Android Geofencing with Google Maps: A geofence can be looked upon as a virtual perimeter that you can draw around any location on a map, and then target customers that enter that location. The phone or your app is monitoring for that geofence, and as one go about their business, day to day, it’s tracking that location in the background. You know immediately when someone breaches a fence, when they dwell there, or as they are about to leave. When you know customers are near, that have not been in your shop, have not been in your location, or have not transacted in a while, this might be a great time to do a win-back campaign
Geofences can be used to target customers in physical locations, allowing you to trigger the right message, the right campaign, at the right time and place. You can do incentives, you can remind them of rewards, you can also survey customers when they leave!
Geofencing is a simple tool that can be set up to send notifications when a geographical area is entered or exited, or both. For example, a geofencing enabled app can alert us with any notification of interest if the person with the app enter a ‘geofenced’ geographical area per Google maps. Now, with the new Location APIs, Google’s location algorithm has been rewritten to give accurate and use less battery life.
They work passively in the background. No active state and it could be terminated in memory, the customers did not have to have the app open.There should be little battery drain. This is a huge issue and so did not need GPS at all. But use wifi pings!
Features of geofencing in car dealership app:
Geofencing allows one to add,/edit,/delete geofences and allows one to choose:-
* When to be notified (entering or exiting the area, or both)
* How to be notified (phone vibrating or playing a sound, or both)
* What your phone is to do automatically on notification: turn on/off WI-FI or Bluetooth
* Normal, Silent or Vibrate mode, send automatic SMS messages to contacts, etc. by robotizing actions & firing events on crossing map zones.
Adding /Removing geofences is pretty much covered in the app. Remember the following while adding/removing fences is:
1. A connection to Google’s Location Services is requested by our app.
2. Once/if the connection is available, the request to add/remove a fence is done using a PendingIntent.
Now, once a geofence is added, we can add a marker (the default or a customized one) and choose between different shapes (circle, polygon, etc.) to delimit the geofence. For instance we can add the default marker and circle the fence within a specified radius: The app has all we need to fire notifications once the circled area above is entered or exited.
Other uses of geofence that can be used in other apps
By combining GPS and electronic memo / checklist, an app will alert you when you enter/exit a predefined area a.k.a Geo Fence.
You will get an automatic push message when you enter / exit a Geo Fence.
The results will be logged as Enter/Exit location history
Examples of possibilities:
Alert youself for –
Gas refill when you are 2000m from a gas station.
Make your hair when you are 100m from your girl friend’s home
Pick up medications when you are 500m from a drug store.
