Nearables: Why a global lost-and-found network is finally viable (opens in new tab)

Hey, Tanuj from Estimote here. We're constantly challenging our engineering team to extend battery life through a combination of better hardware but more importantly smarter software, delivered via OTA updates. For instance, our first generation beacons just had their battery life significantly upgraded recently (blog.estimote.com/post/91749152580/estimote-rolls-out-the-worlds-first-power-management) without any need for a hardware change. We'll do the same with Stickers. 1 year is the default battery life at launch but it'll get better, quickly :)

I think the benefit with using beacons would be that you can be anywhere within ~70 meters of the item and get a notification to help out. You don't have to even see it to be able to help.

Me too, but I think we'll have to keep waiting. I was one of these people who "thought I had the balls" to use piezo using this chip: http://www.linear.com/solutions/1506 Not only did this not sustain enough current, but taking up more space (doubling the size of my board) also hurt it to the point of it being too clunky (e.g. See linqet http://m.connectedly.com/linquet-review-smart-tracking-devic...)

Believe it or not, BTLE isn't a holy grail for power, batteries are still a better bet when it comes to long life. One method that might work is inductive charging, which is what the pebblebee dragon does (http://www.pebblebee.com/products/bluetooth-dragon). Also notice how big the pebblebee is too- but that's because it has many other sensors.

But yeah, there are several devices in this business, and they are all trying to do a variety of things, and energy harvesting just isn't cutting it at the moment.

I really don't think it's a matter of balls ;P

It is surprisingly difficult to get small and cheap enough solar cells (with high enough voltage) in small/medium volume. And then there's the hassles of rechargeable batteries (safety, shipping). And of course, what if you lose your item indoors or in a bag or something?

Hey there one of the Co-Founders of Estimote here, that makes the Sticker Beacons and coined Nearables.

Sometimes we think of Estimote Stickers as 'Tile for Developers', at least among the community that knows Tile.

Meaning, we're a developer facing platform, more B2B2C and anyone can create a digital tethering application, and any app can adopt it.

We have a big vision for the 'Nearables' concept and hope that the community can push this narrative forward together. Sometimes we think abstractly of beacons as place URLs for physical objects.

Looks like the same idea, I'm pretty disappointed that Tile is only for iOS. Looks like a good implementation of the idea in this article.

My mother just wrote her phone number on the tag of my brother's shirt. What's the point of the QR code?

This actually does exist already[1]. They sell a ton of products with a user-specific QR code. Parents/caregivers/etc. can change the message that gets displayed when someone is scanned at any time.

[1] https://www.qrcodeid.org/