When a wearable panic button is activated inside a building, Campus360 reports the location of the alert by reading nearby beacons. Beacons are small, fixed devices installed throughout a campus. Each time a badge is pressed, it scans for the beacons around it, measures how strong each signal is, and reports the location tied to the strongest beacon it can reach. Understanding this signal-strength logic explains why an alert usually lands in the correct room, and why it sometimes reports a neighboring room instead.

How Beacons Strength Determines Location: 

1. Scan: On the button press, the badge does a quick scan of the beacons around it. It also uses beacons it has stored very recently while moving through the building.
2. Measure signal strength: For each beacon it detects, the badge measures signal strength, which reflects how close and how unobstructed that beacon is. A stronger signal generally means the beacon is nearer or has fewer walls in between.
3. Select the nearest beacon: The badge reports the location tied to the strongest beacon it can reach and sends that to the hub. If there is a beacon in the room where the badge was pressed, that beacon is normally the strongest and the correct room is reported. It is possible that a different beacon will be listed as the strongest if the badge was moving and cached a different beacon signal right before the button press. 
4. Fall back when no beacon is in the room: If the room has no beacon of its own, the badge grabs the nearest beacon it can find, which will be in an adjacent room. The alert then reports that neighboring room rather than the true room.
5. Future Enhancement - Fall back to coordinates when no beacon is in range: If no beacon or hub is reachable at all, the badge fails over to satellite (GNSS) mode. In that case the event has no beacon room, and the system shows a coordinate pin drop instead of a highlighted room.
   This enhancement is slated to release in late August 2026
    

Why an alert might report a neighboring room: 

Signal strength is a relative measurement, so several conditions can cause the strongest beacon to belong to a room other than the one the person is standing in:

• No beacon in the room: With no local beacon, the nearest beacon wins by default, and it is in an adjacent room.
• Similar signal strengths: When two or more beacons report nearly identical strength, small differences decide the result. A person standing between two rooms can produce two almost identical hits, and either room may be reported.
• Walls and doors: Cinder block and brick walls, and whether a door is open or closed, change how strong a beacon reads. A closer beacon behind a wall can read weaker than a slightly farther beacon with a clear path.
• Movement and caching: Because the badge stores beacons it has recently seen, pressing immediately after walking into a room can still reflect the previous room. Pausing briefly in the room before activating lets the current room's beacon register.