I'll prefix this with two things - the tags do exist (I have some) and they do partially function.
These Bluetooth Low Energy tracking tags promised a lot in their pitch:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sticknfind-bluetooth-powered-ultra-small-location-stickers/x/1914325?c=homeShowing applications like keeping tabs on a pet, luggage whilst travelling, alerting you when your wife pulls into the driveway. Range is claimed as 100ft LOS, and they made an announcement saying they had boosted this to 150ft.
They wanted $70k, and they got $931,670, i.e. over-funded by a factor of 13 times.
So - the reality of it.
A lot of the tags don't work and they don't work very wellMy 4 tags turned up, and they really didn't work very well at all. One appeared dead, range was poor (20 ft LOS) on the others, operation was intermittent, the radar is mostly useless (a distance estimate), and the leash is totally dysfunctional.
http://cybergibbons.com/2013/04/10/first-impressions-of-my-sticknfind-bluetooth-location-stickers/3 others I know also got tags - out of a total of 38 tags, 20 of them have never worked or stopped working soon after.
My gut feeling is that several aspects of the design are causing reliability issues (battery contacts, use of piezo as antenna, fragile plastic) and that there are serious QC issues compounding this.
I realise that Bluetooth Low Energy range is limited and that the radar must using RSSI somehow, but I had figured they might have some interesting DSP tricks up their sleeve.
I have since received other BLE tags that work much better than StickNFind (i.e. range of 30-50ft, leash that works).
No Android AppThis was just the start though. I'm using iOS, but many people are using Android. Initially there was no Android app at all, and then they released one that only supports a few Samsung phones. This is because the Android OS does not natively support Bluetooth Low Energy - they are "hoping" that an announcement at the end of May will sort this out.
However, the original page showed Android 4.0 as supported. That moved up to 4.1 and now some people suspect it may not be until even later versions. This has left a lot of people with tags they cannot currently use and potentially may never be able to use. A lot of people are unhappy.
They said the Android app was ready in December, but didn't mention it wasn't going to work on most phones. Interestingly, in April they advertised on LinkedIn for an Android developer... too little too late?
They either aren't shipping them, they are going missing or they aren't communicatingAt this point I set up a simple survey to see how many people were unhappy. 125 people responded. 110 of those were unhappy (yes, I know it will be biased this way). About half of those hadn't received the tags at all and there are still a lot of people complaining about this.
They are continuing to sell them via retail channelsTheir website,
StickNFind.com, continues to offer the tags as "Buy now" and they will let you buy tags and pay for priority shipping. There is nothing to say these tags are alpha, beta, pre-release, or not in stock. But then on Facebook they announce the tags are "pre-release". People who have bought the tags retail (yes, they have received them before backers) are seriously unhappy about this.
http://cybergibbons.com/2013/04/26/sticknfind-are-a-dishonest-company-do-not-buy-from-them/This point really troubles me - they have almost $1m. They shouldn't be selling these when they don't seem to work.
Awful communicationEssentially, if you tags are not working, they ignore you. Posts complaining about the tags are deleted, I was banned from their Facebook page.
They shouldn't be having these issuesWe know what we’re doing; We've led the development and manufacturing of more than 2 dozen hardware products for many large companies, so we know exactly what's required to pull this off.The people behind this are SSI America and claim to be able to do this... it would appear not.
Other projectsThe guys behind StickNFind are also behind Blutracker (which has just announced, after a few months of silence, that there are delays) and Meterplug (which is featured here as well).