Practical lessons from place lab

The experiences gained by researchers in the real-world deployment of Place Lab, a location-enhanced mobile computing system, is discussed. Place Lab system lets a device estimate its location by scanning for fixed radio beacons and referencing the beacons' positions cached in the mobile device's database. Users are allowed to get freedom from infrastructure, so dependencies on research infrastructure should be created only when necessary. Infrastructure should be kept stable and operational at the level expected of a commercial infrastructure, which can allow the user community to flourish. System should be able to work on all the latest devices, for real-world pervasive research. The lesson learned from the deployment of Place lab can provide opportunity to deploy a working system, experiment with different platforms, and investigate the research challenges that prevent systems from being practical in real-world.