Gear Eye: Because Mom Isn’t Always Around to Help Keep Up With Your Stuff
I can’t tell you how many times I have left the house to go to school or my job and forgotten a grossly important item back at home. My keys, my phone, my external hard drive, my wallet, I’ve forgotten it all. I was thinking to myself one day “Someone really needs to invent something to help me keep up with all of this [expletive]!” A few Google searches later and I found what I think is the PERFECT idea, and an item I honestly couldn’t wait to buy.
So… What is it!?
I found the KickStarter for a product called “Gear Eye”, (Mind you this was a few years ago and they have their own website now but I’ve been following their progress since) which is a small remote you can put on your key chain and little sticky RFID tags that, combined with a phone app, helps you keep track of your items you usually keep in your bag.
The creator, Roie Galitz, is a professional photographer who, like me, got sick and tired of forgetting important equipment so he set out to create something he could easily carry with him that would keep an inventory of every little item he kept in his camera bag.
How Does It Work?
Gear Eye’s website says it takes just a few seconds to tag your item, scan it with your handheld scanner, give it a name in your app, and go! They also suggest keeping the scanner close to the items in your bag (like on the zipper of the bag that holds your equipment).
Before leaving to work or school, simply hit the “Quick Gear Check” button on the phone app, and it will tell you all of the items that are in your bag. But wait! It gets better! The tags sensors in them that helps the app track them through gps so if you lose an item, you can track it down to the general area of where you left it.
To get even more accurate readings of where an item is in your bag, you simply hold the gear eye scanner(they call it a dongle on the website) up to the bottom of your phone with the app open, hit scan again and it uses your phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope to get more accurate readings.
The product is now available for pre-orders with deliveries starting in April 2019. There are two different bundles for purchase, the Starter and the Pro, and several different tag packs with tags of various sizes, as well as dongles available in five different colors! Who doesn’t love a little variety?
Why I’m Excited, and You Should Be Too!
I’m obviously excited because I constantly lose my own camera and tech gear needed for school and work. But beyond that, I’m realizing that tech like this will soon be readily available for everyone and will be applicable for so many other uses! Imagine being able to use this to help track your dog in real time, never having to worry if they get out of the backyard because you can simply open up your phone app and track them down, or not worrying like crazy if your child doesn’t answer their phone for several hours because they have a sticker attached to an item they always have on them so you can check and see they’re still at their friend’s house or on campus. You can keep tabs on your parent who has begun to develop alzheimers.
Schools could use this to help track their equipment when it’s lent out to students, lessening the chance of never getting the equipment back. Better yet, if the student loses it, they can report to the school and get it tracked down and returned.
There can be so many uses for this kind of technology and I’m sure I’m not even scratching the surface. What would you keep track of if you had access to the Gear Eye products?
