Installing beacons

One of the most important aspects of a Navigil solution implementation is the beacon and safe zone setup. Before installing beacons or creating safe zones, a careful evaluation of the watch user (assistee) needs to be made. There are several questions to answer, such as:

• Do you need to know when the person leaves home?
• Do you need automatic tracking outside the home area, or is it enough to start the tracking when the person is lost?
• Are safe zones going to be used?
• Do you need private beacons or common beacons?
• Do you need to track indoor activity statistics?
• What is the floor plan of the living space?
• What sort of walls or other obstructions are there in the living space?
• Are there going to be multiple installations in the same building?

The primary guideline for any installation is determined by whether or not tracking outside of home range is enabled (defined by the watch profile configuration). If tracking is enabled, the beacon installation needs to provide as complete coverage of the assistee's home area as possible. This avoids false alarms and GPS activation while indoors which quickly drains the watch battery.