Why use Geoloqi?
Geoloqi is a way to add location to your product or service without the overhead of building all of the components from scratch. Whether you’re looking to implement location-based messages in your mobile applications or real-time location tracking, Geoloqi does the hard work for you. The result? Great web and mobile applications with advanced geolocation features, and happy users and customers.
How does Geoloqi work?
The Geoloqi Platform consists of three main components. The software development kits (SDKs) for iOS and Android, a streaming server for receiving location updates in real time, and a web-based API for managing and interacting with location data.
The SDKs can be added to your mobile applications, allowing them to receive information based on where they are physically located. The SDK periodically gets the location of the user using a background service, and sends that information to the Geoloqi API when appropriate.
If the Geoloqi API detects that the phone has entered or exited a trigger, it will either send a message to the phone via push notification or SMS, fire a JSON callback to your web application, or remotely call a function in your iPhone/Android application (iPhone remote function calls only work when application is in foreground). You configure what action takes place when you create the trigger on the API.
Does Geoloqi work even if the application is closed?
Yes! The SDK works in the background, even if the application is not in the foreground, or is not running.
How does Geoloqi differ from other location services?
Geoloqi has an individualized approach. With Geoloqi, you can push messages and execute events to a single end-user at the moment they cross into a geofence, dwell within it, or depart the zone.
Geoloqi is able to track the location of the user's device in the background 24/7, which means that our servers can push a notification to each individual at the moment that they cross into the geofence, dwell there for longer than a certain amount of time or upon departing the geofence. This means that you can get much more granular and engaging with your geo-triggered events and messages.
The mechanism by which Geoloqi sends push notifications is a different than what’s currently available in the marketplace. Most location companies offer geo-messaging that only uses geofences as a way to filter and target messages only to the opted in users that happen to be within the geofenced area at the time that they sample a particular location. In other words, they figure out which opted in users are within the fence, then blast a broadcast a message to all users inside the geofence. Geoloqi does the opposite, allowing you to target individual users on a personalized and real-time basis.
Does it work indoors?
Yes! We can partner with any indoor location provider to bring the same Geoloqi experience indoors. We have native support for Navizon, and can integrate smoothly with any other indoor location beacon service or system.
How accurate is it?
It can be as accurate as at the expense of battery life, or conserve battery life sacrificing a bit of accuracy. GPS itself is only accurate to within 5-10 meters. We recommend programming battery-safe triggers to 100 meters or larger.
How does Geoloqi conserve my device’s battery life?
Our ambient location services run in the background on phones, and use advanced algorithms that we have spent over a year developing. By minimizing the amount of time that your GPS and cellular chipsets need to be active, the SDK automatically manages and preserves battery life.
What mobile phone devices do you support?
Currently we support iPhone and Android. Information on how to use our SDKs is available on our Getting Started page.
How do I set up Push Notifications?
See our
push notifications page.
What programming languages does Geoloqi support?
Natively, we currently support Ruby, PHP, Python, Javascript (client-side), and Node.js. Our platform API is RESTful, using JSON for data-interchange. Almost every language will have support for these components, which can be used to easily build an interface for the platform API. cURL can also be used to test API calls, and we have an API console for making requests via the web on the Developers site.
What kind of location tracking is supported by the Geoloqi SDK?
Geoloqi’s SDKs have three location-update modes. Simply choose one that best fits your user’s needs, or integrate all three into an application.
Passive: A battery-optimized mode that is safe to be run on a phone for day-to-day tasks. Updates the phone's location periodically when the phone is not plugged in, increasing in frequency when the user has their phone plugged in, and when the user approaches nearby triggers. This is the default configuration, and our recommendation for most use cases. This mode works well for applications such as location-aware deal finders, and is best-case at minimizing battery use.
Realtime: A fast updating mode that sends updates every 3 seconds (and will soon update instantly using a fast binary protocol). This mode uses the most battery, but is great for doing real-time updates of phone location (such as when building real-time geolocation games, or tracking a phone).
Logging: Updates location, which is sent to the server in batches every one or two minutes. It uses less power than Realtime, because it only requires frequent use of the GPS chip, not the cellular chip. It is ideal for situations that require frequent location updates, but do not require instant processing on the API. It is more for collecting location updates than for dealing with triggers. An example use of this may be a run tracking application for joggers.
I’m a Titanium Developer, can I use Geoloqi in my existing or new applications?
Yes! You can use the Geoloqi Geofence Module for Titanium.
What kind of analytics does Geoloqi offer?
Geoloqi analytics allow you to gain insight into your user's behavior. Geoloqi's location based analytics tools provide rich analytics and visualizations for tracking users, geofences and message conversions. You can track message conversions, dwell time and visitor metrics, track the Dwell Time of people, places and things, access user location history at a granular or geofence level, and export custom reports.
Analytics currently only available to enterprise customers.
How is Geoloqi data stored and used today? How secure is Geoloqi?
We use the same security that is used to transmit credit cards during secure transactions. Everything on our servers goes through SSL.
Can you geofence polygons or other shapes besides circles?
Our current platform supports circles only, but the next version of the platform will support polygons.
Are you hiring?
We’re always interested in working with great people, and we store every application we receive. Although we can’t always respond to applications, we do take them very seriously and will reach out promptly if there is a fit.
Can Geoloqi develop an app for us?
We currently don’t do custom app development, but if you are a large enterprise serving at least 100,000 users, we can discuss OEM options or other integration points. Contact us to get in touch with our preferred development partners.
How should I estimate my monthly geotrigger usage before my app has launched?
This varies based on the type of application. Two things to consider are the number of people you expect to be using your app, and how often you expect them to visit places with triggers.
All of our plans have soft limits. If you exceed the number of monthly triggers, we will not automatically suspend your account or restrict access. We will contact you if usage is over limits for an extended period of time.
Can Geoloqi do things other than send push messages?
Yes! Geoloqi triggers can send callbacks to your server, in addition to just sending a message. When a trigger is configured as a callback, it sends a JSON payload containing all the relevant data to a URL you provided when the trigger was created. There is also an API call for sending messages from your server, which you can use after processing the trigger callback.
Question not answered?
Feel free to contact us!