Estimote Stickers are still a fresh piece of technology. We have just started shipping them to early adopters at the end of last year, and are excited to see where developers will take the idea of nearables: smart objects, broadcasting data about their location, motion and environment. We of course have ideas of our own: tagging individual items with stickers to never forget about them, using them as digital business cards at events, or putting them in a retail setting to provide more details on products.
But we’d really love to learn in what situations you, the developers, think nearables will come in handy. We’ve already heard ideas as diverse as attaching stickers to animals on farms, or to running shoes, so your Spotify playlist launches automatically when you go for a jog. Now, let’s bring this discussion public.
Dog sticker
Attach a sticker to your dog’s collar and get your dog know better: check if it’s around and track its activity. Set feed and walk reminders and make sure you take a good care of your pet even with a busy schedule.
Bike sticker
Track your sports activity in frictionless way. With a sticker on your bike you can check how long you spent riding your bike in particular day and how many calories you’ve burned. Set the goal and track your progress!
Shoe sticker
Thanks to the sticker attached to goods in an apparel store you can quickly find size and color that fits you best. The app can even advise what you should choose based on your body shape, style and recent trends.
Car sticker
Imagine a car app that will suggest you the best route based on current traffic and even play your favourite songs once you get into the car. Forgot where you parked your car? The sticker will help you find it. Save your time and drive smarter.
Chair sticker
Place the sticker on your office chair to know your habits better and work more efficiently. Get your to do list right away when you arrive and be reminded to prepare for upcoming meetings. Track the time spent at the office and keep work-life balance.
Can I use it without the phone? Is it possible to plug it to the bike and leave the phone at home? When I get back and get near the phone it would show sync on the phone app and show the data. Is it possible without the beacons around the route that would communicate? I guess that then it would need to have gps and some more memory, wouldn’t it? If it can’t be used without the phone than it’s useless because I can have the same information from just the phone, as I have right now.
Hi, We are looking to used Estimote Stickers to advise tourists in our town
about local history. 1) Can we limit proximity so as not to confuse
Visitors, 2) Can we link to Dropbox or other Cloud spaces to trigger
audio/video download and 3) As there will be a number of batteries
involved how much (approx) are their replacement (US$). Thank you
Thanks for sharing your idea. We recommend to use beacons for venues and stickers for objects. The range of beacons is adjustable and you can limit it to just 1.5 meters. The range of stickers is fixed, being close to 10 meters. In your case, you would definitely have more control over the range with beacons.
Beacons/stickers do not transmit any content to the user themselves. They send their IDs which give a clue to your app so that it can present the user with a proper content (e.g. video) according to the location context.
The sticker’s battery is non-replacable and can last more than a year depending on the usage. In case of beacons, the battery expected lifetime is more than 24 months. You can replace it and the price would be around 1-2 bucks each.
The sticker does not have the capability to store data, so if you want to harvest information continuously and save it, you need to have a phone in range of the sticker.
The point of having a sticker or beacon inside the car or attached to a bike is to bring the notification or a particularly useful piece of information based on proximity - exactly when and where you need it
So I understand that proximity means that the beacon works only with other beacons around. This way it can show the route of bicycle ride, is that right?
If that’s the case then we will have to wait some time until such functionality is available.
Thank you jacku, very helpful advice although it changes our budget a little but we can manage that. We are a little ‘in the woods’ with the technology, planning originally to use QR Codes but like the added ‘poke’ given by the Estimote solution. I do note that Estimote is going into the Cloud space, is that for ‘content’ i.e. if we have a multilingual audio message, can that be in Estimote cloud space or should we use Amazon or something similar. Finally if you know of an Estimote App developer that could be interested in our project, would I find such a talent in this Forum?
I’m not sure I follow. Every beacon works independently on others. Navigating a bicycle route is probably better handled by GPS, but you can put a sticker on your bike so that your app knows when you’re cycling, and can make it easy to quickly bring up the map or other relevant information
Hi there,
Quick question: can beacons record locations (ie track where they have been)? So that next time I connect to them, I can get history of positions?
Unfortunately, no, there’s very limited space in the beacon’s memory. Even if we were to expand it, the beacon itself doesn’t have GPS and thus it doesn’t know its position.
I loved all of the ideas suggested here, especially the one which take cares of your pet and the one in the car. What if it can be used in identifying the fresh and best food for you?
