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Did you hear that? It’s the sound of your keys beeping from the nether regions of your couch.
Did you see that? It’s the flashing light coming from your TV remote which is in the bathroom for some reason…
Don’t know where you cat went? Pull out your phone, load up the app and you’ll see he’s in the kitchen, sleeping on top of your cabinets. That’s the power of ultra-small bluetooth location stickers by Stick-n-Find, and their first production run should be complete in March.
Each sticker has a diameter of 0.98 Inches x Thickness 0.16 Inches (24mm x 4mm) and a weight of 0.15 ounces (4.5 grams). They have a range of about 100-ft (30 meters) and use a replaceable CR2016 watch battery with about a 1-year battery life (based on 30 minutes a day usage). The Bluetooth location stickers use Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.
The Stick-N-Find app works iOS devices with Bluetooth 4.0 (iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, new iPad, New Touch, mini iPad) and Android devices supporting Bluetooth Low Energy, running Android 4.1 and newer.
Virtual Leash: This feature allows you to create a virtual Leash on a sticker. If that sticker moves away more than the approximate selected distance from your phone, the app will alarm you. You can select different types of alarms for different Stickers.
“Find It” Alerts: If you are looking for a missing sticker that your phone cannot find, or is not in range use a ‘find it’ alert. Once that sticker is in range, your phone will alert you. For example, waiting for your luggage at an airport carousel: have a seat and wait until your alarm goes off.
The maximum recommended number of stickers per smartphone is 20. You can pair the stickers to multiple phones, and even see all the stickers in range on the radar screen from multiple phones, but only one device can connect to a sticker to make it buzz, light up or create a virtual leash.
The Stick-N-Find Bluetooth location stickers use 3M VHB adhesive. It adheres to most surfaces and creates a achieves full strength in about 1 hour. Batteries can be replaced by twisting off the top, so you do not need to remove the sticker to replace the battery.
The app does not show direction. The radar screen is used to show distance of the Stick-N-Find to your phone, but not direction. Once you have located a sticker on the radar screen you start walking in a specific direction and see if the sticker gets closer or farther away.
On their website the MSRP is $49.95 for 2 stickers and $89.95 for 4 stickers. There’s a crowdfunding page on indiegogo.com where they have already raised $680,000. There you can pre-order 2 stickers for $35 or 4 stickers for $65.
For those wanting a device with greater range than 100-ft, there is the Bluetracker with a range of 2,500 ft. (800m). The device is larger and the battery will only last about 2 months though. Engadget also reports that the designers will be offering an SDK so developers can create their own apps and uses for the stickers. This is where some new and unexpected uses will emerge.
