Loc8tor ships

[Kevin Hawkins <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Have been waiting for something to 'find my dog' for a long while,
really want one of Steve Wozniaks' new devices, or anything that returns
a GPS location  but they're not shipping yet. In the meantime I had a
chance to play with this UK device which has finally shipped....

Pro's and Cons really.  The sensors are really tiny and the handheld is
surprising good directionally at finding them - and is even direction
sensitive down to a few cm's .  Great for keys and remotes and maybe
even a wallet, could be stuck on a mobile phone for when its batteries
have died and you can't ring it. These seem to be the things I lose
most, although surprisingly it's the money in my wallet that seems to
vanish - even when I find it again ;-)   . Out in the open I have found
the range to be pretty useless - certainly for a dog if you can't
physically see it then it probably wouldn't locate it. I couldn't get
much more than about 25m once there were any obstructions - even a
wooden fence or shrubs. Actually once at line of sight I couldn't even
get 40m.  I could see the tag but not locate it.  Also the best distance
they quote (183m) will be based on the directional antenna facing
exactly at the tag - as you've lost it this isn't achievable and you
have to wait quite a long time going around in circles to try and find
it.  This might be ideal to locate your tortoise though.

One thing that did strike me is that it is very good at knowing how far
away a device is - and this may have an application in person
identifying - perhaps when someone comes home based on a tag on their
keys or even within a room (if they had the tag). It reliably produces
different beeps when the tag is in the same room.   It's not easy to
interface to the handheld I'm guessing and the way it works you have to
preselect a tag to detect which is the wrong way around but ... maybe
something useful here HA wise...  The handheld could be mains powered
but the tags are 'switched on' by a radio pulse so their battery life
would be questionable in such an application.   There is a mode where
the handheld constantly monitors for out of range tags and advises you
if it loses one. This is settable on a near/med/far and would work to
tell you when someone/something wasn't in a room perhaps. There are no
battery life figures supplied for this mode.

Overall for my original application (finding my dog) a GPS reporting tag
is what I need , and at an estimated price of only 50% more than this -
it's what I'll go for.  For in house items - keys, etc this is pretty
good though and I was impressed how small the tags are.

Kevin

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