What about an app which lists all visible WiFi networks and as you walk around, it tries to triangulate the source? It will fail in some cases due to reflections and obstacles, but when in line of sight or with few obstacles, could be a fun and interactive app.
You would need to familiarize yourself with the networking api on your phone, retrieve signal SSIDs to distinguish them, then retrieve signal strength, then estimate your own position (either precise location estimated by your phone or estimate it yourself using accelerometer and gyroscope and integrate over the retrieved data points to know how far you moved in each direction). Not sure what familiarity level you are at with any of this but the maths involved are all things I learned in school.
You could easily show how well it works by having another phone act as a temporary hotspot and see whether you can show an arrow towards it and possibly estimate distance.
Edit: estimating distance will be tricky, because you would need to know/estimate the signal emission power and that is probably different for all kinds of routers, some are even dynamic. But identifying the direction of the source is very much doable.
What about an app which lists all visible WiFi networks and as you walk around, it tries to triangulate the source? It will fail in some cases due to reflections and obstacles, but when in line of sight or with few obstacles, could be a fun and interactive app.
You would need to familiarize yourself with the networking api on your phone, retrieve signal SSIDs to distinguish them, then retrieve signal strength, then estimate your own position (either precise location estimated by your phone or estimate it yourself using accelerometer and gyroscope and integrate over the retrieved data points to know how far you moved in each direction). Not sure what familiarity level you are at with any of this but the maths involved are all things I learned in school.
You could easily show how well it works by having another phone act as a temporary hotspot and see whether you can show an arrow towards it and possibly estimate distance.
Edit: estimating distance will be tricky, because you would need to know/estimate the signal emission power and that is probably different for all kinds of routers, some are even dynamic. But identifying the direction of the source is very much doable.
If that’s your dumbest idea, you are undervalued wherever you work. That sounds like a pretty interesting idea.
I thought it would be more engaging to propose a simple yet interactive app =] glad you like it. Joy in programming drives learning and motivation.
Interesting idea, and honestly sounds fun. I was planning on using react native, so I’ll check expos network api