Never Lose Keys with the Loc8tor

Wacky — 07 February 2006

Soon losing your keys maybe a thing of the past. The Loc8tor works by attaching items with stamp sized RF tags (look larger in the pic) that are good to up to 600 feet from the handheld device. Tags can even be set to a proximity alarm, so if they wander out of a preset range (think child or pet) an audible alarm is emitted. With a push of a button up to 24 item’s locations can be viewed, and guidance is provided visually and audibly. The Loc8tor is due for release in the UK come March, and may appear on US shores sometime in May of this year. No word on price, but with RF tags that size folks might find the device a bit cumbersome.

Via Designtechnica

About Author

Christen Costa

Grew up back East, got sick of the cold and headed West. Since I was small I have been pushing buttons - both electronic and human. With an insatiable need for tech I thought "why not start a blog focusing on technology, and use my dislikes and likes to post on gadgets."

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The Loc8tor is almost an ideal solution to the misplaced key and the like scenario. I bought one of these (the plus) and a couple of extra tags. Its a lot of money to tie up in a gadget like this, but it had another use of keeping track of a cat that disappears regularly due to a new cat being brought into the house.

It works well (when it works), but it has one potentially MAJOR downside, one that is not mentioned in the sales brochures. The tags are locked to the main unit once they are registered. They can be un regegistered, But ONLY if the main hand unit is working correctly. My Loc8tor failed in 2 days of use with a dead screen showing nothing but green (old nokia anyone?). When I sent it back I only sent the Handset (saved on postage and never entered my head there would be a problem). In the defence of Loc8tor, they sent a sealed plus pack to replace the failed item (with the usual 3 tags and a panic tag inside the pack) but ALL the tags in my possession including the 2 extra ones had already been linked to the old broken and returned handset. Loc8tor advise me they are now ALL useless, once linked up, they are permanently linked to the one handset. It makes the prospect of buying extra tags a no brainer. It may store 20 odd tags (at 20 pounds a pair, do the maths), but thats a lot of money to lose if the main handset fails on you. I will not be buying any more Loc8tor tags for this reason alone. With loc8tor replacing the main unit, I only lost out to the tune of 20 pounds for the other 2 tags I had bought, It could have been much worse had I had more tags in use.