US Patent 9934485 Methods and apparatus to track wire or cable reels in an inventory storage environment using a mobile device

Examples are disclosed to track wire or cable inventory in an inventory storage environment using an application on a mobile device. During a material intake phase, an identifier of a wire or cable reel is stored in association with a physical location of the reel, a length of a wire or cable, and a type of the wire or cable. During a material retrieval phase, a target location corresponding to the physical location of the wire or cable reel is received in response to a search query. The wire or cable reel is located using a GPS receiver based on the target location when the mobile device is located farther than a threshold distance from the target location, or using a Bluetooth radio interface, without the GPS receiver, based on the target location when the mobile device is located closer than the threshold distance to the target location.