> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.harbinge.rs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Survey Mode

> How to survey rooms so the app can determine where you are

Survey Mode is how you teach Forager what each room looks like on the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth spectrum. Without a survey, the app cannot determine your current location — and without your location, presence confirmation does not work.

You only need to survey each room once. Re-survey if the room's layout or network equipment changes significantly, or if the app consistently misidentifies the room.

## When to survey

* **Initial facility setup** — Before attestation can begin at a new site, every room needs at least one survey. This is typically done by the lead tech or admin over one or two sessions covering all floors.
* **New rooms added to the hierarchy** — When admin adds a new floor or room node in the dashboard, a tech surveys those rooms before they go live for attestation work.
* **Persistent wrong-room detections** — The app consistently places a tech in the wrong room. Re-survey the affected room and its immediate neighbors to refresh the signal fingerprint.
* **After a physical change** — Access point replaced, significant renovation completed, or major furniture rearrangement. The old fingerprint no longer reflects the room's actual signal environment.
* **Quarterly refresh in high-churn areas** — Server rooms, labs, or equipment staging areas where hardware comes and goes frequently benefit from re-surveying every few months to keep fingerprints accurate without waiting for a problem to surface.

***

## What survey captures

When you run a survey capture, the app records 4–6 samples of every Wi-Fi access point and Bluetooth device visible from that spot. It also records barometric pressure (for floor estimation) and magnetic field strength (a stable per-room characteristic based on local metal and structural features). These signals together form a fingerprint unique to that room.

## Running a survey

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Survey Mode">
    From the Forager home screen, tap **Survey Mode**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Select the floor">
    Use the floor selector at the top to choose which floor you are on. Rooms are grouped by urgency — **Needs Attention** rooms appear first, followed by **Monitor**, then **Covered**. Each row shows the current sample count and days since the last survey.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Enter the room">
    Physically walk into the room you want to survey. Stand near the center, away from doorways. Tap the room in the list.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Tap Capture">
    Tap the **Capture** button. The app records a set of RF samples — the sample count increments as each one completes. The full capture takes approximately 30 seconds. Stay still — walking or moving between rooms during capture degrades the fingerprint.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Repeat for each room on the floor">
    After the capture completes, tap **Back** to return to the room list and move to the next room. Work your way through every room on the floor.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Reading the sample count

After a capture completes, the room row shows an updated sample count and quality category. More samples mean a tighter fingerprint and higher confidence during room classification. There is no fixed minimum, but rooms with 3+ captures from different positions in the room consistently reach **Covered** status.

If a capture completes but the sample count does not increase, the app may be having trouble scanning signals. Check that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are enabled on your device.

## Adding a room during survey

If a room does not appear in the list, tap **Add New Room**, enter a name and level type (e.g. "Room", "Zone"), and it will be created under the selected floor. You can then survey it immediately.

## Pinning rooms to the floor plan

If a floor plan image has been uploaded by your admin, a floor plan view appears at the top of the Survey Mode screen. After completing a capture for a room, you can tap the floor plan to place a pin for that room's location. This pin is used for visual navigation during Device Hunt and mismatch display.

The floor plan view supports pinch-to-zoom and two-finger pan so you can place pins precisely on dense floor plans. Double-tap to zoom in, or tap the reset button in the top-right corner to return to the full-floor fit-to-screen view.

If no floor plan is uploaded, survey still works — rooms are tracked by name and location hierarchy only.

## Survey quality indicators

After surveying, open **Coverage** to see the quality of each room's fingerprint.

| Indicator | Meaning                                                |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| Green     | Well surveyed — ready for attestation                  |
| Yellow    | Thin — fewer than ideal samples; consider re-surveying |
| Gray      | Not yet surveyed                                       |

<Note>
  The first survey of a new room creates its fingerprint. Subsequent surveys on the same room refresh it. If room conditions have not changed, you do not need to re-survey frequently — once per quarter is typical unless equipment or layout changes.
</Note>

## Tips for accurate surveys

* Survey each room from the middle of the room, not from a doorway or hallway
* Survey all rooms in a building during the same session when possible — barometric pressure shifts with the weather from day to day, and same-day surveys keep each room's pressure reading comparable for floor estimation
* Survey at a typical working time — signal density can vary if nearby equipment is off overnight
* If two adjacent rooms are frequently confused by the app, re-survey both from the center of each room with the door closed
* Rooms that share a wall with high-density networking equipment benefit from extra captures