WalletTrackr
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Button TrackR extends Indiegogo campaign: never leave your coat or keys behind again
Way back in November, TUAW first covered the Wallet TrackR campaign on Indiegogo. That initial campaign offered a device that could be slipped into your wallet or jacket, and that used Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to ensure long battery life and easy iOS integration. Originally scheduled to ship in April, units are just now getting ready for delivery. CEO Chris Herbert tells TUAW that the delay was unavoidable and frustrating. The first samples Phone Halo received from the manufacturer did not pass their quality assurance standards, so the company had to go a few more rounds before they could begin their mass production run. The units are currently in shipment from China and should be sent out to the original purchasers by the end of the month. Even as they were working to fulfill their initial crowd funding effort, their second foray into personal item tracking was well underway. Their new product Button TrackR streamlines Bluetooth Low Energy tracking even further. Units are smaller, use just one battery, and are (frankly) better looking and more portable. Button TrackR was built using the same technology that powered Wallet TrackR but this second generation uses miniaturized circuitry that enabled Phone Halo to fit it into a much smaller form factor. Customer feedback helped drive a fundamental redesign that makes it easier to stick the unit onto things -- such as remote controls. It ships with 3M double-sided semi-permanent sticky tape in the package. A new attachment hole enables you to attach a loop (also provided in the package) to connect the TrackR to your keychain or even to bracelets to put on your kids and pets. When I first tested the Wallet version of the device back in November, my family fell in love with it. Its beep-to-locate feature means you can find your keys even if they fall into cracks in the couch (and yes, my kids pushed items down there just to make sure during testing). Even better than that, you can set up the software to alert you if you walk away from items that have been left behind -- this was a godsend for items like coats at restaurants, specifically items you don't normally hold in your pocket or backpack. The Bluetooth LE feature means this functionality works even if the Phone Halo app is running directly in the foreground, and best of all, it's super energy efficient, so you won't kill your batteries if you use this tech. Now with Button TrackR, a new crowd-sourcing recovery system plays an even bigger role. Although your phone remembers the last-tracked location of your lost item, many customers want to find items that have gone out of range from their phones. The challenge is getting the lost item in touch with devices that could help send its location back to you. "So we thought, what if other people could help you find your lost stuff for you," Chris Herbert explained. "What we did is update the software so that a lost device starts broadcasting a pre-registered unique ID stored in a cloud database. When other people with our app move near the tracker, the Bluetooth LE on their device can pick up that broadcast and will send those GPS coordinates to our company." The Phone Halo system associates that device ID and coordinates with your account, and sends the location data to you. "This provides an almost live GPS tracking stream for all your lost items without a subscription like other device providers might charge," said Herbert. Worried about privacy? The "call home" signal never activates so long as the device stays in contact with its primary phone. It only starts broadcasting after an hour. What's more, the Wallet TrackR owners who are helping you out will never know anything about your details, your device, or any location. That information is sent invisibly and encrypted for privacy. Want to pick up a device or ten for yourself? Head on over to Indiegogo and place your order. Originally established with a $15,000 goal, Button TrackR has now raised almost a quarter of a million dollars. The developers kindly extended the campaign to the end of the month specifically at TUAW's request. You can pick up a single tracker for $25, two for $40 or if you want to go crazy, the best value for most consumers is going to be 10 devices for $95. The units should ship in August, but given the company's insistence on high quality controls please allow a little extra time for them to get things exactly right.
Wallet TrackR may be the next great way to safeguard your wallet
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the overlooked heroes of iOS. Part of Bluetooth 4.0, it offers a low-power way to wirelessly connect sensors and other short-range devices to applications that can, with Apple's blessing, run in the background. That means, your phone can track and monitor systems without you having to keep an application open full-time and it won't run down your battery. Still an emerging technology, lots of BLE projects are just ramping up. I recently had a chance to try out a prototype of Phone Halo's Wallet TrackR system. Small enough to fit in your wallet, the Wallet TrackR uses BLE to virtually tether valuables to your iPhone. It works like this. You slide the TrackR into your wallet or connect it to your keychain. Once paired with your phone, a background process connects to the unit and makes sure that it stays close. Should you move too far away, your phone alerts you -- and shows you the TrackR's last known location on a map. You won't have to worry about getting up from the table at that restaurant and accidentally leaving your wallet behind. %Gallery-171414% That's not all the TrackR does. Its press-to-find system lets you activate an audio alert, so you can find items that have slid down between cushions. A "cold and hot" indicator tells you how physically close you are to the device. So how does it work in the real world? Keeping in mind that I only had a chance to test a prototype, pretty well. The final unit will be quite flat, about 3.8 mm thick. The design is based around two CR2016 batteries, the CR2032's flatter little brother. You can pick these up for a buck or so apiece at the corner grocery or grab a five-pack with free shipping at DealExtreme for about $1.50. It feels like a slightly thicker credit card and is quite light. The developer says the two batteries should offer up to a three-year battery life (their marketing materials, however, only promise 18 months) due to BLE's low-duty cycle. You should be able to (as he put it, riffing on Ron Popeil), "set it and forget it." The company has tested the power draw off the prototypes to come to this conclusion. In use, I found the audio alert to be adequate. It's fairly tinny and high-pitched, so it was a bit hard to track down under normal family conditions -- with the TV on and kids yelling, but once they were hushed, I did quite well finding it in all the places my kids had hidden it. I paid them to play hide and seek with the test unit, to see how well the audio signal worked. We found that it was quite easy to degrade the signal a bit by putting the unit in the pantry behind a closed door, shoving it under couch cushions, and so forth -- but that for a normal home, the alert worked well enough for the device to be found. I also tested the "abandoned object" functionality, which provides the device leashing. Once I moved far enough away from the dongle, my phone vibrated and sounded, letting me know I had forgotten to take the dongle with me. This worked, as promised, even when I had other apps open -- such as Mobile Safari and Mail. Aside from a few minor early prototype bugs, I also noticed that the software did drain my iPhone 4S battery slightly faster usual. The developer says this is due to developer tools that will not be in the final release. The Wallet TrackR represents an evolution in development, dating back to an original 2009 Bluetooth-based design. Because regular Bluetooth has much different power consumption characteristics, the initial system had only a one week battery life. "It was really a big black ugly thing," explained developer Chris Herbert. "We got it to market and had some initial success, but BLE was the tech we were waiting for." Phone Halo plans to ship units in April 2013. They will cost US$49.95 per device, although you can pre-order now for just $19 each in a sort of non-Kickstarter Kickstarter campaign. Herbert explains that the company will not charge cards until the units are ready to ship.
