In the 3rd Quarter 2015 edition of the Periodic Ponderance, Katie and Michael co-authored an informative piece detailing the benefits of physical trackers that can be placed in your luggage prior to travelling: in the event your luggage goes missing in action, you don’t need to be at the mercy of airport baggage claim to locate your belongings.
This article is a companion piece to theirs, in which they reviewed LugLoc and Trakdot.
Introducing TrackR Bravo, made possible by a very successful Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign that raised over a million dollars towards production funding. As of the beginning of August, TrackR Bravo is available for purchase to help you keep track of your belongings. It can attach to nearly anything – your phone, wallet, pet, bicycle, child, etc., and works with your smartphone to locate missing items through its proximity indicator radar (if your item is within 100 feet) or their Crowd GPS Network (if your item comes within 100 feet of one of their tens of thousands of TrackR users). The app is available for both Android and iOS devices. iOS can handle up to 10 TrackR Bravo devices (the number varies with Android), so you can keep track of multiple items at once. The battery lasts up to a year and can be easily replaced.
So how does it work?
Attach a TrackR Bravo device to the object you want to track by either slipping it inside (as in the case of a wallet), attaching it with the loop (for key rings), or sticking it to a surface, such as the top of your laptop. Once enabled, you can use the app’s distance locator to display the distance between yourself and your item, or use the item ringer to help you locate it. With a range of approximately 100 feet, this approach works well in situations where you’ve simply misplaced your item within your house. But what if your lost or stolen item is more than 100 feet away from you? That’s where TrackR Bravo’s international Crowd GPS Network comes in. If your item comes within 100 feet of another TrackR Bravo user, you’ll receive an alert with the location at which it was last detected. Besides your keys, your phone is probably what gets misplaced most often. So what if you lose that? TrackR Bravo works in reverse as well. Using one of your TrackR Bravo devices, you can ring your phone or tablet, even if it is on “silent.” Quite possibly the coolest feature, though, is the separation alert. You can set a custom 2-way separation alert that will notify you before you leave items behind.
It will cost you a mere $29 for one TrackR Bravo, and the more of them you buy, the less expensive they become (and who doesn’t have more than one item in need of tracking!). Purchase two and get one free; purchase three and get two free; purchase four and get four free. Optionally, you can also purchase an accessory pack, or pay for upgraded colors and custom engraving. For less than $200, you can walk away with four TrackR Bravo devices that are custom engraved, along with 6 accessories of your choice (choose from their pet collar, water resistant case, or metal carabiner) – and all of this ships free in the U.S.!
To purchase TrackR Bravo or to find out more, visit their website at https://buy.thetrackr.com/. We found a wealth of additional information and videos on their Indiegogo campaign page, too.