How Hytera Built an Indoor Positioning System

Hytera is a global leader in professional communications technology, offering radio devices, vehicle-mounted units, and communication software that enable voice, text, and GPS-based tracking across multiple industries. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Hytera serves customers across the U.S.

Executive Summary

Hytera's Horizon Cloud platform gives its customers real-time GPS tracking and dispatch coordination for field teams outdoors, including live device monitoring and voice and text communication.

Unfortunately, GPS tracking doesn't work once someone steps inside a building, which meant the platform wasn't well suited for hospitality clients. So Hytera partnered with us to build an indoor tracking platform from the ground up, using BLE beacon technology for room- and floor-level accuracy. 

Results at a Glance

Capmation's indoor tracking partnership helped Hytera build a platform hotels and resorts needed, without disrupting what already worked outdoors, resulting in:

• A working indoor tracking platform, built from nothing, over two phases and 13 months
• Live radio positions shown on an indoor map, in real time
• Emergency alerts that point straight to the right floor and room, not just the building
• Usage alerts and spending limits that prevent budget problems 
• Better position accuracy using signals from multiple beacons instead of one

How the Project Took Shape

The first version of Hytera's new platform used BLE beacons to track people by room and floor, so we could show an initial proof of concept before Hytera invested more.

Then we added:

• Live radio positions on the indoor map
• Emergency alerts that point straight to the exact floor and room
• Cost alerts and spending limits, so cloud costs stay in check as usage grows
• Better accuracy by combining signals from multiple beacons instead of one

The same Capmation team members stayed on this project for all 13 months, across both phases — so nothing got lost in translation.

Hytera's Overall Goals

These four priorities shaped every decision we made:

• Build indoor tracking without slowing down the outdoor system already in use
• Reduce project risks by starting small 
• Focus on the biggest need first: staff safety and emergency response
• Design the platform so it could grow into a real product, not stay a one-time feature

Takeaways 

Complex projects are notorious for cost overruns unless they are executed with care.

Good execution also means anticipating problems beyond the one you're asked to solve, which is why we built usage alerts and spending limits directly into the platform.

Care also shows up in sequencing. Rather than building toward a full MVP in one pass, we delivered a scoped foundation first, then used what we learned to focus the next phase on accuracy, reliability, and scale — the kind of staged approach that avoids paying twice for the same problem.

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