Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
MAKE:
PROJECTS
How to Locate
(Almost) Anything
By now, you've got a pretty good sense of how to make things talk to each
other over networks. You've learned about packets, sockets, datagrams,
clients, servers, and all sorts of protocols. Now that you know how to
talk, this chapter and the next deal with two common questions: “where
am I?”, and “who am I talking to?” Location and identification technolo-
gies share some important properties. As a result, it's not uncommon
to confuse the two, and to think that a location technology can be used
to identify a person or an object, and vice versa. These are two different
tasks in the physical world, and often in the network environment as
well. Systems for determining physical location aren't always very good
at determining identity, and identification systems don't do a good job
of determining precise location. Likewise, knowing who's talking on a
network doesn't always help you to know where the speaker is. In the
examples that follow, you'll see methods for determining location and
identification in both physical and network environments.
Address 2007 by Mouna Andraos and Sonali Sridhar
This necklace contains a GPS module. When activated, it displays the distance between the necklace and your
home location.
Photo by J. Nordberg.
