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April 12, 2005
RFID chips for Ellie and Hop Hop
Both of my kids have stuffed animals that they are quite fond of. That fondness borders on obsession that often causes tons of grief when we have to find Ellie (James' elephant), and Hop Hop (Emma's bunny) prior to putting our kids to bed at night. Every parent out there knows what I'm talking about. EVERY NIGHT I walk upstairs to start the bedtime ritual, which is hard enough to begin with, only to realize that Ellie or Hop Hop is missing. I then have to go BACK downstairs, often all the way to the basement, to find one or both of those infernal creatures.
I want to purchase a handful of RFID chips for use in my home. There are a ton of objects that might benefit from this technolgy:
- Ellie
- Hop Hop
- Sippy cups
- Wallet
- Keys
- Remote controls
- Pet collars
- Shoes
- Coffee Cup
- Beer bottles -- Wouldn't it be cool if you could issue a different RFID embedded glass for each guest at a party; complete with something like The Clapper. Okay, perhaps it might be better to embed an RFID chip into something like those wine glass charms that people use to keep from drinking from the wrong glass. [UPDATE: Thanks to Andy who forwarded a link about iGlassware]
- You could even tag your kids (belts, hair clips, hats, etc.)
I don't know much about RFID, and I've only heard about companies using it to track inventory (Cisco, Wal-Mart). I haven't heard anything about DIY home RFID kits. I'm betting that the RFID chips are fairly inexpensive, and that the technology to locate and read them is probably the financial bottleneck.
Regardless, even with this system in place, the next time I realize that Ellie is missing, I'll probably be wondering, "Now where did I put that damn RFID receiver."
Portable phones are pretty cheap. I suppose I could just duct tape a portable phone around Ellie's head. Next time she's lost, I can use the phone's buit in paging feature to find it. James could then make phone calls from bed. ;-)
As you get older you could increase the frequency of your RFID receiver, and size of the items you track.
- Spouse
- Car
- Teeth
- Bathroom
- Sanity
Posted by mark at April 12, 2005 1:46 PM Subscribe (FeedBurner)
Comments
Track your sanity? Don't you have to have it in the first place?! Yuk yuk, thanks ladies and gentlemen, don't forget to tip your waitress.
Actually, I totally could've used something tonight. My daughter kinda disappeared to a friend's house without saying anything and without me knowing the friend. Think I could get the RFID thing to emit electrical shocks while we're at it?
Posted by: pcg at April 13, 2005 12:31 AM
pcg mark
0 (___ 0
-|- -|-
/ \ / \
That's an ASCII art picture of me yanking you offstage with a cane.
Yeah, I totally agree, my 2 year-old daughter just figured out how to unlock the screen door. Courtney and I have already joked about using the vibration sensitive anti-bark collars on our kids. "James, you've been talking incessantly for hours, do we need to get out the bark collar?" ;-) I'll let you know if I run across that particular feature in an RFID chip.
[Update: ASCII art, even with pre or tt tags still doesn't work too well in an HTML setting.]
Posted by: Mark Veerman at April 13, 2005 1:37 PM
I think the ASCII art worked out quite nicely. I've often said that RFID technology will only (and always) be evil if it's kept OUT of the hands of the average person. As long as The Man can track us without us being able to do anything about it, it's bad. But if we can use it any way we want, it's good.
Posted by: Topher at May 5, 2005 7:27 AM