
iFind – Battery-Free Item Locating Tag: Funding Suspended - MarlonPro
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yuansong84/ifind-the-worlds-first-battery-free-item-locating?ref=email
======
mentos
pulled from the comments:

Hello, This is a message from Kickstarter’s Trust & Safety team. We’re writing
to notify you that the iFind - The World's First Battery-Free Item Locating
Tag project has been suspended, and your $1.00 USD pledge has been canceled. A
review of the project uncovered evidence of one or more violations of
Kickstarter's rules, which include: • A related party posing as an
independent, supportive party in project comments or elsewhere •
Misrepresenting support by pledging to your own project • Misrepresenting or
failing to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator •
Providing inaccurate or incomplete user information to Kickstarter or one of
our partners Accordingly, all funding has been stopped and backers will not be
charged for their pledges. No further action is required on your part. We take
the integrity of the Kickstarter system very seriously. We only suspend
projects when we find strong evidence that they are misrepresenting themselves
or otherwise violating the letter or spirit of Kickstarter's rules. As a
policy, we do not offer comment on project suspensions beyond what is stated
in this message. Regards, Kickstarter Trust & Safety Rules Community
Guidelines Terms of Use

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mortenjorck
If this isn't the smoking gun, it's at least the smoke:

    
    
      Unlike other locating tags, there is no battery in the iFind tag. 
      It recycles electromagnetic energy and stores it in a unique power bank.
    

This is the sort of language that never describes an actual technological
breakthrough. It's a combination of a description that's too pat, too
abstracted, with a feat that is too impressive to go without at least some
reference to the actual processes that make it work.

~~~
vlunkr
Exactly, if they really created this battery-less technology they could
probably do things much more impressive than iFind

~~~
vsviridov
[http://hackaday.com/2013/01/15/ltc3105-and-ltc3109-energy-
ha...](http://hackaday.com/2013/01/15/ltc3105-and-ltc3109-energy-harvesting-
chips/)

There are chips that allow you to gather and store miniscule amounts of
electricity from surrounding RF radiation. Bluetooth LE is also designed to be
a very low-power devices, so it is within the realm of possibility for this
particular project.

~~~
IgorPartola
So the LTC3105 [1] looks to be able to supply 0.060 amps at 4 volts. Bluetooth
LE [2] seems to use about 0.015 amps at peak (voltage not listed). If I am
reading this correctly, it is possible. The question is: what actually runs
the circuit connected to the Bluetooth transceiver?

[1]
[http://gnodevel.ugent.be/crr.ugent.be/archives/1628](http://gnodevel.ugent.be/crr.ugent.be/archives/1628)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Technical_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Technical_details)

~~~
Timmmmbob
Yeah BLE uses about 12 mA while transmitting or receiving. But it does not do
that continuously. Its average power consumption can be under 100 uA very
easily.

However, there's no way you'd get even 100 uA by harvesting RF energy in a
package that small.

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jkestner
The definitive engineering breakdown: [http://drop-kicker.com/2014/06/ifind-
rf-energy-harvesting-bl...](http://drop-kicker.com/2014/06/ifind-rf-energy-
harvesting-bluetooth-beacon/)

(Drop-Kicker is amazing.)

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joosters
Related articles about the dubious nature of this kickstarter (grabbed from a
comment on the KS project page):

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185038-ifind-worlds-
first...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185038-ifind-worlds-first-
battery-free-bluetooth-location-tag-raises-500000-despite-all-the-hallmarks-
of-being-a-giant-scam)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/24/ifind_kickstarter/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/24/ifind_kickstarter/)

[http://bgr.com/2014/06/24/kickstarter-wetag-ifind-
scam/](http://bgr.com/2014/06/24/kickstarter-wetag-ifind-scam/)

~~~
51Cards
One more... [http://hackaday.com/2014/05/21/ask-hackaday-can-battery-
free...](http://hackaday.com/2014/05/21/ask-hackaday-can-battery-free-
bluetooth-item-locating-tags-exist/)

------
smackfu
Interesting. I bought some of the Tiles (link below), and they are basically
the same thing, except they have a 1-year battery and are a bit thicker. They
work fine.

[http://www.thetileapp.com/](http://www.thetileapp.com/)

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columbo
Couldn't you do this with RFID tags and a scanner on your phone? I don't know
if this is legitimate or not, but something like this:
[http://agbeat.com/tech-news/rfid-enabled-devices-keep-
tabs-o...](http://agbeat.com/tech-news/rfid-enabled-devices-keep-tabs-on-your-
professional-belongings/)

~~~
giarc
RFID works at very close range (think swipe cards to get into an office).
Readers with larger ranges do exist, but they get very pricey.

~~~
imaginenore
No, my father designs RFID readers and antennas. The long-range UHF readers
reach 9-15 feet (with passive credit-card size tags).

~~~
giarc
The cost of that type of system would be no where close to acceptable for
personal use.

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peterwwillis
Why wouldn't people just use RFID tags? They're cheap and batteryless. You
could slip one in your phone's battery cover to locate it (or tape it on) and
the locator could be a 'dumb' brick of plastic and a tiny circuit with a 9V
battery that's mated to the tags.

~~~
bri3d
Passive RFID tags can't beep, so the locator would need to either use multiple
antennas and fun algorithms (indoor location is pretty hard, especially if
your device is small and the antennas are close together) or a highly
directional antenna and user antenna-waving input.

The nice part about beeping locating tags (for those without hearing
disabilities, of course) is that rather than using complex RF approaches to
location, they just make noise and let the human do something they're already
good at: locate a sound.

~~~
peterwwillis
The locater thingy you would carry in your hand could beep faster when it gets
close to a tag.

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therobot24
any news as to why it was suspended? I checked the updates and didn't see
anything

~~~
philmcc
This is a message one of the backers received (according to the comments):

Hello, This is a message from Kickstarter’s Trust & Safety team.

We’re writing to notify you that the iFind - The World's First Battery-Free
Item Locating Tag project has been suspended, and your $1.00 USD pledge has
been canceled.

A review of the project uncovered evidence of one or more violations of
Kickstarter's rules, which include:

• A related party posing as an independent, supportive party in project
comments or elsewhere

• Misrepresenting support by pledging to your own project

• Misrepresenting or failing to disclose relevant facts about the project or
its creator

• Providing inaccurate or incomplete user information to Kickstarter or one of
our partners Accordingly, all funding has been stopped and backers will not be
charged for their pledges. No further action is required on your part.

We take the integrity of the Kickstarter system very seriously. We only
suspend projects when we find strong evidence that they are misrepresenting
themselves or otherwise violating the letter or spirit of Kickstarter's rules.

As a policy, we do not offer comment on project suspensions beyond what is
stated in this message.

Regards,

Kickstarter Trust & Safety

~~~
hgsigala
I received the same message but with $16

------
mehdim
why suspended?

~~~
uptown
There's a lot of skepticism whether their product is in-any-way feasible. The
concern is that they're raising money without a technically-viable product.

~~~
daeken
Seems there's a bit more to it than just that. They claimed that they had
pending patents when they don't (or at least, the patent numbers they gave are
bunk), their demo video had bluetooth turned off, and some other nasty things.
It seems to me that if they do have a legitimate product, they sure picked a
bad way to show that.

~~~
leonardzen
I wouldn't be surprised to find out this is something that came from 4chan.

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publicfig
To future readers, the title used to say "SUSPENDED: iFind – Battery-Free Item
Locating Tag". Unfortunately, the title was changed, removing all of the
context of its posting. Just another reason the automated title changers need
to be reëvaluated.

~~~
mortenjorck
I don't understand why HN still has a field for manually entering titles if
the system is capable of scraping it from the linked site, and does it
automatically within a few minutes of posting.

~~~
lazerwalker
Because sometimes being able to manually add in editorializing can be
valuable.

In this specific example, the added "SUSPENDED" that was removed gave context
about why the link was interesting.

