I have searched for such topic, but haven't quite found the right one. Maybe some one could tip me in the right direction- all info is welcome.
I have a robot vacuum. It does not have a clear circle patter, more like random. So at first, I want to track where my little robot has been inside my house.
Secondly, he sometimes gets stuck. So I would like to see, where he is currently (or like few seconds delay).
I started to look into Arduino, as I'm a bit more familiar to it and don't want to sink a lot of cash into it.
I thought about some kind of smaller device, that sits on top of the robot.
On tracking, I saw recommendations on someone using 3 phones to triangulate the location of a cat. But I don't want to use phones, want to make some kind of beacons if this is the case.
Also there was some that suggested some QR codes on walls to scan- I see it a bit robust and bad solution.
In the long run, I would like to use this for multiple items, not only the robot vacuum- but it would be the start of desire.
Has anyone gotten some experience in this? Is triangulation the best option and how should it be approached?
Thank You all!
tl;dr- I want to track the location of something inside an apartment
What you want to do is not simple. Outdoors and over longer distances you would use GPS.
If you want to track the position of something within a single room maybe a ceiling mounted camera and image recognition software would work - but that is far beyoned the capability of an Arduino.
Another approach, which an Arduino could manage, would be to have 3 light beacons and have a direction-sensitive scanner on the robot that can identify the angle to each beacon and work out its position from that - like the way ships used to use navigation lights and lighthouses.
If you want to be able to track it through multiple rooms I can't think how that could be done other than with a similar setup in each room.
All in all this sounds like more trouble than it would be worth.
You need some form of beacon (in case of GPS that are the satellites, in case of the cat that are the phones) to triangulate your location. You also need at least three beacons to get an absolute location.
Finding out in which room your robot is is hard enough. Finding out where exactly in the room it is, is a lot harder.