Watchman with Indoor Positioning System (IPS)

Our novel Indoor Positioning System (IPS) works with your  existing WiFi network. There is no additional hardware or change required in your existing WiFi infrastructure. You are ready to start as long as you have a separate 2.4G WiFi network. And if you do not, you may start with provisioning a guest WiFi at 2.4G on your existing WiFi router(s).

1) Connect your Watchman IPS to your WiFi network (follow setup instructions), call this as your "primary" WiFi.

2) Once connected and activated, you will program it, using our web portal, with a list (max. 5) of location WiFi networks, call them "locator" WiFis.

3) Every 5min, your Watchman scans the list of locator WiFis and saves the one(s) it is able to connect with. It records the successfully-connected-WiFi with maximum signal strength. The (new) record is then compared with the last one to determine if any one of the following conditions occur:

• change in signal strength
• change in WiFi network
• change in WiFi access point

If so then the (new) record is pushed to the cloud and is logged into our portal. This is how you know that people/goods (that Watchman is attached to) has changed the location and you can track it by knowing connected WiFi network and access point.

If for some reason, Watchman is not able to connect to Internet (to push the new record to cloud) using locator WiFi, it retries using primary WiFi. This allows for the case where locator WiFi may not have Internet access.

As a new record is logged on the portal (indicating change of position), you can also configure to be alerted via email/SMS.  

If there occurs no (location) change that triggered a log for more than an hour, Watchman will send a keep-up log (with WiFi network info that it's been connected to). You will see such logs, showing up on the portal, approximately 1 hour apart. They simply indicate that though Watchman has not moved, it is still working and scanning for location change (if any).

For locations, where Watchman can see multiple locator WiFis at similar signal strength, Watchman is designed to not "swing" (as it scans locator WiFis) unless signal strength varies more than 5db. There may still be the situations where an interference causes signals to vary more than 5db and that makes Watchman to "swing" (i.e. connect to another locator WiFi whereas it has not moved). If you observe the "swing" behavior, you now know why it is so. And, over time, you will be able to easily identify them.  This is part of learning on your Watchman and how it is working with your locations. 

IPS Watchman power draw is very low (100mA or less). Though it helps run IPS Watchman for long, the regular (low cost) power banks will not work with it. The  regular power banks shut off (automatically) when draw is too low (as is the case with IPS Watchman).  Here are your options:

• Use always-on power bank. They are at higher price point and do not come in as large (power) bank size as regular ones.

OR

• Use 18650 Lithium battery power supply. They are cheaper ($2 to $3 per) and has been tested to run IPS for 1 to 2 months on a pair of 5000mAH 18650.   

Feel free to contact us (tech@pp-code.com) for additional questions.