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Add wifi-based geolocation, where available

Open bwarden opened this issue 1 week ago • 0 comments

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I have a couple of portable nodes (GL-AR750). I'd like to be able to update their location as automatically as possible.

Describe the solution you'd like Scan for nearby WiFi access points and submit them to a free, public geolocation service to get an approximate location (https://beacondb.net/).

This will only work if:

  • the node has access to the internet
  • the node has an additional radio not used for AREDN that we can use to scan
  • Other wifi APs are actually nearby to scan
  • The geolocation service is online
  • The geolocation service has mapping data for the current area

The beacondb service will fall back to public IP geolocation, with a city-sized area of precision

Describe alternatives you've considered

  • Adding a USB (or I2C) GPS puck
    • requires extra hardware purchase
    • requires view of the sky
  • Using browser-based geolocation
    • requires connecting a browser to the node
    • requires that the device with a browser can successfully complete geolocation via a similar service

Additional context This is just an idea to provide a supplemental service to geolocate a node. I don't intend to replace anything; just to make something new available.

bwarden avatar Jan 01 '26 20:01 bwarden