I have been playing around with a product called “Indoor Atlas”. It is a toolset for mapping indoor locations. In effect, it gives you the ability to have a Google Maps like routing experience, but indoors. For example, warehouses, office buildings, stadiums, etc...if you want the application to route your from where you are currently to the popcorn stand in the stadium, it can do that. Indoor Atlas uses some proprierary tech that leverages the magnetometer in most smartphones today (basically the compass), along with Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons and Wifi to locate users indoors. I have been working on using this with the WMS product we are rolling out.
IndoorAtlas provides an open source Android demonstration application that is intended to get users up and running quickly with their SDK and toolset. It’s purpose is to allow people to build their own mobile experiences, but leveraging the IndoorAtlas code and platform to get started faster. It is located here: https://github.com/IndoorAtlas/android-sdk-examples
I think Acumatica could learn from this model. If the mobile application were open sourced, then we could easily integrate tools like IndoorAtlas, and a whole host of other services that can leverage the native Android container to tap directly into the device’s sensors. This makes for a much more powerful user experience, and would also allow companies to tailor the mobile environement to their specific business needs. Then, as the Acumatica mobile app code evolves, the new code can be pulled down and easily upgraded inside the custom apps that use its core.
