iPhone Bag-Claim
 

This seems to be a system that uses a Bluetooth speaker in your checked-in bag to connect to an iPhone when in range on the carousel and tell you that its arriving.

"Picture the scene - you and your family arrive at your vacation destination; you're waiting with the crowd at the luggage carousel or hall. You’re staring at lots of bags, hoping to get a glimpse of yours, and wondering "where is mine; ours? They all look so similar, and knowing you have to work your way through that crowd, only to flip the wrong luggage, to check if it's yours!

You wish there was some way your luggage could say, "I’ve arrived; I’m here!"

Well Wish No More! Bag-ClaimTM has arrived too, and in a BIG WAY!!!

The Bag-ClaimTM travel application seeks out your luggage and continually signals your iPhone with a [visual and/or vibrating] indicator until its arrived and in your hands. To keep it simple, priced fairly, and multi-functional, a readily available mini Bluetooth wireless speaker, (not included) is placed within your luggage. It wakes up when it receives your iPhone Bag-Claim signal and lets you know your luggage has arrived, and it’s close by."


Putting to one side its usefullness or not; doesn't this require you to put a switched on Bluetooth device in your bag and doesn't that infringe all the regulations on electronic devices during flights?

That was one of my first thoughts when I was reading the post. The other is that I have no idea what kind of battery life Bluetooth speakers have, but unless it is fairly long, it wouldn't be useful for long trips.

my concern is why would someone put a personal electronic device in a checked bag unless they want to give one of the baggage handlers or a tsa airline baggage screener an early christmas present.....

Sadly both of those would cause me to worry about someone who is prepared to put something like that switched on in their luggage. Now an NFC (or medium range) version of this to check you have the right bag etc might be more interesting.

My thought too. I think I'll stick with my Flyertalk luggage tags for easy bag identification :)

If you follow the e-bay deal of the day, luggage finders come up every few weeks for $6 or so. Attach one to your bag and the other half you carry, and when you and your bag get near each other - beep beep beep.

The $6 ones are not multi channel, you need to use one receiver and one transmitter for each bag, which can be a pain, but once you get off a cruise ship or something having your bag able to beep at you on demand from across a sea of bags.....

For the airport, I'll stick to The Strap which makes it so easy to spot

How long until the first plane gets evacuated because a bag started beeping as it was being loaded into the plane? I wonder if it is blast proof for when the bomb squad gets a hold of it.

There’s been some stupid things done “out of abundance of caution”, but wouldn’t the more common reaction be that someone’s travel alarm was going off inadvertently?

I would guess they would just turn it off if it was to happen, all of the ones I've seen have been meant to attach to the handle or luggage tag or whatever.

They have been around for years, they can't be that uncommon of a sight around the airport luggage area.

thou art wise :D

This would make more sense if phones had RFID readers. Then you could just "tag" your bag, open an app and wait for it to come in contact, no charging necessary. Or you could just put a few strips of colored duct tape on the sides of the bag like I do so its easy to spot.