m accuracy, it would give a city and country name. All of > this is likely more accurate than IP geolocation - which thinks I'm 200 > miles away. > > What excites me the most, though, is the room-level wireless AP > geolocation. Obviously, the weather won't change when I move around the > building - the UK has unpredictable weather, but it's not /that/ > unpredictable. What does change, certainly in my case, is my intention. > Using my laptop in my office typically means I'm sat doing work; if I go to > the meeting room or a lecture theatre, and have my laptop switched on, I'm > usually about to give a presentation; and so on. For this, I envisage > defining `zones' with geolocation-based triggers (GPS, wireless AP, or > otherwise), and attaching effects to these. My running example on giving a > lecture or talk, for instance: > > - Zone is active if either: > * Lat/Long/Altitude points towards me being in in one of the departmental > meeting rooms; * Can see Strathclyde but cannot see CIS-WLAN (i.e. > somewhere else on campus). - On entering the zone: > * Battery Monitor to 'Presentation' > * krandr to 1024x768, --output VGA --same-as LVDS > * Turn off all non-critical notifications (so I don't get MSN messages > during talks ;) ) - On leaving: > * Restore settings to previous values > > Even without room-level geolocation, it would be neat to do something > things as simple as: - Zone is active if either: > * Country Code = GB > * Reverse Geocoding on Lat/Long gives GB > - On entering the zone: > * Set Time Zone to London > - On leaving: > * Restore Time Zone > > PlaceLab exists, WiGLE has data, and it's trivial to add extra or even have > an offline cache. The pie-in-the-sky is the glue to hook that in as a Data > Engine, and then being able to set behaviours triggered by location. > > So, now to flame, praise, or be fairly ambivalent - over to you :). > > Andrew > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Plasma-devel mailing list > Plasma-devel@kde.org > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel _______________________________________________ Plasma-devel mailing list Plasma-devel@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
