WiFi Location Tracking Using the TrackALL IoT Device

Using WiFi location services within the TrackALL device

The new TrackALL (on Kickstarter) device allows you to get locations using WiFi access points and a location service like Skyhook or Google. After parsing the WiFi location data (MAC Addresses and RSSI values of the various WiFi access points in the vicinity of the device), these location services will provide you a lat/lon that can be plotted on a map within a cloud application!

In this quick example, we'll plot the locations onto a Losant map block.

How the new mcThings Platform works:

With the advent and soon to be released mcCloud feature, the mcThings platform now provides the ability to connect to devices remotely, from anywhere in the world and within range of an mcGateway, so that you can easily debug and make programming changes to the application on your mcThings device. New mcOS (device firmware) is also updated OTA through mcCloud and the mcGateway.

After writing a programming script within mcStudio and uploading that to your mcCloud security domain, you can then deploy applications to your devices easily from anywhere. Information incoming from your devices travels either to Sigfox to the cloud or to an mcGateway over mcAir (a LPLAN) and are forwarded, through integrations that you setup within your security domain, to any type of application that can receive webhooks (HTTPS). You can even send the same information to multiple different applications like Microsoft Azure, Ubidots, AWS, Losant, etc. Check out this visual:

Network options

You can use either Sigfox or mcAir to send the data to the internet and onto the application of your choice to view the data. Sigfox, where available, provides fantastic range and is perfect for sending location (and other data) from Sigfox enabled devices. If you are not within Sigfox coverage, you can store your data on the device and 'batch' that information to the cloud when the device comes back into range of an mcGateway. You can also use both networks in tandem (store data on the device while sending exception reports out using Sigfox) if you wish. Check out more info in our Kickstarter campaign!

Viewing the data in Losant

Using a workflow in Losant, we used Google location services to get our location and plot it on a map block:

Back us on Kickstarter and join our Hackster hub!

The TrackALL device is currently on Kickstarter, check it out! And join our hub here on Hackster to stay up to date with many more examples and projects to come using the mcThings platform.

Thanks for reading!