Awesome Stuff: A Mesh Network For Your Things
from the never-forget dept
Plenty of people have tried to market various devices for keeping track of your keys or never losing your wallet, but they've tended towards the cumbersome and gimmicky, and have always been pretty limited in their function. This week, we're taking a look at a much cooler approach to the same problem: little computers called Trakkies that attach to your things and link them all up in a mesh network.
The Good
Trakkies are a great example of innovation at work. The problem — people losing their keys, forgetting their bags, etc. — has an obvious solution in a world of wireless technology, but implementing that solution in a functional and stylish way that makes people say "wow, I want that" is another challenge altogether. Trakkies go beyond a simple proximity or location system, and instead make all your stuff smart. The little node tags come in two sizes, each with a bunch of sensors and a big configurable button; they locate each other and form a mesh network with Bluetooth and NFC connectivity, and begin learning what you bring with you and when. Your wallet can warn you if you're leaving the house without your keys, and vice versa — or you can tap the button on any one tag to find out if all the others are with you. The associated mobile app is optional (a beautiful thing) and brings your phone into the mesh network without the need for an an attached node tag, plus provides additional tools like looking up the last known location of all your tags on a map.
The network can communicate with lots of other smart devices and can be hooked into IFTTT for programmable behaviours based on a wide variety of factors. And the buttons on each node can be set up with context-sensitive functions — so the button on your coat could be set to tell you if your phone isn't with you, but serve as a music skip control if it is; it could check for your wallet and keys when you're getting off the bus, but turn on and off your smart lightbulbs when you're at home. Trakkies take a big leap beyond solving a simple problem, and actually spark excitement about the new things they could enable.
The Bad
Truthfully, at this stage, I don't have much bad to say about this project. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. The price isn't cheap, but it isn't prohibitive either, and the designers have made what I'd consider all the right choices. The "internet of things" has been looming on the horizon for some time now, and a device like this could represent a meaningful step in that direction.
The Background
There's an interesting bit of backstory to the Trakkies on the Kickstarter page: the whole thing actually started as a software pursuit. The original team was a research company at European Space Agency BIC, and was focused entirely on the data science and machine learning aspects of the project. The switch to a focus on hardware only came when the team realized that nobody was making hardware capable of doing what they wanted their software to do. That's the path innovation often takes, and beautifully illustrative of the fact that the simplest problems — people sometimes forget their keys — can yield the most interesting and groundbreaking solutions.
Filed Under: awesome stuff, mesh network, smart things
