RFID your stuff, find it with your mobile phone

Mitch Wagner sez, "uGrokIt lets people attach RFID tags to their stuff, locate it with a device that attaches to a smartphone, just like in Cory's Makers." The Geiger counter-style audio cues are a nice touch, and I like the salaryman who uses the gizmo to remind him that he's left his phone-charger under one of those pointless stand-up cards next to the nearly pointless land-line phone in his hotel room.

UGrokIt (Thanks, Mitch!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Gainclone

What happens when you lose your ugrokit device?
- http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman
  
  It look pretty big. And orange. If you’re losing objects of that size you may have issues that RFID can not solve. :)
- Van Diemen
  
  Buy two or more devices & RFID the lot.
  It’s marketing.
Daniel Sinnott

The trouble is I’m always misplacing my phone
DeargDoom

…the nearly pointless land-line phone in his hotel room

By nearly pointless do you mean pointless unless you want to order room service, query reception about the noisy renovation work which has just woken you up, confirm with reception that the fire alarm was a false alarm without getting out of bed, contact a guest in a different room when you are in a hotel abroad or be cheaply contacted by friends and family when you are in a hotel abroad?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/George-Tomorrow/100000059681060 George Tomorrow
  
  Sadly omitted from your list, perhaps the most useful use for that nearly pointless landline:
  
  Locating your mobile phone, so you can use it to find whatever else you’ve lost.
http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen

Call me when they create something that makes use of the native NFC in some Android phones.
- http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot
  
  NFC is short-range RFID, very short range – something like a few centimeters… so it really couldn’t be used like this.
Hakuin

why does it need the phone?
http://profile.yahoo.com/BEITZMPZLZI3HPPIIOPXHB2HJQ ralph

instead of a geiger counter sound, can it say “cold… warm… warmer… so warm… WARMER… HOT… YOU’RE ON FIRE!!!”
noah django

this is the dumbest shit of all time! you have to locate TWO items in order to find one? the more complex a system, the greater likelihood of it breaking down.
Hazique Kamarul Azman

A very interesting and useful concept indeed.

I’d like a version that doesn’t require a phone.
Nathaniel

Make it look like this and I’m sold.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

This thing has WINNER for “First World Problem” writ large.
HahTse

The only really useful feature (imo) is the “have I forgotten anything?”-thingy the sporty and the suit use at the end of the clip…
autark

this is really inventing the problems its solving, *and* promoting the whole idea that rfid is just fine & dandy (and you shouldn’t mind its use in your id, passport, etc).

I honestly can’t see any one of the demonstrated use cases without laughing. Lose your keys? Try leaving them in the same place every time. The stuffed animal? Seriously!? I don’t even get the girl w/the gym bag use case, and that biz traveler is an idiot. I don’t need a device to do the “last sweep to remember where I placed everything in the hotel I’ve been at ONE freaking night”. I wouldn’t trust that man with my corporate merger! He might forget where the assets and liabilities were placed.
stemserf

I’ve been developing a system almost identical to this (independently) since September.

Much like the UGrokIt folks, my motivation for developing this system is mostly personal. To quote their site: “U Grok It was born as a way to reduce our family stress over all the everyday items that go missing just when you need them.”

I’ve been a 3-4 season commuter cyclist in Washington for the past few years and I’ve found a ‘spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch’-ish routine somewhat incapable for the variety of trips I take (school, work, short). Sure I can rememember (most of) the basics (wallet, keys, emergency kit, phone, lock, water bottle, change of shoes, pocket knife, lighter) most of the time, but in society it’s tricky for me to have a worry-free, healthy day without each of those. And that’s not counting the extra stuff I need.

Of course I’m not saying there aren’t issues with this system (or probably any system like it). Security, losing the phone itself, hefty addon hardware, actual usefulness are the obvious ones and have been stated earlier. But I do think that keeping track of personal items is an interesting problem and this is a fair shake at a solution.
zarray

If it can track a specific tag that’d be great for archival use.
gourneau

I made a system like this 2 years ago at NASA, as a prototype for the ISS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRO4xHjKls#t=4m13s

@doctorow:twitter I mentioned this to you at CCC!
Ty Myrick

I was thinking about something like this this morning. I want to stick an RFID tag in every book I own so I can catalog them and find each one again when I want it. Yes, the video is hokey and the form factor reeks 1980, but the idea is the same one Google has sold to millions of people in the form of Gmail: search, don’t sort.