Home › Help Forum - Questions, Comments, Feature Requests - NetSpot › Features › Combining Multiple Zones
- This topic has 8 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 11 months ago by
Alex – NetSpot.
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November 8, 2013 at 5:30 am #1477
sonofskywalker3ParticipantThe company I work for uses Netspot to do wireless site surveys for our customers. In addition to doing surveys of existing coverage, we also take our APs with us and place them in weak/no coverage spots and measure the changes made by adding additional APs. However, since we use one AP for multiple areas, we have to measure each as a separate zone, and then move the AP. This leaves us with a lot of individual heatmaps on the same map. I then have to use image editing software to combine the individual JPG’s into a single heatmap, showing where we would add new APs to improve their coverage. This is a time consuming process, as we have to try and select just the area of the map that has better coverage to copy onto the existing coverage map.
It would save a huge amount of time if your software could automatically combine zones together, keeping the best measurement from each map, basically simulating coverage as if there were an access point at each of the locations we have created a zone for.
If I’m missing something and there’s an easier way to do this, please let me know.
November 8, 2013 at 10:04 am #1917
Alex – NetSpotKeymasterJoining zones and surveys is something we do have on the roadmap. However, in your scenario I’m not clear with just one condition: “keeping the best measurement from each map”. How exactly do you want this to work?
Anyway, thanks for sharing your scenario and ideas with us!
November 8, 2013 at 10:16 am #1919
sonofskywalker3ParticipantI just mean that if you combine zones there will be some overlap in the recorded measurements. I would obviously want the best recorded value to show up on the combined heatmap.
As an example:
Our office has two APs. If I take a measurement in between them, what shows up on the heatmap (if both are enabled) is the highest signal measured or extrapolated at the given point.
Now imagine that we had no APs here. I would place my survey AP on the left side of the building and take measurements of the entire left side, as well as some overlap into the right side as zone 1. Then I would place my survey AP on the right side of the building and take measurements of the entire right side, as well as some overlap into the left side as zone 2.
While examining these I will get a good idea of how far the coverage from each AP goes, but somewhere in the middle the zone1 will show better signal and other places zone2 will show better.
When you get to a bigger scale (I’ve measured as many as 25 different zones for a single site) you don’t want to submit 50 different images (signal level and SNR) to a customer, so I have to manually export each zones heat map, and select/copy/paste each zones results from the individual images onto the “clean” map image. Doing so I have to try to compare separate images and put it all together in a way that shows only the best signal possible for any given point on the map.
I hope this clarifies what I was talking about.
November 11, 2013 at 7:28 pm #1921
Alex – NetSpotKeymasterGot it, Jeff. I cannot guarantee that snapshots’ joining will be immediately available in the next build of NetSpot, but we’ll definitely keep you informed of our progress. We did get a few other similar requests and would now have a better picture of the implementation that would match user requests at most.
December 18, 2013 at 2:04 pm #1940
geoffnewnhamParticipantI would definitely be looking for this feature ASAP. It would aid our company in doing wireless surveys.
February 10, 2014 at 12:42 pm #1957
kanneParticipantHi Alex,
additionaly I suggest the following:
You can create views, which is selection of the already made zone surveys.
This could be a selection tree where you can either select the complete zone survey or only a single groups (e.g. a custom group) or only single APs.
Or a Combination of these.
Great would be a addintional level on your left selection pane.
The user can choose, if he like “survey/Group/AP” or “Group/AP/survey” priority
or only “Group/AP” like now.
So he can disable one AP in a former survey an add it from a newer one, just with two clicks.
Or just combine them like the wish of sonofskywalker3.
Then he can save this view, maybe you can replace the “Zone survey”-Bar with a “Views”-Bar.
Default is: every survey gives one view, so it replaces the former version.
You can switch between many saved views to play arround with some combinations.
As a side effect, you can save your favorite views without select all the time in the left pane.If you are interested in this ideas, i can make a small preview of the intended GUI.
Just same ideas from the daily use of your great tool.
Regards, KanneFebruary 16, 2014 at 8:59 pm #2007
Alex – NetSpotKeymasterThanks Kanne. I can see how these views may work similar to (for example) Photoshop’s “Layer comps”. However, this idea will need to reside in our roadmap for a little while, until we complete the other features imminently coming to NetSpot shortly! But we are always open to the new ideas, thanks a lot for sharing!
June 15, 2014 at 12:19 am #2520
Jakob PeterhänselParticipantWhen implementing this, please consider:
Surveying new buildings with no wifi at all, moving One AP around. Same SSID, same MAC/BSSID..
Would the workflow be:
One snapshot for each location? And then combine all snapshots into one, giving each snapshot a ‘virtual BSSID’/location on the final map?I know, buildings without any wifi is becoming rare, but it still does happen.. ;.)
June 15, 2014 at 11:42 am #2527
Alex – NetSpotKeymaster[quote]Surveying new buildings with no wifi at all, moving One AP around. Same SSID, same MAC/BSSID..[/quote]
See this: /help/talk/topic/the-same-wap-multiple-times-in-1-zone/
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