1. Indoor Positioning Services + Location Based Recommendations
My name is Jim Hahn, I am a Librarian in the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois. Today I'm talking about a service we have prototyped that will provide new students guidance to library items of interest, as well as promote the availability of e-resources that go overlooked in stacks based browsing. As an added benefit, we are also able to show students what the popular circulating items are in the area they are standing.
Jim Hahn

2. Wayfinder
Prototype interface (at left). The blue dot is the location of the users device. The red dot is the location of the item that they searched for. At any location in the library they can tap the button for related items near them, and a query to the popular near me algorithm is generated. The popular near them results are populated in the next screen (to the right).

3. Estimote Beacons
In order to locate the users device, 52 Estimote Beacons were placed above the tiles in the Undergrad Library. The Undergrad Library measures 50.8 meters by 56.7 meters

4. Beacon Components
Inside a beacon is a 2.4 GHz radio using Bluetooth 4.0 Smart, also known as BLE or Bluetooth low energy. Estimote docs have the best analogy for how to think of beacons: "You can think about the beacon as a small lighthouse. But instead of light, it uses radio waves, and instead of ships, it alerts smartphones of its presence." According to Estimote dev page “Estimote Beacons have a range of up to 70 meters (230 feet). The signal, however, can be diffracted, interfered with, or absorbed by water (including the human body). That’s why in real world conditions you should expect range of about 40–50 meters.”

5. Goals + Objectives
 Computing processes used to integrate beacons into app
Components for the recommendation algorithm 
Testing and improving beacon precision
Securing location based services

6. Integrating Beacons to App
Device locations were then recorded in a SQL table that correspond to a grid (16 X 18 grid system) of the library map. When the Wayfinder app loads, it checks the Minrva APIs to ensure it has the most recent table of beacon locations. There is an indoor SDK but after testing it with our Android devices, we chose to utilize a math library for inferring location.

7. Math Emergency: Trilateration
The app relies on a math library for Trilateration to infer its location in the grid. Trilateration is the process of determining absolute or relative locations of points by measurement of distances, using the geometry of circles, spheres or triangles.

8. Modular APIs
API provides: basic call number layout (custom table we curate ), searching and filtering (VuFind), ranking popularity ( Oracle Database ).

9. Recommendations Processing
In order to process recommendations we filter through several server side function beginning with the current location. Based off patron location we get the shelf ranges from our custom Minrva DB. Once we know the ranges of a nearby stack we get relevant books and ebooks. We filter for popularity based on that range, and add any ebooks that would be relevant. Finally, we add any relevant databases that may be relevant to the patrons starting location, and serialize this.

10. Recommendations Processing
The Android app consumes this JSON to create the the location based recommendations view.

11. Beacon Locations
The beacon locations in the Library.

12. Beacon Awareness Tests
This is an interface our CS students developed for testing. It provides a view of what beacons the app can "see". It lets us know how well the phone is inferring and helps us test out latency.

13. Beacon Testing
Another way outside of the app to test where beacon sparseness may occur is by using Estimote's app for locating beacons in range. The far left represents sparseness -- an area where we might want to add one more beacon so that there are three points to compute available. The far right shows at least five beacons the app can see.

14. Security: Estimote Cloud

15. Securing Local DB

16. Securing Local DB

17. Conclusion + Project Next Steps
Look for Wayfinder update to the Minrva app on Android Play store this Summer 2016.
Updates from Technology Prototyping Projects Page:

18. Acknowledgements Ben Ryckman, Lead Developer
Maria Lux, Graphic Designer
Senior Projects Course Team SrProj CS492/493
Ben Blaisdell, Christopher Collins, Maxx Macica, Raymond Farias, Yier Huang
The author wishes to acknowledge the Research and Publication Committee of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, which provided support for the completion of this research.

19. Estimote Resources
Developer Docs, including Beacon Tech Overview:
Reality Matters: How do beacons work? The physics of beacon tech: