Well we have finally got this project to a state we feel comfortable calling "complete" for the Sci-Fi-Contest. While any project of this nature can always be revised and improved, we now have a fully functioning system that tracks your location and displays it on a map! Below we will have a video demonstration.

Summary of project:

The project uses a network of TI EZ430-RF2500's to measure the signal strength of a tracking beacon inside a building. We demonstrate our system using 1 tracking tag, 1 base station receiver & 5 receiver nodes and only a 1Hz location update rate, but this can easily be expanded to have hundreds of nodes and many tracking tags. The update rate can also be increased, but we had it running slowly for other tests. The network nodes measure the signal strength (RSSI) of the locator beacon and send this signal strength information back to the base station. The base station hands this data over to a python script that pushes all of the information onto a database. Finally, a C# GUI application gathers the information from the database, calculates the best approximate location of the tracking tag within the room and displays it on a map.

Video:

Demo Video

Some notes about the video:

•  Sorry about the random circles and lines appearing on the map. We had these displaying for debug use and forgot to turn them off.
• You may notice the green dot bounces away from the actual position a few times (even off the map once). This is because of RF interference in the room. It turns out RF tracking inside a room like this is a non-trivial task. Our system recovers relatively quickly though and starts showing an accurate location again.