Hasta La Gadget!

Do you ever worry about losing your luggage when you travel? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to know exactly where you bag was all the time? Well thanks to a nifty new gadget, you can spot the location of your checked bag from your smartphone.

Announced just in time for CES 2013 by GlobaTrac, the Trakdot is a small tracking device you slip into your luggage, and can view city-specific information on the location of your bag using your Android or iOS smartphone, via SMS or E-mail. You can also just surf to Trakdot.com to view the location of your bag. There’s also an app which can alert you as your bag gets close to the carousel at the airport – a common source of frustration for travelers.

The Trakdot will be available this March for $49.95(USD), although there will be a $8.99 activation fee and a $12.99 annual fee per device for using the tracking service. Unfortunately, that price is per device – hopefully they’ll offer a discounted rate for tracking multiple TrakDots at some point.

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Whether you’re a frequent flier, an avid outdoorsman or a kid who was a prime target for bullies back in grade school, when you were so thin you might as well have been two-dimensional, your packed lunch a bait for your physically endowed peers – wait where was I? Right. We’ve all lost a bag at some point in our lives. So it’s fun to see a concept for a suitcase that hates being lost as much as you hate losing it.

Conceptualized by Rodrigo Garcia, the Hop! suitcase has three Bluetooth sensors and a microcontroller. The sensors are meant to be paired with a Bluetooth-enabled phone. A pair of treads running on compressed air help the Hop! follow its owner – or whoever has his phone. If the Hop! loses track of the phone that it’s paired to, it will lock itself down and make the phone vibrate.  It will try its best not to cry, because it’s a big boy.

Head to Garcia’s website to see more details and pictures of the Hop! Forget about following me, what I want is a suitcase that can carry me around.

[via Slash Gear]

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