For example, there exist devices to help us find lost keys, portable telephones, and who knows what. I need a device that helps me to locate my glasses, which I lose daily. Okay, maybe what I really need is training in not losing things in the first place. You can imbed a chip in your laptop or your child. Or you can use GPS to track them. Why can't we get this product for glasses? (The kind you wear, not the kind you drink from)
Several years ago, I phoned the president of the company that made the first devices for finding keys and other stuff lost around the house. He said making a chip for glasses is too challenging. Why?
Meanwhile, one eyeglass company, if you pay a fortune for it, can equip your prescription, sports eyeglasses with just such a find-me chip. Or anyway, I think they can. Well, what about the rest of us who don't ski or race bicycles or whatever?
But that's not the only invention I'd like to see. iRobot is coming out, I read, with a version of their product that acts as a security device. Last year, we installed the security device that won the top award of the year in the apartment of my 92-year-old mother. She hated it. She felt spied on. We placed the cameras to assure privacy and could check on her anytime, at least in rooms covered by cameras. But of course there was no camera in the bathroom, despite its being so dangerous for the elderly. Why can't someone invent security devices that make sense? I had ADT at my home. Sometimes the alarm went off. After enough "mistakes," I got fined by the police department. The security company and the telephone company kept us a drumbeat rat-a-tat-tat about which of them was at fault. Needless to say, neither one helped pay the fine.
How about a directory of kids who can set up your VCR or TIVO for you? Principle qualification: being under the age of 20.
What would you like to see invented? Write in and, if we're lucky, someone who actually manufactures what you're looking for will write and tell you how to get it.
Replies | 8 Total
January 28, 2008 at 2:16am by David Locke
The technology for finding things inside a building exists already. RFID is that technology. The product exists as well. The company sells B2B and probably has not thought about selling B2C. A new organization would be necessary to sell B2C, so step up to the plate and license the technology from them.
Outside is another matter. GPS can get you close enought to find a car, but civilian GPS is not accurate enough for you to find a lobster pot. Loran was that accurate for civilians. The last forecast that I read said it would be 2011 before GPS got to be that accurate. Amazingly enough cell tower based location is accurate enough.
February 11, 2008 at 12:51am by Carlyle Bradford
Why doesn't someone invent the following: a flying camera which automatically takes your picture.
The Need: having your picture taken outside or anywhere where other people are not available to take it and you don't want to lugg around a tripod.
Market: tourists, photographers, people with cameras who want to get in the picture.
How it would work: let go of the camera, it flies (hovers) in position, and snaps a picture of you at the perfect height within X amount of seconds. Things that need to be invented: a system that would allow the camera to fly or hover above the ground with sensors of the distance from the ground to the camera. The sensors send a signal to the propellor or mini-flight technology how fast to spin to create the hover motion.
Just an idea that solves a problem. Make it happen.
February 22, 2008 at 4:10pm by wood stock
there are already products out there that find your keys
RFID
July 16, 2008 at 6:50pm by David C.
Or, you could just purchase several pairs of glasses, that way you always have a pair. You're bound to eventually find the pair(s) you lose, thus keeping your stock active on a rolling basis.
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August 3, 2008 at 6:41pm by Leslie Levy
I think someone should invent a hearing aid that has a home base to charge at and also that has a button you can push to locate either your left or your right hearing aid by the push of a button. It would beep like mad and you could find your lost hearing aid.
August 3, 2008 at 6:43pm by Leslie Levy
This Leslie's 10 year old grandson....I wrote about the hearing aid not her. OOOps
January 20, 2009 at 6:32pm by Jack Durban
Actually none of the suggested solutions posted would work. RFID is out of the question due to quite a few factors but mostly having to do with materials like steel and uncertain orientation between the glasses and the RFID Interrogator. RFID is not nearly as easy to deploy as represented. Range is very short and you can't mount RFID labels directly to a metallic object without an isolating substrate or the antenna will not see the carrier signal and produce a return.
Over my 30 years of developing products "object finders" rank right at the top of design requests.
The problem lies in powering a receiver at the device that needs to be located. Even a power cycled receiver would require a frequent battery change.
In summary remote locating is tougher than it looks. For the world's most advanced location technology see my pending patent 20080303717 "Oblique EM wave navigation coordinate plotter and cooperative transponder" at www.pto.gov.
This system provides triangulation of an object from a single point interrogator! By sweeping an area with coordinate embedded EM pixels an active tag can be provided real time position and dead reckoning data to report in real time its exact location.
You heard it here first!