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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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Supermarket LED Lights Talk to Smartphone App
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @07:03PM
I'm suspecting that even a camera pointing down-ish will still pick up the flickering lights.
Yeah maybe. That would sure be convenient so if it were even remotely possible for a marketdroid to claim it with a straight face, then they'd surely go with that rather than the weasel words in the article about having to wave at the ceiling. By observation I'd say about 20% of retail customers are playing with their phones at any instant. The dorky part would be waving it around at the ceiling for every purchase just in case there's a coupon.
On the bright side, WRT waving cameras around wildly, I anticipate lots more "creep shot" type stuff on the internet. "Are you taking a picture of my butt in my ridiculously skimpy outfit? I only want the cute guys working here to see me wiggle not every dork on the internet." "uh, very nice, but no, just trying to download a free e-coupon for preparation H from the ceiling. Hey baby, wanna see my app?" meanwhile furiously swiping to hide the clover/baconreader/camera and bring up the StoreSpam app or whatever it'll be called. I'm sure it won't be awkward at all, LOL.