We use the term floorplan to describe a plan or map of an indoor location. In a multi-level building each level or floor will have its own floorplan.

An accurate floorplan is needed before Sail technology can work.

• The location of beacons needs to be identified on the floorplan, and the distances between them need to be very accurate for indoor positioning to work well.
• To deliver navigation for users, their location needs to be displayed on an accurate floorplan

Sail provides a built-in floorplan service, and can integrate with third-party indoor mapping services.

Built-in floorplans are simple static images, with no points of interest or routing.

To use built-in floorplans, you first upload an image (jpeg or png file). This can be from any source, and at any level of detail. But it must be an accurate and consistent scale diagram.

Having uploaded the image, you need to draw lines on the floorplan and enter their actual length in meters. This enables Sail to calculate the scale of the plan (like the 1:1000 scale of a paper plan, but for digital plans in pixels per meter).

Once set up, the floorplan is displayed in the web console so that you can indicate the position of Bluetooth beacons that are needed for indoor positioning.

The floorplan is also used in the Sail Demo app, with a blue dot to indicate the user's location.

You could also use the floorplan within your own mobile app, by using our webview.

However, your app users will probably want features like POIs and routing. So for production apps, you will probably want to use a third-party mapping provider.

Sail allows you to import existing indoor maps that you have created using third-party services like Mazemap and MapsPeople. One single map is used in our console for positioning Bluetooth beacons, and in your app for customer navigation.