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Tracking devices for lost objects.

I

iamtrout

Diamond Member
I just recently lost my 20GB MP3 player and I can't help but wonder how great it would be if it had a built-in tracking device of some sort, but I don't understand why there aren't technologies like this available already for people to put on valuables that may get stolen or misplaced, like expensive electronics, your car, your keys, your wallet, kids...

Last I heard was a company called SiRF making these tracking devices, but I haven't heard of any of their products being available commercially.

I was thinking, as far as my MP3 player was concerned, that such a device could be attached inside the player and could be powered by the player's own battery, and to save power the tracker would only turn on at a specific time(s) of the day and report its GPS signal to a reciever that's on all the time in the user's home. Or report its position to a satelite that in return relays the info to a reciever.

Or integrate a cell phone reciever into it so if one loses something simply "call" it with your cell phone and it would text message you coordinates.

Anyone could benefit greatly from tracking devices, so why aren't any avaliable that are user-installable?
 
My guess would be all of the "the government is out to get me" types would think that this invades their privacy. Which is a valid argument
 
Do we even have the battery technology for that? Could you imagine how big a battery that would have to be for it to be able to recieve messages through a Cell Phone Reciever. I believe Wal-mart is tracking their inventory through RF-ID's, but that is only possible because the chip's get their power from the radio waves in the air and not a battery or some stored energy source. That also means you have very limited range. I guess your talking about On-Star for your Ipod. That would be a funny little feature you could ask GM to add.
 
LoJack has been selling tracking devices for high value items for years. They were designed for cars but have been adapted to construction equipment, high value shipments, and other items expensive enough to make it worth while.
 
Couldn't RFID be used to track people (kids) and valuables from great distances or is the range that limited? I could definitely see the potential for abuse, especially by paranoid spouses, stupid teens and young adult pranksters, not to mention criminals and sex offenders if you could get that stuff anywhere.
 
RFID is highly range limited. The chips don?t power themselves. They get power from the reader. So in other words, unless you can make a long range RFID reader, its not going to happen. GPS coupled with a small UHF transmitter probably has a good chance of being a decent tracker.
 
Why not require the device in question to be in the presence of the owner before it will work? If the owner had the embedded chip in his body and the device had the RFID reader, the problem is solved. This would work for just about any device you could name. When you bought a new gadget it would be programmed for the exclusive use of the owner and would be worthless to anyone else. Good for cars, guns, stereos, laptops, and anything else. The thief would have to cut your head off and take it with him to listen to your Ipod. Just like GM's Passkey III transponder.
 
They have "LoJack for Notebooks" now.... it's not actually called that, it's by a company called CompuTrace or something like that...
 
Originally posted by: Megamixman
RFID is highly range limited. The chips don?t power themselves.
Click to expand...
Passive RFID is highly range limited. Active RFID tags do power themselves and can be read from a distance of nearly 100m. It's possible to use it to hunt down a lost item, but of limited use.

Honestly, the cost / benefit to such a device just doesn't make sense until you get into the thousands of dollars. If you already have computing power (in say a laptop) or connectivity (in a cellphone, PPC, Blackberry, etc), I can see it being possible to customize something to the device.
 
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