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Supermarket LED Lights Talk to Smartphone App

posted by martyb on Monday May 25 2015, @03:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the Aisle-B-Seeing-You dept.

n1 wrote with news of a report at the BBC:

French shoppers have become the first to experience a new LED lighting system that sends special offers and location data to their smartphones.

The technology was designed by Philips and has been installed at a Carrefour supermarket in Lille.

It transmits codes via light waves, which are undetectable to the eye but can be picked up by a phone camera.

The innovation offers an alternative to Bluetooth-based "beacons", which are being installed by many retailers.

[...]Carrefour is using the location data to trigger aisle-specific special offers. If users open a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards, this can be used to determine their location - accurate to up to 1m - and the direction they are facing.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @06:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @06:44PM (#187687)

    Oh yeah that will not be abused... /sarc

    So I have to turn on my camera (using power). So it can reach across the internet (using my dataplan), to give me possible coupons.

    So put a unique code on it and you can basically track people around the store to within a few feet (as GPS is garbage inside).

    So any store that lets someone implement this is basically giving away its customer hot spot data and tracking data and the customer pays for it.