Never lose your glasses again with the Orbit tracker

I’m blind as a bat without my glasses, and I can’t find them if I’ve forgotten where I left them.  I actually had to call my husband home from work one day to help me find them.  With the Orbit sensor and app, I could track them down all by myself.  The Orbit tracker for glasses is small enough to fit on the inside of one of the arms of your glasses, so it won’t be visible while you are wearing them.

The tracker will fit a minimum 4mm arm width, and it’s not suitable for aviator-style glasses.  It adheres to your glasses with 3M double-sided adhesive, and it measures 1.25″ x 0.2″.   You won’t have to worry about sweat or rain, because it is waterproof.

The USB-rechargeable battery lasts about a month between charges.  The Orbit app (iOS and Android) connects to the tracker via Bluetooth, with a range of up to 100 feet.  The tracker has a built-in 80dB speaker that sounds a tone when you are leaving your glasses behind, or the app can have it chime to help you locate them.  You can also see their last know location on a map in the app.

I found the Orbit Glasses Tracker at Levenger in black for $50.00.  You can also purchase a tracker at the Orbit website for $39.99, but it is currently on backorder.

The post Never lose your glasses again with the Orbit tracker appeared first on The Gadgeteer.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: ,

Never lose your glasses again with the Orbit tracker originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 10, 2018 at 10:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

Chipolo CARD Bluetooth Item Finder review

Coming in from a brisk walk around the park near your office, you sit down at your desk and notice something is… off. The familiar lump in your front pocket where you always keep your wallet is conspicuously absent. You try the other pocket, nothing. Your stomach feels cold.

Then your mind begins to race, trying to remember everywhere you could have been in the past couple hours. Just then, you remember the small device you have pushed between the other cards in your wallet, a tiny device from Chipolo, the CARD Bluetooth wallet finder.

Wallet, found! At least as close as Bluetooth range.

You dig out your iPhone and launch the app. Sure enough, it can’t find the device within range, so you know it’s somewhere out there. The park perhaps. That bench you like to sit on every once in a while when the sun is out. You can see on the map screen that your hunch is correct, there’s a circle toward the middle of the park where you’re pretty sure you were sitting.

With your phone in hand, you start back toward the bench. A quick glance at the app’s “connected devices” screen reveals that your wallet is nearby. You tap the icon and press the “sound alarm” button and hear a faint electronic melody. As you approach your favorite bench, the melody grows louder, and at last you spot it. Your wallet, right where it fell out of your pocket.

You feel a rush of relief as you rifle through your cash and cards, everything’s still there.

This was about the distance I was standing where I could connect and hear the alarm.

This little story is a rather common occurrence… however the difference between a happy ending and finding your lost wallet, or having to cancel all of your credit cards and get a new license could be due to a simple little device from Chipolo called the CARD.

By the time I walked up to it, it was chiming fairly loudly.

Specs and Function

The CARD is a small, thin device that looks like it could be a simple remote control.

Easily fits into any credit card slot in a wallet.

The exact size is 1.45 inch x 2.67 inch x 0.08 inch and it weighs next to nothing. The CARD primarily designed to be placed in a wallet, but you can put it in almost anything you want to keep tabs on, like a purse or perhaps even a bike bag. It’s waterproof and the battery lasts for approximately 12 months, according to the website, which is also the length of time it’s guaranteed for. Naturally, the device is useless once the battery is dead, but Chipolo has a renewal program that offers you a discount on replacement devices.

The CARD itself is very simple. Basically, it’s a simple Bluetooth finder that, when paired with an app, will show you its last location when the connection was lost. You can easily see in Chipolo’s app if the device is within range. If it’s connected, you can tap a button on your phone to sound a musical alarm on the device. Or, conversely, if you have the device and can’t find your phone, you can press the large button on the CARD to make your phone ring.

That’s a pretty nice feature and especially handy if you’re prone to losing your phone at the bottom of a bag or in couch cushions.

In an effort to give the CARD a fair test, I left the device itself at my house and drove several miles away. When I looked up the last known location, it identified that the device was at a location I labeled “home,” and displayed where it was, and where I was, on a map.

You can assign locations on the map to make finding your lost item even easier.

I immediately knew where it was and how much time had passed since I was out of range. It also gave me a fairly specific area of where it was when zoomed in on the map. More than likely, when going back to find the lost CARD, you might have to keep the Connected screen up until you see it come within range. Of course, if someone made off with your item, there would be nothing there to find, and it wouldn’t show back up on the map.

In case of such an event, the CARD has a “Lost” mode. If a device is labeled as lost, then it sends out a signal to any Chipolo app in range and tells the stranger that there is a lost item nearby, and sounds the alarm. If another user finds the device, it will notify you through the app, email you the new location, and guide you to the lost item. Of course, this mode only works with users who have the app itself. Likely, perhaps, in a large city or heavily trafficked area.

You can also use Chipolo’s web app to find your phone. Just log in to the community page to send a message to your phone’s screen and sound an alert. With any luck, the person who finds it will see that message and be able to contact you. It’s like a “Find my Phone” function on top of the one already embedded in your OS.

Another nice feature is the ability to share CARD locations with friends and family members, so they can see where other devices are on a map at any time, sort of like Find my Friends. You can even see where their phones are as well, if they have them enabled to display on the map.

Conclusion

In my experiments with the CARD just to see how it worked, I think it would be moderately useful in finding a lost item. It would take some guessing out of where exactly you dropped something, as long as it was a stationary place. If your wallet fell out in a bus or taxi, man, good luck. The tinny chime that emits from the CARD when in search mode is fairly quiet. I think that if it was inside a wallet inside another purse or bag, in a noisy environment, it would be difficult to hear unless you were right on top of it.

That said, the app interface is really slick and I love that they included a community feature just in case another user would happen to come across a lost item. Hopefully, the only thing you’ll forget is the fact that you’re even carrying the device in your wallet. That extra piece of mind is a very nice thing.

The CARD is available now from Chipolo for $35 (or two for $70), along with other Bluetooth finder devices.

Source: The sample for this review as provided by Chipolo. Please visit their site for more information and to order.

 

Product Information

Price: $35
Manufacturer: Chipolo
Pros:
  • – slightly thicker than a credit card
  • – year-long battery life
  • – excellent smartphone app
Cons:
  • – battery cannot be replaced, need to buy more every year
  • – could take some searching to find exact location
  • – alarm tone is not very loud

Filed in categories: Reviews

Tagged:

Chipolo CARD Bluetooth Item Finder review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 5, 2017 at 9:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

These are the Bluetooth finders you’re looking for

Bluetooth trackers have evolved from the boring plastic one color plastic tiles from a few years ago, to superhero inspired Bluetooth finders and now we have these cool Star Wars inspired finders from ThinkGeek.

These officially licensed Star Wars Bluetooth trackers are designed to attach to a keychain or object so you can keep track of it. They pair with your phone and if you go out of range (> 100ft), you’ll receive an alert on your phone.

They can work the other way around too. If you lose your phone, you can use the tracker to make your phone ring so you can find it.

Available in 5 styles that include: BB-8, R2-D2, Chewbacca, Stormtrooper, and Darth Vader, the Star Wars finders are $26 each from ThinkGeek.com

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: ,

These are the Bluetooth finders you’re looking for originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 5, 2017 at 10:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

Mu, world’s smallest loss prevention tag


In physics, the Greek letter “µ” (Mu) is used to mathematically represent the effective gravitational inertia of two objects as a single “reduced” object. I suspect the designers of the Mu locator tag were aware of this when naming their miniature loss prevention tag. 

The Mu tag, like its larger cousins such as Tile, TrackR, and ITrex, can be deployed to allow a user to locate wayward phones, keys, or even pets using wireless communication to their corresponding apps. Where Mu sets itself apart is its diminutive size. Smaller than HALF a postage stamp, the 18 X 10 X 3mm pixie can easily piggy-back on your favorite treasures to prevent that oh-so-familiar pain when misplaced. At a fraction of the size of its cousins, Mu is certain to appeal to anyone wishing to discreetly locate their belongings.

As a memory-challenged individual, I welcome anything that can make my life easier. The rechargeable Mu certainly fits that bill and I look forward to seeing them hit the market after being successfully funded.

For more info, check out their story On Kickstarter.

 

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: ,

Mu, world’s smallest loss prevention tag originally appeared on on May 17, 2017 at 8:27 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.