Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Oh, patents! Lost your keys? Just call 'em!

Copyright @ Françoise Herrmann

What’s the worst you can lose? Your cell phone? Your glasses? Your purse or wallet? Your suitcase? Your pooch?

Relax now! There is plenty of patented technology to prevent these catastrophic events.

Your basic Apple gear (Iphone, Ipad and Macbook), for example, is equipped with GPS tracking technology which enables you to logon to the ICloud Find my Iphone, Ipad or Macbook app to locate the whereabouts of your hardware! You can even remotely erase the contents of your lost hardware; lock the screen with a message requesting anyone who finds the equipment to call you; or have the hardware beep quite loudly (even when your device is turned off) so that you can finally locate it, and reboot your life! 


Almost ditto with Android devices and the AndroidLost app. 

However, this embedded GPS-enabled technology hardly works with everyday objects such as your keys, your glasses, your wallet or purse or even the furry, tail-wagging object of your affection.

In comes small, Bluetooth-enabled, tracking tags that you can attach directly to your indispensable possessions and interrogate using an app, downloaded to your cell phone! This way, you can tag your keys, your glasses, your wallet or even your lively, bouncy, furry pooch, to stay informed of the whereabouts of all your tagged possessions and companions, and even be alerted when they are out of range, or hidden out of sight (within range!). 

So, for example, if you were to misplace your (tagged) glasses... you can just call them by pressing on their tag icon, on the app, (assuming you can still see the icons...) It's as easy as that!

US2010283600 titled Tracker tag low power apparatus for preventing loss of cell phone and other high-value items discloses just this possibility, with the additional bonuses of being both very low energy-consuming and very small tags (about the size of a quarter), so that the tracking system will work a long time on a lithium cell CR battery, informing you of your valuables whereabouts.

The Abstract for US2010283600 is included below
A system for the prevention of loss of wallets, keys, purses and the like. The system uses a programmable wireless appliance such as a cell phone as a wireless tracker, and utilizes lightweight wireless tag devices attached to the items to protected. A software application executes on the wireless appliance to query the wireless tags and determines when any part of the system is going out of range.

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