- Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:49 am
#88096
Though I have to agree with pangolin on a couple of things, it's always good to brainstorm on the issues at hand and possible solutions to it.
There are already a few/a lot of (commercial, of course) initiatives at the moment: in some countries it's compulsory to install some app on your phone, in others it's optional or at least still in a development/testing stage.
Since "Everybody" in the modern world nowadays has and uses a mobile phone with installable apps, writing an app would be more fruitful than trying to create dedicated hardware that is, in all it's fairness, pretty limited (in flexibility, scalability, updatability and above all privacy-ability
); people are always connected to a network (either through WiFi or GSM) and will keep their batteries topped-up, so the information you receive is fairly up-to-date and one could take appropriate action ASAP if needed (eg. go in quarantine).
Here in the Netherlands we've got an app that works with BlueTooth, which is somewhat better suited since it needs less power and the range is only limited to 3 - 10 meters or so (whereas WiFi could travel hundreds of meters, possibly even more) and you only want to know whether someone with the virus was in close proximity.
Though I always encourage people to work out their ideas, you might want to have a look at the ESP32, the bigger brother of the ESP8266: it also supports BlueTooth as well as WiFi and has better power management.
Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups. At least: that's what I'm assuming.