Hi Bob,

Without knowing specific details of your situation that might make this a 
lousy suggestion; and assuming that you have control of the software; my first 
suggestion would be to use WiFi.

On the basis that your locations are sufficiently distinct; if you used poor 
quality WiFi access points (or just removed/nobbled their antenna); gave them 
all the same SID (WiFi network name); then I think the tablets will probably 
lock on to the nearest one when it's available. Then you could have some 
simple mechanism to deliver a different location ID from each point (e.g. a 
minimal computer offering a web page which is, at the minimum, just the 
location ID). They shouldn't need to actually be connected to the internet (I 
think). Indeed you could probably use a Raspberry Pi or similar to be both the 
access point and serve the location info.

Depending on how the software is developed and whether you have complete 
control, you could probably make this even simpler; if the software can access 
the list of available access points, you don't even need the second part. 
Instead of giving all the access points the same SID, go the other way: make 
the SID of each access point be the location code.

Of course there are lots of reasons why this might not work! Good luck, and 
please let us know what route you end up with.

Ben

On 11/03/2022 17:13, Bob Clark wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Here is a technical question with which we hope the MCG crowd can help us.  
> What technical solutions are available to get a tablet to recognise its 
> location so that it can then show predetermined content for that place?
> 
> To explain, Auchindrain Historic Township is a physically-large and 
> internationally-important historic site in Argyll, Scotland, which has been 
> run as an independent museum since the 1960s. For some years, _all_ of the 
> museum’s interpretive material has been contained within a bespoke app running 
> on 10-inch Samsung Galaxy tablets which are loaned to visitors.  For various 
> reasons, a downloadable app for personal mobiles is not considered suitable.  
> When outdoors, the tablet uses GPS to detect its location and display 
> appropriate content.  GPS, however, does not work indoors, so when the system 
> was designed in 2014-15 the app was set up to receive identifier signals from 
> Bluetooth beacons located in the buildings which achieved the same result as a 
> GPS location.  This system worked fine for around three years, after which it 
> became progressively more unreliable as the tablets aged and were updated, and 
> as the Bluetooth hardware aged (it sits in very hostile environments).
> 
> Had it not been for Covid, a couple of years ago we should have been starting 
> to plan and test out a second generation of the whole system, but for reasons 
> I do not need to explain that did not happen.  As life starts to return to 
> normal, we have found that the Bluetooth beacons have had it, and that in the 
> intervening years technology has moved on and there is nothing quite like them 
> any more.  We have thus been talking hard to our developer about what we might 
> do instead.
> 
> QR codes would work of course, but that would require the tablet-user to 
> operate the tablet’s built-in camera – an extra degree of complication in a 
> system designed with the non-technical person in mind.  LFC would work 
> wonderfully, but the old tablets can’t read it and seemingly nor can new ones 
> – there was a generation of LFC-enabled tablets but not now unless they are 
> unaffordably expensive.  As things stand, we may be obliged to reduce 
> functionality and get tablet users to navigate by map-and-finger when in a 
> building.
> 
> Hence now this open question.  Can anyone thing of a technological fix that 
> would work?  What we are looking for is a way other than GPS of automatically 
> sending a signal to an app on a tablet that is at or in close proximity to a 
> specified location, so that the tablet can then display appropriate content?
> 
> Many thanks in advance for any replies.
> 
> Bob
> 
> BOB CLARK MA (Oxon), MSc, FMA, FSA Scot
> 
> Director of Auchindrain Township
> 
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 
> 07770 420999
> 
> 01499 320272 (Direct Line)
> 
> 01499 400235 (Reception)
> 
> www.auchindrain.org.uk <http://www.auchindrain.org.uk/>
> 
> Urras Achadh an Droighinn/The Auchindrain Trust
> 
> Bail' Ach' an Droighinn/Auchindrain Historic Township
> 
> Ionar Aora/Inveraray
> 
> Earra Ghàidheal/Argyll
> 
> PA32 8WD
> 
> Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Number SC015528
> 
> 
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