

Nearables: Why a global lost-and-found network is finally viable - wdages
http://willd.me/posts/nearables-why-a-global-lost-and-found-network-is-finally-viable

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Myztiq
The estimote stickers are pretty cool. However, I notice they have a battery
life of one year, at $12.50 a sticker ($99 for a pack of 10 + $25 in shipping)
it is starting to get close to where I can imagine buying a set. If only they
had some sort of solar recharging, or ability to pop in a new battery for a
few bucks.

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tanujparikh
Hey, Tanuj from Estimote here. We're constantly challenging our engineering
team to extend battery life through a combination of better hardware but more
importantly smarter software, delivered via OTA updates. For instance, our
first generation beacons just had their battery life significantly upgraded
recently (blog.estimote.com/post/91749152580/estimote-rolls-out-the-worlds-
first-power-management) without any need for a hardware change. We'll do the
same with Stickers. 1 year is the default battery life at launch but it'll get
better, quickly :)

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brent_noorda
Thanks for the thorough description. Could we simplify this by replacing the
beacons with a sticker that says "if found email DS7-4BD-62A@lostfound.org"
and the rest of the flow begin through email? Much lower barriers with almost
all of the same results.

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wdages
I think the benefit with using beacons would be that you can be anywhere
within ~70 meters of the item and get a notification to help out. You don't
have to even see it to be able to help.

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ibisum
I'm still waiting for the energy-harvesting, no-battery-required, versions to
hit the market .. seems the technology (BTLE) is out there, but its just
waiting for someone to have the balls to mass-manufacture them ..

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Ohtrahddis
Me too, but I think we'll have to keep waiting. I was one of these people who
"thought I had the balls" to use piezo using this chip:
[http://www.linear.com/solutions/1506](http://www.linear.com/solutions/1506)
Not only did this not sustain enough current, but taking up more space
(doubling the size of my board) also hurt it to the point of it being too
clunky (e.g. See linqet [http://m.connectedly.com/linquet-review-smart-
tracking-devic...](http://m.connectedly.com/linquet-review-smart-tracking-
device-thats-not-quite-there-yet))

Believe it or not, BTLE isn't a holy grail for power, batteries are still a
better bet when it comes to long life. One method that might work is inductive
charging, which is what the pebblebee dragon does
([http://www.pebblebee.com/products/bluetooth-
dragon](http://www.pebblebee.com/products/bluetooth-dragon)). Also notice how
big the pebblebee is too- but that's because it has many other sensors.

But yeah, there are several devices in this business, and they are all trying
to do a variety of things, and energy harvesting just isn't cutting it at the
moment.

I really don't think it's a matter of balls ;P

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toddh
For the iphone at least the problem is apple will not approve apps that try to
discover beacons. Identifiers must be baked into the application, which
greatly limits their utility.

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BenSS
It's been viable for at least a year in other forms. (Have a small demo
system) However, there are some technical and social challenges associated
with such a database. Most notably it would be very easy to poison the well as
a thief/opportunitist. There's zero security around what beacons represent
themselves as, it takes less than a second to clone one with a smartphone app.

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jimmytidey
I'd like a passport holder that sets off an alarm on my phone eveytime its
more than 2 meters away. You'd only have it active when you are travelling.
Might help relieve some of the paranoia I have about loosing it.

I Say passport holder because I'm not sure if you could physically affix if to
the passport without upsetting border control.

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sauravc
Isn't this basically Tile?
[https://www.thetileapp.com/](https://www.thetileapp.com/)

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qzcx
Looks like the same idea, I'm pretty disappointed that Tile is only for iOS.
Looks like a good implementation of the idea in this article.

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mahyarm
I think tile will come out with an android client seeing how an android
engineer is on their careers page.

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dredmorbius
Cory Doctorow's _Makers_ describes a very similar item tracking and locating
system based off of RFID. With effective reader ranges being up to several
meters, this could be extended to a L&F system.

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alan
For that matter, the app could just record every time it "sees" an object and
when you mark it lost, it tells you where it was the last time (GPS
coordinates and all) it "saw" it.

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pjmorris
I sat in a coffee shop ~5 years ago, and sketched out what a lost-and-found
system based on QR codes and QR code readers. My particular application was
'Non-verbal kid lost at mall, kindly smartphone user with QR reader scans
(branded) QR code on kid's shirt to get parent's contact info', but I saw no
reason why that couldn't work for any item large enough to have a QR code
painted/sprayed/stapled on. I don't know why this doesn't exist yet.

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icebraining
My mother just wrote her phone number on the tag of my brother's shirt. What's
the point of the QR code?

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deserted
Two benefits I can see:

\- The parent can change what the QR code points to at any time.

\- You can scan a QR code from a distance without making physical contact.

