London: A US technology firm has come up with Bluetooth stickers which can be attached to your essential items like wallets, keys, and even kids and pets to track them. Your valuables can be detected by the stickers which work through a smartphone app that sets off a buzzer to help locate them. The app also includes a radar-like function to help you find your way to your possessions.
About the size of a coin, the StickNFind stickers can attach via adhesive to valued possessions and send a low-energy Bluetooth signal with a range of about 100ft, the 'Daily Mail' reported. So far the team behind it have developed apps compatible with smartphones with a range of features to help users track down their stickered-up possessions when they go missing.
The first function the app offers is a simple radar screen that approximates the distance - but not yet the location - of all the paired Stick-N-Find stickers in range. The technology does not yet allow the app to determine which direction the lost items are in, so users have to start walking while watching the screen to see whether the device they are hunting for gets closer.
A second feature, which the designers call the Virtual Leash, allows users to set an alarm to sound whenever a sticker moves a predetermined distance from your phone. This feature could be used to keep track of your children at the playground, for example, or to remind you if you're getting ready to leave the house for work and forget to pick up your keys.
A third feature called Find It helps to locate any items that are out of range by setting an alarm to sound as soon as they appear on the app's radar, allowing you to begin using it to track down the lost item as soon as you are nearby. The stickers themselves will keep going for up to a year on a watch-type battery.
They include buzzers and flashing lights that can be activated remotely to help users track them down and one smartphone can be paired with as many as 20. The Stick-N-Find location stickers are the brainchild of John Mitts, an engineer at SSI America which is a product development company specialising in small electronics.
"Just like everyone we lose stuff all the time so, we thought, why not design an ultra-small Bluetooth connected sticker you can stick on any device, person or animal so you can easily find them?" he said.
"So we came up with Stick-N-Find. Stick-N-Find is an ultra-small sticker with built in Bluetooth low energy with a range of 100ft, about the size of a US quarter and with a battery life that lasts about a year," he added.
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