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Nestia – Lifestyle Mobile Apps in Singapore

Posted on June 19, 2016 Written by 3 Comments

I am currently working at a startup company called Nestia as a Senior iOS Developer. Nestia is a startup company in Singapore. We started as a property rental startup company. But our business has grown to more than just the property sector. We are now a Home Living/Lifestyle startup company.

What is a Lifestyle Startup Company?

We are trying to provide all the needs/wants for the foreigners who come to Singapore to work or study.

They need to rent/buy an apartment, we develop the Property Rental and Sale listing web/apps for them. They need to know how to get around the Singapore, we develop the Interactive MRT map, the Bus Routes and Arrival Time, Direction from A to B and Get Off Alarm for them. They want to know what are the place of interest and also need help for cleaning their apartment. We have added the Home Services and Nearby in our app for their convenience.

Thus, If you are using the Nestia App. You will see some features such as the Property Rental/Sales, Transportations, Home Services, Nearby, Movies and more in our app.

If you are a iPhone user in Singapore. You may go to the iTunes Appstore on your mobile devices and go to Lifestyle category. You should see the Nestia iOS app rank within the Top 10 positions on the Lifestyle Category of Singapore App Store.

Nestia App Annie


From the App Annie, you can see that our app has been ranked consistently within the top 10 position in the Singapore Lifestyle on the iOS App store since early 2016.

My Responsibilities as the iOS Developer

Basically, there are 2 different apps that I developed in Nestia:-
1. Nestia Pro iOS App (Property publishing and management app for property agents)
2. Nestia User iOS App (The lifestyle app for common users)

Nestia Pro iOS App is the First app that I started to build because during that time, our web portal has just been launched. We have to develop an app for the property agents to manage the property listings. After the Nestia Pro app has the decent functionalities, we focus most of our time and energy on the Nestia user apps.

The initial stage of the Nestia user app contains only the messaging and the property listing functionality. Now, it has other additional features like Transportation and Home Services like I mentioned above.

In the First 10 months when I was working in Nestia, I was the only iOS developer for both the apps.

But now, there are 2 more iOS developers joining the iOS development team. It has been interesting to develop the apps in a team using Git version control. I have learned deeper into the Git by learning how to control the master branch in released stage, create new development branches, merge the branches, rebasing, solving the conflicts and etc. It has been a good learning experience.

I will only describe the features that I developed myself in the bottom post.

Nestia Pro (For Property Agents)

This is the app for the property agents. They use the app to add/edit/publish the property rental and sale listings. I will explain briefly on some of the features that I developed for this agent app:-

1. The property listing page (Rental and Sales)
2. The Property submissions page (Rental and Sales)
3. Co-broke (Rental)
4. Inbox (App messaging)

Nestia Pro
Nestia Pro
Nestia Pro


The property agent can register an account with us via our website or the app for Free. We have given the agents at least 6 months of free trial before they decide if they want to join us as paying members.

The agents can submit and view their listings via the app. The agent can even co-broke with other agents for any potential rental deals. In the co-broke feature, the agent can search for a property using place, condo or MRT station.

The agent can use our app to communicate with the potential tenants, buyers or other agents for the co-broking.

Nestia Pro
Nestia Pro
Nestia Pro


Nestia Lifestyle app – (For Common Users)

The early stage of the Nestia iOS app contains only the Property rental feature. Because the main targetted users of our app are the foreigners who are either working or studying in Singapore, as time passed by, we have added more features into the app to help them in their daily lifestyle.

We really care about the user experience of our products. Many of the touches, how and when to load info/photo, the navigation from 1 view to another view have been properly planned in a way to give the best experience for the users of our app.

NOTE: There are too many features on this app and I will only share the main features.

The Property Listing View
We want to make the First page of property listing as simple as possible. The vertical loading of the property list. When a user is going to the homepage of the property rental/sales, we have limited the loading to only 10 properties at a time (using the paging logic). This is to prevent the long waiting time. As for the property photo for each property, we only load 2 photos at the same time. Each swipe of the photo will only load 2 photos as well.

This type of small logics of loading is not easy to implement. We have implemented it because we know that it will improve the user experience.

Nestia User
Nestia User
Nestia User


The Property Map View
The clustering technology. There are many clustering technology and we find out that most of the clustering technology out there will have random generated clusters that always have random numbers for every single scroll and zoom level. We believe that user might be confused and might not be able to find the property that the user has previously seen.

So, we have implemented a clustering technology that based on different zoom level. Within a certain zoom levels and without changing the property filters, the number of properties inside that cluster will be static. It will ensure that the user is able to find back the same property inside the same cluster at the same location inside the map view itself.

Yet again. this type of clustering is not easy to implement because we have removed the randomness of the clustering. We have implemented it because we believe the users would prefer this type of clustering property search inside a map view.

To further simplify the property search on the mapview, we only limited the cluster to only 3 layers. Users know exactly what to expect after using our app for the first time. Most of the time, you will not know how many layers are there for the clustering on other apps as there could be unlimited layers.

The Location Search Filter
When a user is searching a location, there could be 3 different types of results:-
– A Place
– A Condo
– A MRT/LRT station.

These search results are not randomly selected, we did that because we believe it will provide a lot of convenience to the users of our app. After the user has selected a search result. The coordinate of that result be will compared further with the coordinates of the property to let the user know the distance between them. If you go to the static map of the property listing page, it will let you know the fastest route between these 2 locations (either via walking only or MRT + walking). Here, we actually are using the Google static map technology to compare 2 different locations.

Nestia User
Nestia User
Nestia User


Transportation
Transportation is second biggest module after the Property Rental and the Sales. It is to provide the convenience of the users who want to know how to get around Singapore. The main modules for the transportations are:-
– The MRT Interactive System Map
– The MRT Map
– The Bus Arrival Time
– Direction
– Get-off Alarm

The MRT Interactive System Map
Most of the app/website only have static MRT graphic map which give very little information. Our app has this MRT Interactive map which allow the users to choose 2 different stations. After choosing 2 stations, the map will show the closest route between 2 stations, the cost and the estimated time.

The MRT Map
This MRT Map is a more detailed map compare with the graphic map. It shows all the route of the MRT system in Singapore.

The map has 3 layers:-
Layer 1: Show all the MRT routes
Layer 2: Show all routes + MRT station
Layer 3: Show the routes + MRT stations and the station Exits

The user of our app can do some filtering using the station and the map will navigate to that station. It will also show the MRT schedule of that station.

Nestia User
Nestia User
Nestia User


The Bus Arrival Time
Land Transport Authority has done a great job by providing the open API for the bus arrival time. Not only that, I personally have been a frequent user of this particular feature of the app. I can assure you that the bus arrival time is accurate to the seconds. It helps me to plan my travel time properly.

Nestia User
Nestia User
Nestia User


Direction (from A to B)
Direction is the module used by our app users to get around Singapore. The users can enter the location A and B, then we will shows:-
– The Best Recommended Routes
– The Less walking Routes
– The Bus Only Routes

It is up to the users to choose which route is the best for him/her. For each of the routes, the app will also show the cost and the estimated time.

On the Direction map view, it shows the the walking route, the MRT stations, the MRT station Exists and also the bus routes.

The map and the table view may look simple but it is not easy to implement. It is difficult because there are so many ways to get the the same location. To prevent misleading, we need to show the right information to the users. The height of the table view cells will have to be determined in real time based on the information returned from the server. For example, some cell might has only 1 row but other cells might have 3 rows.

Nestia User
Nestia User
Nestia User


Final Notes on the Nestia iOS Apps

I couldn’t cover all the features that I developed for the Nestia app in this post. Here are some other features that I have developed.

The Get-off Alarm – When the user is riding a bus, he/she can set a bus stop to get off. The user can do other stuff, put the app in the background. When the bus is approaching the destination, it will sound the alarm to alert the user to get off from the bus. We are using the GPS and the background location technology.

Home Services – The current apps has 10 different home services: Aircon, Cleaning, Moving, Plumbing, Laundry, Electrical, Paint, Wallpaper, Locksmith and Pest-control.

Favourites – Users can add Property Rental, Sales, Home Services to the Favourites so that they can access the listing easier in the future.

Inbox – The user can communicate with the property agents or owner via the Nestia app. We are using Push Notification technology to notify the users when they have new messages. The current messaging system support the normal text message, the picture message and the property card message. In the future, there will be more message type when we allow the user to use the in-app messaging to communicate with the service provider.

Nearby – The user can use Nearby to find out the Place of Interest from his/her current location. For example, if a user is trying to find the nearest petrol station, with a few taps on the app, the petrol stations info will be available on the screen.

Property Details Page – On the property detail page itself not only has the info related to the property, we also include feature like Transport, Direction and Nearby. The user knows all the available transportations and place of interest near that particular property.

Nestia User
Nestia User
Nestia User


The above post is a summary of the apps that I developed when working in Nestia as a senior iOS developer, if you are interested to find out more about the apps, please download the apps and give them a try!

Download the apps from the Apple iTunes App Store:-
– Nestia Pro iOS (For Property Agents)
– Nestia iOS (For Users)

Filed Under: Android, Git, GPS, iOS, iPhone, Location Updates, Mobile Apps, Startups, Swift

Watch Over Me Version 6.0

Posted on January 31, 2015 Written by Leave a Comment

To wrap up the First month of 2015, I am going to share the continuous development for the Watch Over Me app.

The last update that I wrote related to my company’s mobile app was back on March 2014. The version was Watch Over Me (WOM) 3.0. It seems to be a long time ago. There has been a lot of changes and we have gone through many new iterations. We have skipped the version 4.0 in order to synch version between the Android and also the iOS app. We have introduced new features in both Version 5.0 and 6.0. In this article, I will make a quick share on my experience on developing the WOM app from Version 3.0 to Version 6.0.

WOM6.0
WOM2.0
WOM2.0


Watch Over Me (WOM) Version 5.0 – 5.1

Before WOM 5.0, I don’t have too much experience and knowledge in Auto Layout. During the time I was developing some cool new features in WOM 5, Apple has announced the new XCode 6 Beta with a new programming language – Swift during the WWDC 2014. In addition to that, Apple actually gave some hints that the future iPhones will have new screen sizes (which turned out to be iPhone 6 and 6 plus).

The new XCode 6 also has a lot of improvements related to the Auto Layout on Storyboard. The improvement is necessary to make sure that the iOS developers can easily optimize for the new iPhone/iPad screen sizes in the future.

I was actually quite excited that Apple has made the AutoLayout so much easy to use. We had our internal discussion in our company and I convinced my boss that we need to spend time in converting the existing non-autolayout supported project to become a fully auto layout supported project. After gaining his permission and I used about 3 weeks of time to complete the AutoLayout conversion (It was not an easy task!).

It turned out that our decision was right. When Apple released the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, for me to optimise for the new screen sizes was almost effortlessly. 🙂

WOM6.0
WOM2.0
WOM2.0


Supporting the autolayout on Watch Over Me 5.0 – 5.1 was the major improvement. We also have added a couple more features on the mobile app such as :-

– The Network Contact
The main contact and the emergency contacts are able to know the status event running for each other. Eg: When the main contact is running an event and he/she shares his/her event to the emergency contacts, the emergency contacts are able to see the whereabouts (the map) of the main contact.

– Split Testing on the Sign Up Screen
There are 2 different designs on the Sign Up Screen. Each of the user will only see 1 design. We split test the design to know which design actually will convert the download to become a sign up user. We have been using Mixpanel and also the Google Analytics for the data analytics. This Split Testing was added into the tracking as well.

– Optimisation for iOS 8.0
Without a doubt, optimising the code to support the iOS 8.0 was important as well. There are some new permissions needed in iOS in order to gain the device’s location in the background for iOS 8.

WOM6.0
WOM2.0
WOM2.0


Watch Over Me Version 6.0

The major thing for WOM 6.0 was a total new design on the User Interface. The designer has made the design so much cleaner. I actually love this clean design in WOM 6 way more than any other version of WOM.

We also introduced a new feature calls “The Safety Level“. Safety Level is a feature that encourages the users to make the full use of Watch Over Me app. The user can keep track on his/her progress of using the WOM. Eg: If a user has added 1 contact, then the Safety level is at 20%.

If the user wants to achieve the 100% safety level, the user has to add more contacts, invite the emergency contacts to download the app so that they can watch over each other, add some places (safe zones). With the 100% Safety Level, the user will feel more safe when he/she is using the app.

To encourage users to use Watch Over Me more often, we have simplified the user categories and also removed a lot of restrictions. Eg: Before WOM 6, the Lite user could only launch an event with at most 20 minutes. We have removed this limitation. The only difference between the normal users (Free) and the paid user (Premium) is the SMS. Since SMS notification will cost quite a bit of money, only the Premium users can get unlimited SMS and the free user will get 7 SMS.

There were some further optimisations for iOS 8, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus for this version. On this version, CocoaPods is being used more often now. I have added some of the third party libraries/frameworks on XCode using Cocoapod rather than manually adding them. It is to make sure that any new iOS developer (who wants to continue my project in the future) is able to get the initial configuration on getting the project up and running at the shortest time.

WOM6.0
WOM2.0
WOM2.0


Watch Over Me – Future Version

We will be launching a new feature calls the Safer Streets soon. Moving forward, the Watch Over Me Team will be focusing on the Big Data.

Watch Over Me is a safety app, especially for women. The app will let the users know that which streets are safe based on the statistics from the local government. When a user is nearby a crime prone area, the app will notify the user. The user might want to use Watch Over me when he/she is nearby that area.

There are some challenges to implement the Safer Streets. First of all, the app has to get the user’s location all the time (No matter if the app is active, in the background or in the suspended state). Secondly, when a user is launching the Watch Over Me event, the GPS coordinates of the user has to be sending to the Watch Over Me server every 1 minute.

In order for the Location Manager to support these 2 different functions on the same app, the only way that I can think of is to use 2 different Location Manager instances.

Location Manager #1: Get the Location update even when the app is terminated/killed.
Location Manager #2: Get the GPS coordinates from the user every 1 minute continuously even when the app is in the background.

Here is the demonstration of the WOM 6 with XCode and Simulator

Filed Under: Auto Layout, CocoaPods, GPS, Indoor Positioning System, iOS, iPhone, Location Updates, Mobile Apps, Objective-C, Split Testing, XCode

Getting Location Updates for iOS 7 and 8 when the App is Killed/ Terminated/ Suspended

Posted on January 1, 2015 Written by 116 Comments

This is a long awaited article that I promised to write. A couple months ago, I found a way to get the location update from iOS 7 and 8 even when the app is not active on foreground and not in the background. Yes, you may get the GPS coordinates from the iOS devices even when the app is killed/terminated either by the user or the iOS itself.

Apple does not communicate much with the developers on the ways to do that. If you remember this post from early 2014: Apple’s iOS 7.1 will fix a geolocation bug — after developer sends letter to Tim Cook. In iOS 7.0, Apple prevents the location update when the app is killed/terminated/suspended. But, Apple has fixed the “bug” starting from iOS 7.1 by allowing the app to get the location coordinates.

I have read the release notes for iOS 7.1 but I couldn’t find any information related to location updates and also the way to get the location when the mobile application is terminated/killed/suspended. The iOS 7.0 to iOS 7.1 API Differences for CoreLocation is stated as “No changes“. What?!

But, I didn’t give up in finding the solution. So for a few months, I used my free time to play a bit of the iOS APIs including the CoreLocation APIs. After many months of trials and errors, I finally found the solution.

I will provide the full solution, upload to the Github and write the detailed information on this post.

How to get Location Update for iOS 7 and 8 even When the App is Killed/Terminated

I have written an old article related to getting the continuous Background Location Updates for iOS 7 and iOS 8.

The method to get the location in the background continuously for iOS 7 and 8 is using the method “startUpdatingLocation”

[myLocationManager startUpdatingLocation];

and then the next trick would be on the delegate method “didUpdateLocations“. You will have to use a timer and handle the Background Task appropriately. Any missing steps and the location will not be updated continuously.

But in the case of getting the location when the app is terminated/suspended, I can not use [myLocationManager startUpdatingLocation]; The only way to make it work is to use:-

[anotherLocationManager startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];

Surprised. Surprised. Yes, I only figured that out after many trials and errors.

Another important trick is, you will have to know how to handle the key “UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey” on the app delegate “didFinishLaunchingWithOptions“. Here is the sample code:-

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions{
self.shareModel = [LocationShareModel sharedModel];

if ([launchOptions objectForKey:UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey]) { 
  self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager = [[CLLocationManager alloc]init];
  self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager.delegate = self;
  self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation;
  self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager.activityType = CLActivityTypeOtherNavigation;
            
  if(IS_OS_8_OR_LATER) {
    [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager requestAlwaysAuthorization];
  }
 [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];   
   
}    
    return YES;
}

In addition to the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method, I have created a locationManager Instance when the app is active. Here are some code examples:

- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
{
    [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager stopMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];

    if(IS_OS_8_OR_LATER) {
        [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager requestAlwaysAuthorization];
    }
    [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];
}

- (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application
{
    if(self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager)
        [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager stopMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];
    
    self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager = [[CLLocationManager alloc]init];
    self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager.delegate = self;
    self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation;
    self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager.activityType = CLActivityTypeOtherNavigation;
    
    if(IS_OS_8_OR_LATER) {
        [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager requestAlwaysAuthorization];
    }
    [self.shareModel.anotherLocationManager startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];
}

What exactly is the LaunchOptions Key “UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey”?

UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey is very important to get the location update even when the app is neither active nor in the background.

If you read its description from the XCode, it says: “The presence of this key indicates that the app was launched in response to an incoming location event”. What does it mean?

You may realize that when your app is launched for the First time, the App Delegate method “didFinishLaunchingWithOptions” will run once. If you put your app into the background and then launch the app again from the background. This app delegate method will not run again.

The method will only run again after you killed/terminated the app by swiping up from the App Preview Screen and then relaunch from where your app is located.

If your app is a location based mobile application and you need the user’s location even the app is terminated/suspended, then there is another way to launch the app without the user interaction. The iOS will launch the app for you.

When your app delegate methods LaunchOptions contains the key UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey, it means that your app is launched by the iOS because there is a significant location changes. So, you will have to do something with the new location GPS coordinates return from the location manager.

If order to do so, you will have to create a new instance of location manager and you shall get the location coordinates from the method “didUpdateLocations“.

How Frequent is the Location Updates?

As per Developer Documentation: Core Location Documentation.

Apps can expect a notification as soon as the device moves 500 meters or more from its previous notification. It should not expect notifications more frequently than once every five minutes. If the device is able to retrieve data from the network, the location manager is much more likely to deliver notifications in a timely manner.

So, you could only expect the location update if the device moves over 500 meters and at most once in every 5 minutes.

From my own testing (I am driving around a lot! To test the Core Locaton API), I only get the location update about every 10 minutes.

Full Source Code for the Location Updates Even when the iOS mobile apps is Suspended/Terminated/Killed

In this source code, I have included the methods to save the location GPS coordinates into a PList file. The purpose of saving into a PList is to record the location coordinates, the iOS Application States and the way locationManager is created (Add From Resume or otherwise).

Here are some simple instructions on how to test this solution:-

1. Download the project from Git Hub.
2. Change to your own Bundle Identifier (If need to)
3. Connect your iPhone with your mac.
4. Launch the app into your iPhone.
5. Killed the app. (Double tap and remove the app from the App Preview)
6. Travel around with your iPhone for a few days.
7. Download iFunBox for Mac or any alternative that allows you to open the app and Read the PList from the “Documents” folder.
8. From the PLIst, you will see something like the screen shot below:-
Getting Location Even When the App is Suspended/Killed/Terminated

When you see the key “UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey” under “Resume“, it means that the iOS has relaunched the app after the devices has moving significantly from the last known location. If you create a new location Manager instance, you will get new location from delegate method “didUpdateLocations“.

Source Code: GitHub Source Code for Getting Location Updates for iOS 7 and 8 when the App is Killed/Terminated/Suspended

Filed Under: Git, Global Positioning System, GPS, iOS, iPhone, Location Updates, Objective-C

iOS Region Monitoring and Location Manager

Posted on May 11, 2014 Written by 8 Comments

One interesting feature in the new version of Watch Over Me app is Crime Zone. The main purpose of the crime zones is to notify the user of Watch Over me when he/she is passing the area. Watch Over Me app will ask if the user wants to be watched over during that time.

We have accumulated some trustable and reliable resources from various websites from the Internet to gather the crime zone areas in 7 major cities in 5 different countries (Malaysia, USA, UK, Australia, Thailand). These 7 cities are our test regions and we will be adding more regions in the future.

iOS Region Monitoring and Location Manager

I am using Region Monitoring from the Location Manager to implement this feature on the iOS Watch Over Me app. This particular module is not hard compare with getting the location in iOS 7 in background mode.

The maximum regions that an iOS device can monitor is only limited to 20. So, I have to come out with a good strategy to only get and monitor the regions that are useful to the users.

This is the logic we use for the region monitoring in iOS:-
1. Getting the current location from the user.
2. Send the current location to the server.
3. The server will return all the regions within a 20 km radius from the current location
4. If there are more than 20 regions, the server will only send the closest 20 regions from the current location.
5. After receiving the regions, the app will start to monitor the regions.

A Potential Bug for locationManager delegate method didEnterRegion

After the app has been released on the app store, we are still constantly in testing on the region monitoring on Kuala Lumpur (KL). We have 8 monitored regions in KL at the time of typing this article.

On one fine day, my colleague saw a bug with multiple region notifications triggered at the same time. The location of my colleague is at least 3000 meters away from the nearest region that we monitored. I have double checked on the radius and also the coordinate for all the regions that we monitor in KL, there wasn’t any discrepancy of the data.

Region Monitoring Bug
iOS Region Monitoring Bug
Region MonitoringiOS Region Monitoring


The screen on the Left shows the bug when 4 notifications triggered at the same time when the device is NOT even close to any of the regions.

The screen on the Right is a simple app that I made to stimulate the location of the device (Green Marker) and also the location (Red Marker) and the radius of each region (Red Circle). The Blue Circle is the estimation of the radius of the device when it triggered the notification for all 4 regions. The estimated radius for the device is about 4700 meters! It should not happen.

I have searched through various websites (StackOverFlow, Apple Developer Forum and etc.), I couldn’t find other developer faced the same issue like mine. I saw a lot of questions on NOT getting any notification when passing through a region, but my case is the entire opposite.

I am not sure if this is the fault on my code, on iOS system level or the problem on the local Telco in my country. I have posted a question on StackOverFlow for more than 1 week but I didn’t get any answer as well.

How to Fix this Bug?

Without much reliable information, I can only do trial and error in order to fix this bug. I have been trying a few different method on trying to fix the bug. This includes setting the distanceFilter = 10 for the locationManager. Previously, it was kCLDistanceFilterNone because I want the app to detect every single movement. 

//locationManager.distanceFilter = kCLDistanceFilterNone;
locationManager.distanceFilter = 10;

My colleague still saw this bug after a few days of testing. So, the above solution is no good.

After experimenting for sometimes, I found a solution that works good.

1. Whenever a user enters a monitored region, he/she will get a notification in the locationManager delegate method didEnterRegion. But due to the bug, this method is not reliable. I have to use a smart way to filter out the fake location.
2. I found a way to get the recent location of the user from locationManager.
3. After the app gets the user location, the app will make sure that the location is within the region before deciding to send the location notification to the device.

From my research, this location is not 100% reliable, especially if there isn’t any location based running at the background. But generally, it is good enough to filter out the bad location which may trigger multiple notifications for different regions.

Here are the example code:

-(void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didEnterRegion:(CLRegion *)region{    
    CLLocation * lastLocation = [manager location];
    BOOL doesItContainMyPoint;
    if(lastLocation==nil)
        doesItContainMyPoint = NO;
    else{
        CLLocationCoordinate2D theLocationCoordinate = lastLocation.coordinate;
        CLCircularRegion * theRegion = (CLCircularRegion*)region;
        doesItContainMyPoint = [theRegion containsCoordinate:theLocationCoordinate];
    }

    if(doesItContainMyPoint){
        NSString* message = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"You are now in this region:%@",region.identifier];
        UIApplicationState state = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] applicationState];
        if (state == UIApplicationStateBackground || state == UIApplicationStateInactive)
           {
             UILocalNotification *notification = [[UILocalNotification alloc] init];
             notification.fireDate = [NSDate date];
             NSTimeZone* timezone = [NSTimeZone defaultTimeZone];
             notification.timeZone = timezone;
             notification.alertBody = message;
             notification.alertAction = @"Show";
             notification.soundName = UILocalNotificationDefaultSoundName;
             [[UIApplication sharedApplication] scheduleLocalNotification:notification];
            }
     }
}
Filed Under: Global Positioning System, GPS, iOS, Location Updates, Objective-C

iBeacon and Indoor Positioning System (IPS)

Posted on April 6, 2014 Written by 1 Comment

I have been excited for the Indoor Positioning System (IPS) Technology for a quite while. In fact, one of the main reasons I train myself to be an iOS developer is because I want to develop some excited Location and Positioning Based Mobile apps that will change the way we do things in life.

What is Indoor Positioning System?

Indoor Positioning System is a new technology that probably only exists in less than 15 years ago. When I am trying to find more information about this IPS technology from Wikipedia, the earliest research paper on the reference was dated based in year 2009. But when I am searching through google search, I found some research papers on early 2000s.

So, this is a relatively new technology that we haven’t see much applications on the real world yet. But, this will definitely change in the next 5 years.

With the exponential growth of the smart phone users, we have seen a lot of location based (GPS) mobile applications that pop up in the last 5 years. For your information, Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed in 1940s during the World War 2. So, GPS was initially developed to pinpoint the enemy’s location so that they can launch a missile to that location. Thanks to the mobile technology, the GPS technology has been highly commercialised to the mass market in the last 5 years.

All the smart phones users know very well that the Global Positioning System (GPS) does not work well inside a building. This is where the Indoor Positioning System comes into existence.

I am actually betting that the Indoor Positioning System will become highly commercialised within the next 5 years. There will be a lot of innovative mobile apps coming out of it that will make our life easier.

What is iBeacon?

Beacon is actually a device that transmits signal to its surrounding to determine the approximate distance betweens some objects and the broadcaster. We have seen some real world applications like on a car with reverse sensor. That sensor is actually a type of beacon.

iBeacon, on the other way, is a term trademarked by Apple. It is a new iOS technology which is only available on iOS 7 and onwards. iBeacon is using Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) to determine the your location as far as 10 50 meters inside a building.

The vivid location based Mobile apps users know very well that the location based apps usually consume a lot of battery, especially on the navigation mobile apps.

One of the big advantages over the GPS technology is that the IPS technology such as Bluetooth consumes a lot less battery. Even if you turn your bluetooth on 24 hours per day, you almost never feel any battery drain at all.

Some people mentioned that iBeacon is better than the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that is available on some Android devices. It is due to its greater distance in discovery (iBeacon: 10 50 meters vs. NFC: 20 cms) and energy efficiency.

You may learn the details on the iBeacon here: iBeacon – Wikipedia.

So, What’s Next?

Some people mentioned that after Steve jobs passed aways, there isn’t much innovations coming out from Apple. This isn’t true. We have seen the innovation from Apple from iPhone 5s which has the fingerprint recognition technology and also this iBeacon Technology.

The DNA that Steve Jobs has implemented into Apple will last for a very long time. Apple was late in the map and location technology when comparing with Google. But, it has been catching up fast.

Apple has acquired an Indoor Positioning company – WiFiSlam for $20 millions. There isn’t much news from Apple after the acquisition. I believe we will hear something within the next 1 year.

Don Dodge, who is a Developer Advocate for Google, mentioned in his blog post that there will be many potential markets that could adopt IPS technology. There will be a lot of winners in this technology. He is also an investor and also advisor for some of the IPS startups.

I am very excited to see what will be coming out from iBeacon and Indoor Positioning System within the next 5 years. I just started to learn iBeacon iOS framework and I will make a new post when I am ready to share.

Filed Under: Bluetooth, Global Positioning System, GPS, Indoor Positioning System, iOS, iPhone, IPS, Location Updates