Neostumbler has has a huge update! Better maps, higher scan interval, customizability!
It is an app to contribute to open geolocation through wifi, cell towers or bluetooth beacons. This is faster, energy efficient, resilient and can be fully anonymous.
The database is beacondb.net and can already be used!
Neostumbler can be installed via
- Accrescent
- Obtainium with the repo URL
- F-Droid
- IzzyOnDroid (same as Github releases, quicker updates)
Neostumbler now also shows the coverage map, which still has reduced accuracy.
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Is there any way to access the data from beacondb.net, or is it just a service for getting the location. That would be like OpenStreetMap only providing the tiles but not the data itself.
Openstreetmap provides the data afaik, but they are raw. Or is that only geofabrik?
BeaconDB handles pretty sensitive data. Basically movements of people and specific wifi SSIDs (names).
Currently they provide the map, and a service to load it in other clients. NeoStumbler supports that:
Full data downloads are still in the works afaik, because of the privacy implications. They probably also need to filter out GPS jamming and moving APs (trains, busses, etc.).
Check their issuetracker
https://codeberg.org/beacondb/beacondb/issues
OSM provides all data, including who created them and at what point in time. I see that beacondb has more sensitive data, since the users have been definitively at that time in that place, but I do not see why it should be a problem to just publish no users.
In how far is beacondb any better that Google collecting that data (except for beacondb not beeing a monopolistic company that is selling your data)? The advantage of OSM is that the data is not tied to the OpenStreetMap foundation. Whenever it collapses, users can create a new instance, since the software and the data is open and publicly available.