In the era of smart everything and the auto availability of the cloud, it is often hard to remember the tangible items in our lives.
However, now even tangible items are becoming less problematic thanks to technology. We already introduced you to Chipolo and its smart wallet technology during CES 2018, but in the video above we get to see it in action.
Here, the Chipolo Card, which is a thin Bluetooth tracker and works with a smartphone app, is activated in the smartphone and sends out a 95-decibel ring sound to help the owner find his or her wallet. It works within a range of 200 feet so you have to be relatively close to hear it giving off the sound.
However, Nika Kramžar, chief marketing officer at Chipolo, told Electronics360 at CES the Bluetooth tracker works also as a hive device so that anyone else with the Chipolo app or tracker will be alerted to the wallet’s location. This will help if the wallet is lost in a restaurant or other location, allowing a community recovery program to be created similar to what Tile has done for smart luggage.
If the wallet is lost outside of that range, Chipolo’s global Lost & Found Network, which is already enabling more than 1 million users around the world to find more than 50,000 lost items daily, will automatically start searching for it. When another Chipolo user passes by the misplaced wallet, the original user will receive a confidential update with the wallet’s last known location.
While the first manufacturer to sign up with Chipolo is menswear fashion brand, Perry Ellis, and costs $75 at Macy’s stores and online at PerryEllis.com starting in February, Kramžar says the company is in talks with other brand-name manufacturers to add the technology to their portfolios. The company is also looking into other ways and other products where the Bluetooth tracker could be implemented such as in a purse or other wearable fashion items, she says.
