Sitting on the right bank of the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, Ca’ Rezzonico stands tall, a white marble baroque style facade facing the lagoon. Its majesty has been honored amongst other buildings lining the water, as these buildings served as a showpiece for nobility and their wealth for centuries. Ca’ Rezzonico is unique from all other structures along the canal, however; inside, they are managing a fleet of Estimote Location beacons. More importantly though, they are successfully running dual features within their app: real-time positioning, thanks to Estimote Indoor Location SDK, and contextual content notifications with our proximity technology.
Museum Pilot is not just an app, it’s actually a platform. The app may be seen as an evolution of the traditional audio guides normally found in museums. Sure, those classic features are built -in and available. You can search for an exhibit by code number to bring up details about the architecture, ceiling frescos, and sculptures. Or, you can simply hold your Ca’ Rezzonico issued iPad in your hands, and explore the space! The app will automatically activate room information whenever you walk into a new space, providing images, text, audio, and video. If you like spoilers, you can see what’s in the next space over before you even get there, pulling up the corresponding icon on the map to see what exhibit awaits. And perhaps the most innovative feature of all, you can check your real time position while moving or standing on the museum’s virtual map. Cumbersome paper maps are a thing of the past. You can now navigate everything virtually with Museum Pilot.
Several more advanced features are in their design stage and will be released in the upcoming months, like for example the “guided visit” based on each user’s preferences. However, the app represents just half the scope of Museum Pilot. The other half is about the advantages which Museum Pilot brings to the museum management staff, in real time, through their own web-based backend. Thanks to that, they’re able to pull detailed and graphical reports about visits, including preferred rooms, exhibits, paths, and more. Their app enables an interactive questionnaire for guests, which feeds to the backend and creates visitor profiles. Lastly, full and multilingual management of exhibit content, and their positioning on the museum map. Using Estimote SDK, Indoor Location SDK, Estimote Cloud, and of course their home-brewed analytics solution, Museum Pilot puts together the whole package and end-to-end resolution.
“The biggest challenge was the beacon setup. We had to explore issues about the right beacon density, the best practices for placing/orienting beacons, and had to overcome problems of visual impact inside this museum, which happens to be a very important historical palace! The beacons must be practically invisible. The project itself was quite fun. By the way, we learned a lot about the involved art, the history of the palace, and of Venice itself!” -Paolo Bellei, Trient Consulting for Ca’ Rezzonico
One of our favorite games here at Estimote: “Can you spot the beacon?”
A final, fun note to mention is that when Ca Rezzonico was getting ready to launch with our Indoor Location features and installation, they were looking for precision. Here at Estimote, we want our customers to be set up for success. When we knew they needed a little extra help to get the results they were seeking, we flew out to Venice personally alongside our Lead Data Scientist from our Indoor Location team. From there, we made some magic happen.
Next time you’re in Venice, Italy near the Grand Canal, step inside Ca’ Rezzonico to be transported from room to room with contextual audio and video guides, real-time positioning on a paperless map, and guided visits.
Written by Jess Anderson, Content Creator + Community Manager @ Estimote