Remember that game you used to play as a kid, where you had to try and find the hidden object from somewhere in the house, and the closer you got to it, the warmer you were? Do you get a sense of deja vu every time you try and find your sunglasses or the remote control? That concept is now about to go digital.
A small Nevada-based start-up called WIHO Corp has developed and is about to launch a wireless object finder kit for home use. The kit, which is expected to be released in the US around May 2006 will consist of three wireless access points and cabling, a sheet of 30 adhesive RFID tags and software to run on Macintosh, PC and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. According to an unnamed source from WIHO, the retail price for the kit is likely to be somewhere around US$400. A final brand name for the product is still being worked out, with Home Sleuth, WIHO Sherlock, WIHO-R-FIDO and iBloodHound all in the running.
WIHO Marketing Vice President, Russ Quartermaine was quoted as saying, “There are any number of computer-savvy folk around the world who struggle to remember where they left the TV remote or their car keys. With our wireless finder kit, we can save people minutes, even hours a day as they go hunting for that important item that slipped down the back of the sofa or was accidentally left in their jeans pocket in the dirty clothes basket.” The system works by locating items affixed with an RFID tag using triangulation from the three wireless access points. The software provided with the kit allows users to set up a floor plan of their house. Then, by assigning the supplied RFID with particular attributes, such as “house keys”, “wallet”, “cell phone”, etc. and attaching them to the appropriate objects, users can locate these objects quickly by using a hand-held PDA or regular computer.Users can also log in remotely over the Internet to help family members at home search for missing items. The kit can support over 250 RFID-tagged objects. Additional sheets of RFID labels will be available for separate purchase on launch date. ** This information was provided to me by a pilot user of the WIHO object finder kit. **