Tiny device to track your bag. Never lose luggage again. | Hacker News Reader

Tiny device to track your bag. Never lose luggage again.

lugga.me

25 pointspablosanchez45 comments

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Easily the worst homepage I've seen in some time.

Zero information, literally no explanation of what the product is.

None of the links go anywhere but the single page.. why even have links?

The website is literally void of information, which should be the only reason to have a website in the first place.

I can only imagine this is being upvoted by spam/shill accounts.

This was presented yesterday at AngelHack, I guess the team built the website as quick as they could. The presentation was quite good. Will have to look into the AngelHack videos to see if they post it.

Actually, it's a rather reasonable homepage for value proposition testing with just two exceptions. I too was irritated by the links-to-nowhere, so that would have to change. And the email CTA is dangerous in that it deters actual signups. Otherwise, this page gets straight to the value proposition and the price, and almost nothing else. It's a reasonable way of quickly testing traction for your idea, especially considering that it was (apparently) a hackathon project.

The value proposition is weak if the consumer wants to know how this works before commuting. It skews data.

This seems like a good idea, however the website needs more information. It's not to clear what your $40 is getting you or how it works. Maybe look at adding a demo video or something?

Slightly off topic: What if you already own both an iPad (assuming it's a 3g model and not just wifi) and an iPhone, couldn't you just leave your iPad in the bag then use the "Find Your iPhone" app to locate the bag for free?

EDIT: I guess my overall point is why would anyone pay $39.99 for a simple tracking device when you can do this free (with an iPad/iPhone) or buy a GPS tracker yourself, for cheaper than ~$40? Maybe this leads back to my first statement that the landing page needs much more info to convince the user this is worth the money.

"couldn't you just leave your iPad "

What if you don't. You could get lucky if you leave your iPad in the bag. But the point is when you don't.

I guess my overall point is why would anyone pay $39.99 for a simple tracking device when you can do this free (with an iPad/iPhone) or buy a GPS tracker yourself, for cheaper than ~$40?

Maybe this leads back to my first statement that the landing page needs much more info to convince the user this is worth the money.

You can do it for free if a) you already have 2 devices, b) don't want to use both of them on the flight and c) dont' worry about the person stealing your bag and simply turning your iDevice off.

BTW, genuine question - which GPS tracker are you thinking of that is less than $40 and will transmit its location to you remotely? I'd be extremely interested in one of those, but I've never seen one for that kind of price.

It may not be as fancy as what this site is offering (not sure since they don't show the product), but you can use an old burner cell phone that has GPS on it to hookup to sites online to track positions of the phone. They also have very long battery lives on them. There is quite a few tutorials online that explain how to to do it for your car, which is the same idea.

old burner cell phone that has GPS on it to hookup to sites online to track positions of the phone.

If by "sites online" you mean "send a text" sure. But that kind of data & gps usage will kill a normal dumbphone battery within a few hours.

These devices use a battery 1/4 to 1/3rd the life of a smartphone's and they use GPS chips or SOCs with integrated GPS that suck power much more quickly that the high-end SOCs you find in iPhones and decent Android devices. They do not have long battery life. Try it. I have.

There is quite a few tutorials online that explain how to to do it for your car

And these tutorials almost always hook the phone up to 12V power. Relying on a dumbphone battery just isn't worth it.

Anecdotally up to 14 hours: http://mologogo.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/485693

Supported devices: http://mologogo.wikispaces.com/Phone+List

Altertnate (commercial) service supported devices: http://support.accutracking.com/kb/article/00003

More info, eHow style: http://www.maps-gps-info.com/free-gps-cell-phone-tracking.ht...

This is assuming someone doesn't jack your iPad from your bag as they did mine at SFO. :)

That happens a lot outside the U.S. too, so I guess is better to have something worth less than 40 bucks to do the tracking.

I think the biggest risk to that is battery life.

Also, am I the only person who gets seriously bothered by profession-looking websites or applications that list the dollar sign after a price?

Google thinks the page is italian, if I let it translate it, the $ sign goes to the start... odd!

The currency sign is a suffix in many locales, e.g. parts of Europe. Makes sense for a translator to fix it. Although I'd consider it feature of the currency involved as opposed to the document language.

I've noticed an increasing trend for Americans to write, for example, '10$'. As an odd reflection to that, I've also noticed a lot of people writing percentages with the percent sign in front: '%50'. I can't help but wonder if the latter is just confused web developers.

See my reply to mdanger about battery life not being an issue at all.

> Also, am I the only person who gets seriously bothered by profession-looking websites or applications that list the dollar sign after a price?

It's common practice in some other countries to place the currency sign after the amount.

(http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/22574/where-to-place-c...)

Wouldn't you have to leave it powered on for the entire flight? Seems like it would drain the battery before you got there.

An iPad (fully charged) with no use in a bag could easily stay powered for the length of any flight. I don't use my iPad often, and when it's 'locked' it can last for a few days on that battery charged. I don't think battery life would be an issue at all.

Possibly it's more geared towards suitcases than hand luggage. I'd personally never leave my iPad or iPhone (or similar) in a suitcase and I can't imagine I'm the only one.

It gets pretty expensive to do that if you have more than one bag. Plus a dedicated tracking device can be smart enough to detect plane takeoff and landing, and shut down during that like the FCC wants everything to do. Plus much better battery life.

Plus if you live in the US and are trusting your pricey, covetable electronics to your checked bags and the underpaid TSA inspectors, you are much more trusting than I am.

For a similar product with an actual presentation, see http://www.indiegogo.com/blutracker/

I have to e-mail someone to pre-order? That seems...odd. Just setup a Wufoo or Google Form?

I don't know what I'm even supposed to put in that e-mail; am I going to e-mail you my CC details (PROTIP: No.)?

tl;dr: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.

This, simple form please? My Thunderbird opens, but I don't even use mail clients. This is when you should not use mailto. How do I give you money?

I saw the presentation of this startup at @AngelHack, they are pretty focused on building the product. I guess a better website is coming next on their roadmap.

Web apps can now register handlers for protocols like mailto: in recent browsers (Gmail does in Chrome for ex.).

Maybe you want one of these instead: http://www.indiegogo.com/blutracker/

It's from the same people behind this: http://sticknfind.com/product/

I would have linked to the Indiegogo for the latter but it just ended. I've got a few of the latter on the way!

I usually just read and don't comment. A couple things.. Better information on the website. Even just a picture of the device. Preorder is just a mailto: - put a form on there at least, it adds to the legitimacy of the company even if it just forwards an email in the end.

And a third point - whats the status of the product? Expected Ship Date? Are you just putting this out there to see if there is interest in the product? Be honest with the consumer.

So you had the hook - there are people that clicked on the link because they want to track their bags.. but you need more.

Where is the move down button on Hacker News? I know you can give points to comments but there should be a way to quickly drop posts that seem a little sketchy.

There's lot of these out there now and I guess at first glance, it seems like it makes sense. But as someone whose had his luggage "lost" (delayed etc.) about 6 times now, and every time, eventually reunited with it, I'm not sure what this app would do that the usual tracking provided by the airline's baggage service can't do for you. OK, so you can track your luggage and see it's still in JFK and it didn't make your connection to London - so what? The airline knows this too, and they're the ones fetching it for you and making sure it gets to you. This app doesn't reduce the time this process takes or in any way remove the middle man.

Maybe it's buying you a little piece of mind?

I tell you what I would be useful (as a tangentially similar idea).

At my daughter's school you quite often find that the girls' have grabbed another girl's coat, hat, P.E kit etc (they have to wear a school uniform).

The current solution is to sew name tags into the clothes, which is helpful at finding the wrong clothes after the fact.

What I thought would be cool would be is if you could sew an RFID name tag into your child's clothes, and then wave a "wand" over them as you collect them, and it beeps if they have someone else's coat (for example) on.

This may well be a bit of an over-engineered solution :-)

It's awesome that it can make my bag to talk to me, but I'd love to know what language will she talk.

There's zero information about how the device works. Will it talk to me online while my bag is miles away after someone steal it and drive away (I doubt)? Or is it simply low energy Bluetooth 4? Will it only tell me “your bag is within 200 meters” or will it exactly show me direction?

First make your website talk to me, then promise me talking bags.

Lugga.me is registered to Matteo Lai and Empatica S.r.l. ("a young startup focused on real-time emotion tracking through bio-signals") in Italy but he seems to be based in the Bay area... http://www.meetup.com/qsmilan/members/30004242/

Are all these luggage tracker devices approved to be continually while the airplane is in-flight?

I've seen similar devices. They usually require you to pay an ongoing subscription for a mobile phone connection that makes the price unattractive in the long term.

Is there anyway to broadcast a signal from these devices without me having to make a telco rich?

This seems to be just a landing page to validate the idea. However it's quite a good idea.

I thought planes generally want you to "turn off all electronic devices" at take-off and landing. Pardon the pun, but how is this idea going to fly?

Also, Q. Why is the dollar sign on the wrong side?

A. "This page is in Italian! Would you like to translate it?" >_<

Cue the starter pistol hack: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/expensive_came...

If the airline wants you to turn off your harmless e-reader, they're not going to be keen on having your luggage emit radio frequencies.

I guess this is an early design prototype (as all the social links are referring to dribble.com). Not sure what this is doing on HN.

This was announced at CES 2013:

http://www.trakdot.com/

The site in the OP looks to be testing the idea.

Thanks for the link, it seems to have all the info about this product (assuming it's the same thing).

No, a different product. However, it looks like TracDot will be available for purchase in April.

How is this different from the stick-n-find or tod devices recently launched through Kickstarter?

There is no information on the site....This belongs on theuselessweb.com

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