I’m a pretty patient person, but there’s one thing that instantly makes me go all ragey: driving away from home only to realize I forgot to put something important in my car. That U-turn? It feels like defeat. If I’m already running late when I notice my mistake, prepare to learn some new swear words.
Bringrr is a gadget for people like me. It sits in your car’s cigarette lighter port, quietly keeping tabs on what you’ve packed. If it notices that something is missing, it’ll let you know now, before you realize it 10 miles later.
Bringrr actually first launched in its first form back in 2010, focusing on helping you remember one item: your phone. If you turned on your car and Bringrr detected that your phone wasn’t within Bluetooth range, it’d light up and let out a noise to give you a heads up.
But remembering your phone is the easy part. Many of us pretty much live on our phones, these days, so it’s either in our pocket, in our hands, or gettin’ charged back up. Remembering all that other stuff — the stuff that isn’t blooping and bleeping at you constantly — is the hard part. Things like your wallet, or your camera, or that file you were supposed to bring to work today that you’re suddenly remembering just as the traffic in front of you goes all gridlock.
For all that stuff, Bringrr has introduced an object tagging system very much like that of Tile. In addition to looking for your phone, the car charger can also be configured to be on the lookout for little stick-on Bluetooth LE tags that the company calls “BringTags”. Want to make sure you remember your phone, wallet, backpack, and laptop? Pair the charger with your phone, pop a tag in your wallet and backpack, and stick one to your laptop lid. Next time you get in your car without one of’em, the charger will let you know.
Of course, there are some items you don’t need with you every day. Maybe you don’t want to drag your work laptop around with you on weekends. Thats okay — with their configuration app, you can tell the charger to only care about certain devices on certain days.
Outside of the car, though, Bringrr still wants to help you keep track of your stuff. You can ping each tag for its proximity, allowing you to triangulate your way back to lost keys. And if you still can’t find it? A backup panic button makes the tag ring out loud. The whole thing is very much like the aforementioned Tile, with the clever twist of knowing to be on the lookout as soon as your car turns on.
While I love any concept that promises to make me forget things (and thus rage) less often, there’s one flaw: the more likely I am to have tagged something, the less like it is it’s something I’ll forget. That is, the stuff that’s easiest to forget is the stuff we don’t already bring with us every day (like that important work folder) — and unless we’re constantly sticking/unsticking these things from everything around us, those one-off items probably won’t be tagged.
Bringrr is trying to raise $75,000 on Kickstarter, and it’s just shy of halfway there with 21 days to go. $39 gets backers just a charger, while kits with BringTags included start at $49.