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Herding cats with bluetooth

S

sharpstick

Lurker
After an outing at Disney with a party of eight(adults and children), I was thinking of an app that would allow one or more people to be the "herder", and everyone else would have bluetooth shock collars that would go off when they go out of range. This has been shot down a a bad idea, but if everyone has a phone(and who doesn't), they could be linked together and when out of range, vibrate or ring on both end to show out of range condition.
Is there anything like this? (Yes, there are child finder devices, but they cost $40 + and everyone already has a phone)
 
I think what you are looking for are geofencing apps. I can't vouch for any of them, but there are a bunch in the play store. If you find something that works for you, let us know. I have a few people I'd like to have fitted for that collar. ;)
 
What about tile?

It isn't the purpose, but my understanding is it does some geofencing, plus you get around little kids with no phones, and as an added bonus, don't have to worry about your luggage getting lost. I hear it makes a great smoothie in its downtime. :D

Seriously, I did a 9 person trip to Disney in December, I can relate.
 
I know of no such Bluetooth-based app, nor do I think it's feasible for 2 reasons.
1) Bluetooth is a 1-to-1 (not 1-to-many) communication protocol. At best you could herd one cat.
2) Bluetooth has a maximum, line-of-sight range of 10M (33'). For a Disney scenario with phones in pockets, radio-wave-absorbing crowds, radio interference, buildings and metal, that's probably as low as 3-6M (10-20')-- not enough to put a kid on a ride without their alarm going off. When it comes to Bluetooth, it's a small world after all.
 
No Bluetooth or other high-tech required, and nobody can go out of range...

chaingang.jpg
 
I think what we have here is a failure to communicate. ;)

sharpstick said:
It looks like geofencing is for a static area, not a moving herd of people.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, it's just a generic term to differentiate regions based on location and imaginary borders. If that location can be mobile (tied to the primary device) and the border can be relative (a specific distance from the primary device) then it would do just what you wanted. As I said, I'm not familiar with the apps that a re currently available, but perhaps if there isn't one, it would be a good development idea. :)
 
RazzMaTazz said:
1) Bluetooth is a 1-to-1 (not 1-to-many) communication protocol. At best you could herd one cat.
Click to expand...
Not true. Newer protocols allow many to one. I can have multiple phones connected to my truck radio at the same time. I can also have my phone paired to a bluetooth speaker for audio and my truck for phone calls.
RazzMaTazz said:
2) Bluetooth has a maximum, line-of-sight range of 10M (33'). For a Disney scenario with phones in pockets, radio-wave-absorbing crowds, radio interference, buildings and metal, that's probably as low as 3-6M (10-20')-- not enough to put a kid on a ride without their alarm going off. When it comes to Bluetooth, it's a small world after all.
Click to expand...
Class 1 bluetooth has a range of 100 meters, again, I reference my truck. When I'm at work and hit the remote start in my office I have to turn off bluetooth on my phone. Reason, it tries routing my phone calls through the truck stereo.
 
Unforgiven said:
Not true. Newer protocols allow many to one. I can have multiple phones connected to my truck radio at the same time. I can also have my phone paired to a bluetooth speaker for audio and my truck for phone calls.
Click to expand...
Sure. And you can have a BT mouse and BT speaker connected to a phone because they're different types of peripherals. But are there any SMARTPHONES that enable multiple other SMARTPHONES to make identical-type Bluetooth connections, as would be needed for the OP's desired app? I never heard of such a thing.

Unforgiven said:
Class 1 bluetooth has a range of 100 meters, again, I reference my truck. When I'm at work and hit the remote start in my office I have to turn off bluetooth on my phone. Reason, it tries routing my phone calls through the truck stereo.
Click to expand...
Are there any SMARTPHONES that have Class 1 Bluetooth? I thought that practically all (if not all) Bluetooth-capable smartphones are Class 2 (10M/33ft) because it would too rapidly drain a smartphone battery to broadcast a Class 1 signal for 100M-- and there's no normal use-case to justify such a thing.

FYI: I read that the Galaxy S8 is to likely be the first smartphone to have Bluetooth 5, which supposedly will quadruple the range of Class 2 without using more power.
 
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