The Tile App

[vanarebane]

http://www.thetileapp.com/

I did not find anyone talking about this on the forums.
This thing claims to have bluetooth with 50 - 150ft range, speaker to locate missing items and all that with no need for (to charge) batteries?
All that in this small form?

I call it too good to be true.
What others think?

[AndyC_772]

Looks to me as though there's no battery charging, or changing, either because they couldn't figure out how to do it or because they'd rather you buy new ones every year when the battery goes flat.

It's classic marketing: lead with your weakest card. They advertise "a whole year", as if having to replace an item every year is a good thing.

[codeboy2k]

Wasn't there something like this on kickstarter a while back.. GPS tags... find your things... then when they actually delivered (some people got sets of 3 or 6 or something like that)... they found that the reliability was way off what was claimed, the accuracy was way off, and most people couldn't find anything they had tagged, and couldn't track it with the phone app (i.e. the phone app was useless, it didn't change as they got closer to the tag, or the tag was behind them when reading showed it was in front of them...)

Is this the same company?

[Stonent]

A whole year?

Tiles last a year. We'll remind you when it's time to order new Tiles and send you an envelope to recycle your old ones.

Profit!

[Psi]

i stopped reading/listening to them the moment they said their idea was revolutionary.

[Gallymimus]

Yep, seen this sort of thing before. Same problem as always, low battery life. Bluetooth is not ideal for this kind of application. With non-BT radios a five year lifetime on a coin cell would be possible.

This should be Bluetooth SMART which has almost nothing to do with conventional bluetooth.  It's power usage is competitive with the most power conservative radios out there. 5yr life on a coin cell is very viable with the CC2540 from TI for instance.

[Gallymimus]

http://www.thetileapp.com/

I did not find anyone talking about this on the forums.
This thing claims to have bluetooth with 50 - 150ft range, speaker to locate missing items and all that with no need for (to charge) batteries?
All that in this small form?

I call it too good to be true.
What others think?

Look up StickNfind, it's about the same size (though the product was poorly executed, the basic design is okay for an alpha or beta).  All you need for this is a single 5mm QFP chip, surface mount chip antenna and a battery.  Not much else in a device like this.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

This idea is so old and have been exercised like 1000 times by many companies. I purchased tags at Schiphol airport (that is Amsterdam) for 25 euros about 8 years ago - those were designed to track your baggage in case it is lost, but principle and idea exactly same.

[strangelovemd12]

This is the kind of crap I want inductive charging for.  Once every six months an 0805 led tells you to put it on the charge pad for a while.  No worries.  As devices get less power hungry the lifespan approaches the shelf life of the battery.  Maybe even longer since periodically cycling(?) a cell makes it last longer?

Edit: Seems like Lithium ion lifespans are a bit more complicated than that:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

[zapta]

This idea is so old and have been exercised like 1000 times by many companies.

Reference?

This one is based on a community of receivers and short distance BT transmitters, not GPS, cell system, etc.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

Simple Google search returns plenty references like
http://globalbagtag.com/lostluggage/peace_of_mind.cfm
http://www.trakdot.com/TrakDot/index.jsp

and list goes on and on, some use different technology such as RFID or GSM but many appear to be using proprietary protocols or Bluetooth. I assume that they have readers/transponders installed around baggage routes in major airports. One I was referring to claimed that they have tracker installed in every airport in Europe.

[ConKbot]

It's classic marketing: lead with your weakest card. They advertise "a whole year", as if having to replace an item every year is a good thing.

Burger king has been big on that for their ads lately
"The Whopper junior, now just $1.69"


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