Signal Hunt Lab

An experimental Bluetooth proximity system for locating people through authenticated BLE signals and deliberately limited directional feedback.

Can a proximity interface be useful without pretending noisy radio measurements are a compass?

Protocol exploration, prototype implementation, signal testing, interaction language, and field evaluation.

1. Encrypted packet delivery. Compatible phones forward packets through bounded local Bluetooth relays or later encounters. Each phone makes a local hop; having the app alone is insufficient. Compatible event participation, Bluetooth availability, usable encounters, packet expiry and hop limits determine delivery. Current documented lab policy allows at most three hops and fifteen minutes maximum packet lifetime—not fundamental Bluetooth limits.

2. Direct proximity guidance. Authenticated direct Bluetooth observations support the final warmer-or-colder cue. The prototype interprets changing signal strength over time and reports relative confidence rather than fabricating precise direction or distance. Packet relay does not provide a friend’s distance or activate proximity guidance.

Think GPS for friends—an offline network built by the people around you.

Encrypted relays carry messages beyond a single Bluetooth connection. Direct proximity cues help you find each other when you get close.

Intermediate participants forward encrypted payloads; they are not given the message plaintext or friendship keys. Relays still observe limited routing metadata. Delivery is best effort.

Bitchat-informed BLE design, independently implemented for Signal Hunt. The local reuse assessment records concepts only and no adopted upstream source. This is application-level relaying over BLE, not Bluetooth SIG Mesh compliance or Bitchat protocol, cryptography, or interoperability.

The lab handoff reports one validated three-phone Android relay. The browser demo’s four-node illustration is not that physical test. These records do not establish large-event coverage, all-device support, battery performance, iOS implementation, or current release certification. All browser traces and routes are synthetic; QR patterns are illustrative and haptic pulses are visual previews. Earlier illustrative field-study images remain in the archive but are not physical-device evidence.