Dude! Where’s My Stroller?

There was one day when we were at Disneyland and we had our baby stroller with us. We parked it in the sea of strollers and all I could think of was.......

1. what if we come back out and the stroller is gone?
2. Be cool to be able to track it.

Luckily or just because of the sheer amount of strollers, no stroller went missing that day. On the drive home, I kept on thinking about how to track stuff...like keys, the diaper bag, or like the dog. So when I got home, I looked online to see what options there was to keep track of things. The great thing about the Internet is most likely someone already encountered that issue and made something for it. (my wife likes to mention, why can't you encounter things earlier and come up with a product instead?). but anycase...I found a few actually but the one I liked the most is called the TrackR. I thought it would be a great thing to write about and share what I discovered.

So TrackR is thing small circle shaped thing that you attach to anything you want to track. It uses bluetooth technology (that every phone has so don't worry) to track your item within a certain distance. So what happens if you go beyond that distance? That's where the "Crowd GPS" comes into play. So going back to my Disneyland example. Crowd GPS relies on other people who have that device near your tracker.

So whenever another TrackR user passes within my stroller, it's GPS location is instantly updated to my phone. The downside is that if nobody passes by your tracker and you can't find it, then you can't find it. But 420 million of these have sold so far, so I can't be the only dad at Disneyland that didn't think about getting one.

So chances of someone at Disneyland having one is pretty high and usually when you lose stuff, you're at a place where there are a lot of people so chances of someone having one of these is always high.

So here's the key features that I like about the Trackr (besides being able to find my stuff).

1. Distance Indicator: The app displays how close you are between you and the lost item (now if Pokemon Go had this feature..)
2. Item Ringer: You can make the TrackR ring so you can hear where it can be
3. Separation Alert: Need to make sure you don't leave something behind? You can set an alert to be notify if you do (great idea of luggages at the airport!)

See more features here!

I forgot to mention one cool feature that the other tracking devices didn't have. Let's say I was about to leave and had my keys with a TrackR on it but I couldn't find my phone? All I have to do is press the button on the TrackR and my phone will ring - even if it's on silent. COOL!

So I found this map that shows the coverage of TrackR so as you can see, it does cover a wide range of area and since this map is current at the time of my writing, the longer time passes the more coverage there is. So it's one of those things that just get better and better.

So You're Probably Asking How Much Does This Cost?
At the time of this writing, the pricing is as follows:

1 TrackR: $29
3 TrackR: $58 (basically buy 2 get 1 free)
5 TrackR: $87 (buy 3 get 2 free)
8 TrackR: $116 (buy 4 get 4 FREE)

Click here to check current pricing.

I can easily come up with at least 4 things I would need to track (my keys, my wife's keys, my phone and her phone). I opted for the 8 pack because I needed 4 already so might as well get 4 free! One went to the stroller, the other 2 went into backpacks and the last one went to our puppy as a tag.

Forgot to mention the size of the TrackR. It's literally the size of a quarter and almost as thin. See the picture of it next to the quarter. It uses CR1620 batteries that is suppose to last you up to a year of use. This is important because some tracking units I looked at didn't have replaceable batteries which meant that you would have to always keep buying new ones and that gets expensive. Way cheaper and smarter to just replace the battery.

One final cool thing is the personalization you can do with it. You can get laser engraving onto the TrackR. This is a great idea if you're using it to track your dog. You can engrave your phone number or your pets name right onto it.

Anyways, I hope you found this interesting enough to give it a try. Let me know what you think of it cause I've used it a few times already to find my phone around the house. Click here to learn more!