Access to wifi-towers

Hey guys,

I've just read the Geolocation Level 2 Spec and I have one
wish/suggestion for future versions of the spec:

Wouldn't it be great to provide a way to query all the surrounding
wifi towers to work with it?

When I use Geolocation in Firefox and monitor my outgoing traffic,
there's an interesting post request sent to
https://www.google.com/loc/json posting the following JSON object:

{
   "version":"1.1.0",
   "request_address":true,
   "access_token":"........",
   "wifi_towers":[
      {
         "mac_address":"xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx",
         "ssid":"GuestWLAN",
         "signal_strength":-64
      },
      {
         "mac_address":"xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx",
         "ssid":"Guest",
         "signal_strength":-83
      },
      {
         "mac_address":"xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx",
         "ssid":"devel",
         "signal_strength":-84
      },
      {
         "mac_address":"xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx",
         "ssid":"E5832-S-ac22",
         "signal_strength":-81
      }
   ]
}

For the use of Geolocation indoors it'd be really great to be able to
access the wifi_towers property so I can try to determine my position
inside the building with the help of the signal strength of the
surrounding wifi towers.

I could imagine an interface that looks like
position.wifi[i].ssid
position.wifi[i].strength

Maybe you have already discussed that in the past, I couldn't find it
in the public archives but maybe it's actually a new idea. Anyway, I'd
be pleased if this suggestions finds its way to one of the future
Gelocation specs one day.

Regards
Manuel

-- 
Manuel Bieh
http://www.manuel-bieh.de/
http://www.twitter.com/ManuelBieh

Received on Monday, 6 June 2011 10:04:16 UTC