Indoor tracking is one of the most requested scenarios in asset management. Users want to see which floor of a building an asset is on, which zone it is in, how it got there, and what is happening around it in real time.
Over the past few months, we have significantly updated the indoor tracking features in Tags, and we would like to share more details about this.
Buildings, layers, and zones
The main components of indoor tracking in Tags are buildings, layers (which can represent floors), and zones inside the layers.
You can create buildings, place them on the map, define their shape, and then add multiple layers (floors) inside.
Each layer represents an individual floor inside the building. You can upload a floor plan in PNG, JPG, or SVG format and configure its scale, rotation, transparency, and georeferencing.
An important step is placing gateways on the layer to match their actual physical locations. These can be either mobile GPS trackers with BLE scanning or Wirepas Mesh anchors that transmit data throughout the facility.
When placing a gateway, you can also set its height above the floor if needed. This is taken into account later, when the position of a sensor or an asset on the floor is calculated.
A layer doesn't have to be linked to a building — for example, when it's just an open area next to the facility.
On each layer, you can also create zones - important areas of a floor (e.g., warehouse, assembly line, charging station). Zones can be drawn as circles or polygons, and you can set their colour and transparency.
Every zone entry and exit is logged. You can view these events in the history, generate reports, and receive notifications the moment an asset moves into or out of a zone. The same applies to layers (floors).
2D and 3D maps
Tags provides two viewing modes for working with buildings.
The 2D view (top-down view) is convenient when a site contains a large number of tracked objects: it is lighter on performance, and objects located in the same area are automatically grouped together, keeping the plan readable.
The 3D view provides a visual representation of the building structure with all layers and positioned objects. You can freely rotate, tilt, and zoom the view. Movement between floors and height data are displayed directly in the scene.
In the 3D view assets appear as miniature 3D figures based on their category - a person, forklift, cart, trolley, etc. So you can see what is moving, not only where.
Display & Filtering
Indoor scenes can contain a large number of objects, so the system provides specific tools to manage their visualization.
You can show or hide:
- Gateways, anchors, assets, sensors
- Zones
- Object and zone names
- Map underlay
- Signal strength
- Height indicators
You can also filter objects in the scene by labels, geofences and zones.
Movement history
Indoor movement history can be viewed in two modes.
Individual-object replay is available from a sensor or asset's History tab, where stays on different floors and zone visits are shown as individual records with playback controls.
Whole-building history replays all objects across a building's floors at once. It is toggled in User Settings → Whole-building history on the 3D scene (experimental feature)
During a whole-building replay, selecting a sensor or asset and using the corresponding icon switches to that object's complete history. The same control returns you to the whole-building replay.
These features genuinely make indoor tracking easier - and they look great while doing it.