Field Scanner: Survey Sensing, Off the Phone

A handheld scanner that takes over Forager's RF survey capture from the phone entirely. Purpose-built sensing hardware streams live results to the Forager app over Bluetooth; the phone becomes a screen and a barcode scanner.

Why move sensing off the phone?

Room-level fingerprinting depends on rich RF scan data, and today that data comes from the phone's own radios. That works, but it rests on a policy surface we don't control: each phone OS decides what scanning an app is allowed to do, and those decisions change. iOS never opened up Wi-Fi scanning at all, which is why full Survey Mode has been an Android capability.

The Field Scanner ends that dependency. Sensing moves to dedicated hardware that Harbingers designs and controls end to end, the same reasoning that put Ravens on purpose-built silicon instead of a phone-dependent design. Your survey tooling stops caring which phone, or which OS version, your techs happen to carry.

How the Field Scanner works.

1. Carry
2. Scan
3. Stream
4. Pin

The tech pairs the Field Scanner with the Forager app once, then simply carries it on the survey walkthrough. There is no button to press and no "scan now" step to remember. The scanner senses when it's moving and works; when the tech stops or sets it down, it sleeps to conserve battery.

While in motion, the scanner continuously captures the ambient RF environment across both Wi-Fi bands and BLE, along with heading, altitude, and GPS context. It's the same class of evidence the phone captures today, gathered by radios and sensors selected for exactly this job.

Results stream to the paired phone over Bluetooth in real time. The Forager app keeps the most recent samples ready, so there's never a wait between arriving at a capture point and having fresh data in hand.

The survey workflow itself doesn't change. The tech still walks the floor plan and taps a pin at each capture point; the app attaches the latest scanner sample to that pin, exactly as it attaches a phone-captured fingerprint today. Same screens, same coverage view, same result.

The phone keeps doing what phones are good at: showing the floor plan, scanning barcodes, and provisioning Ravens by NFC tap. The Field Scanner does the RF work. Splitting the job this way makes survey capture consistent across every device your techs carry.

Purpose-built radios and sensors, independent of phone OS scanning policy
No buttons: motion-aware scanning starts and stops itself
Streams to the Forager app over Bluetooth in real time
Survey workflow unchanged: walk the floor, tap pins
Barcode attestation and NFC provisioning stay on the phone, untouched

The path to full Survey Mode on iOS. With the Field Scanner doing the sensing, the app's job is the same on every platform: pair over Bluetooth, receive samples, tap pins. That closes most of the gap that has kept full survey capture Android-only.

A bonus for new site surveys.

Because the scanner's Bluetooth radio is already listening while a tech walks a building, it also hears Raven beacon check-ins along the way and relays them through the phone's connection. During the first survey of a new site, before any fixed Gateway is installed, Raven-tagged assets start reporting the moment a tech walks past them.

This is a supplement to fixed Gateway coverage, not a replacement. Continuous, always-on coverage still comes from installed Gateways; the Field Scanner adds opportunistic pickup wherever a tech happens to walk.

What the Field Scanner is not

Not a wearable tracker: it's scoped for survey visits, minutes at a time
Not an on-demand tool: it scans while moving and sleeps when still
Not a camera or NFC replacement: attestation and provisioning stay on the phone
Not a Gateway replacement: fixed Gateways still provide continuous coverage

Tell us it matters to you

The Field Scanner is in development, with hardware validation underway. If iOS support or independence from phone scanning permissions matters to your deployment, reach out; early interest directly shapes the build priority and the first production run.

Get in Touch

Ready to deploy Forager at your site?

Forager runs on the phones your techs already carry, today. The Field Scanner makes a working deployment even better; it doesn't hold one up.