“The Tile”

A couple of weeks ago I had a post called “Find my iThingy”. After describing that post to one of my friends he sent me a link to a crown sourced project called “The Tile”.

http://www.thetileapp.com/

I’m sure many of you have come up with an ideal only to find that it has already been done. In this case the creators are close, but there is still a lot of room to improve on the design. Don’t get me wrong, this is amazing technology, but I think that the device is too big and that many people are not going to be comfortable with other people’s devices linking to their devices and potentially their phones.

In order for the device to be stealthy, it has to be smaller so that it will be less visible. One of the examples in the video is a bike being stolen, tracked and found. As soon as this technology is understood, the bad guys will look for and remove the tile.

The tile is a great first step in a technology sector that Google describes as “An Internet of Things”. This is a new an emerging market that could mean the end of petty crimes like theft. If everything is connected and you can find out where everything is, stealing something becomes an exercise in futility.

This new market has lots of room for innovation. We need similar things that can be sewn into clothing, that can survive the wash, that can harvest power for different sources, that can be deployed in metals to measure stress, and the list goes on. I recently had lunch with the dean of engineering at a local university and he was telling me that the number sensors that exist today is mind boggling. Combining these sensors with ultra low power wireless, has endless possibilities.

Everything is about to get smarter…

Watch the video and let me know what you think…

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