OP, sorry for diverting so much from your topic. If you want this without a wire pulling, you can consider air flow. Using air flowing from below into a pipe that has openings on both end, small openings, you can have a better control of the the height. That is how flow meters work.
thanks for the ideas. I think suspension of a magnet spinning in one spot would be easier to perform. I've seen the magnetic barbell that would spin above a concave base. However back to the idea of making the magnet float. What if I just have sections of coiled wire and I power the sections on each side of the magnet with a repelling force. Then I change which sections repel to get the magnet moving.
Suspending a magnet is a lot harder than suspending a magnetic piece of metal. This is because the two inverse laws combine to give a fourth law, which is even harder to control.
Side fields will just flip the magnet over.
Look at diamagnetic material, that is material that is repelled by a magnetic field. Bismuth is one such metal, then use the electro magnet to push against gravity, it is a much more stable set up.