Locating Objects Around The House

It's always interesting to read over older Sci-Fi books and see what they got right about their future. I was re-reading Cory Doctorow's excellent "Makers" recently, when I came across this passage:

Now the place was *spotless* -- and what's more, it was *minimalist*. The floor was not only clean, it was visible. Lining the walls were translucent white plastic tubs stacked to the ceiling. "You like it?" "It's amazing," she said. "Like Ikea meets *Barbarella*. What happened here?" Tjan did a little two-step. "It was Lester's idea. Have a look in the boxes." She pulled a couple of the tubs out. They were jam-packed with books, tools, cruft and crud -- all the crap that had previously cluttered the shelves and the floor and the sofa and the coffee table. "Watch this," he said. He unvelcroed a wireless keyboard from the side of the TV and began to type: T-H-E C-O. . . The field autocompleted itself: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, and brought up a picture of a beaten-up paperback along with links to web-stores, reviews, and the full text. Tjan gestured with his chin and she saw that the front of one of the tubs was pulsing with a soft blue glow. Tjan went and pulled open the tub and fished for a second before producing the book. "Try it," he said, handing her the keyboard. She began to type experimentally: U-N and up came UNDERWEAR (14). "No way," she said. "Way," Tjan said, and hit return, bringing up a thumbnail gallery of fourteen pairs of underwear. He tabbed over each, picked out a pair of Simpsons boxers, and hit return. A different tub started glowing. "Lester finally found a socially beneficial use for RFIDs. We're going to get rich!" "I don't think I understand," she said. "Come on," he said. "Let's get to the junkyard. Lester explains this really well." He did, too, losing all of the shyness she remembered, his eyes glowing, his sausage-thick fingers dancing. "Have you ever alphabetized your hard drive? I mean, have you ever spent any time concerning yourself with where on your hard drive your files are stored, which sectors contain which files? Computers abstract away the tedious, physical properties of files and leave us with handles that we use to persistently refer to them, regardless of which part of the hard drive currently holds those particular bits. So I thought, with RFIDs, you could do this with the real world, just tag everything and have your furniture keep track of where it is." Cory Doctorow - Makers

There have been some attempts to build this system - but one of the major problems it suffers with is range. Even if you are diligent and always put your socks back in a drawer you still might have problems given that typical RFID tags have a range of a few centimetres.

This got me thinking - would Bluetooth low energy be a better solution?

I've found some BLE "Key Finders" on Amazon for £3.

They're a bit bigger and bulkier than RFID - and they require an (albeit long-life) battery to work - but they do have some advantages.

• Range of up to 100 metres. Means the locating software can be built into a stand-alone device rather than into storage tubs.
• In-built speaker - so they can emit a sound when you want to locate them.
• Potentially the ability to include the objects into The Physical Web.
• Two-way communications. Press the button on the tag and have something happen.
• Data about the tag can also be sent - temperature, weight, orientation, etc.

So, that might be an interesting project to make :-)