This is an extension to those devices that beep when you whistle at them, to cars who honk humorously when you press their PANIC button, and to those neat-o phones with the "Page" button.

Why don't other devices that get easily lost have a simple circuit in them that allows us to teach them their own name and then answer to that name? Or, just as well, why not create a product that performs this same task, implemented as a little button that can be stuck on *anything* we wish to name?

This could also be extended to having a central box with labels on it corresponding to all the "mobile buttons" you had distributed on devices thoughout the house, allowing you to locate them all without remembering all their individual names.

You: "Go go gadget CELLPHONE!"
Cellphone (from across the room): BEEP! BEEP! <to the tune of "Back that Azz Up">

You: "Fido!"
Fido's Collar <from the bathroom, echoing hollowly as if inside a toilet bowl>: "Arf!"
-- jester, Sep 30 2001

Cellphones can generally be found by calling them up with another telephone. If you don't have another phone, you could purchase a cheap one for this purpose.

Apart from that, how many objects would you really lose? Enough that you'd need a hundred little buttons? Or hardly any? That seems the flaw with this: either you fit it to every key, electrical appliance, remote control, address book, CD, coffee jar, pair of jeans, you own, or you'll be spending half your life shouting "Walkman! Walkman!" only to discover some hours later that you never attached a button to your walkman.
-- pottedstu, Sep 30 2001


This would be implementable using existing RFID technology, but then you'd have to have a gadget to interrogate the RFID tags, and you'd tend to lose that gadget. Perhaps it coud be designed to be mounted to the wall.
-- wiml, Sep 30 2001


This is just like all those home-inventory-system ideas crossed with all those items-that-beep-when-lost ideas...
-- egnor, Sep 30 2001


I disagree with the deletion tag. The other ideas address the same general need, but using a speech recognition facility in the thing stuck to the target is new.
-- jutta, Oct 28 2001


We have key-rings that you whistle for. Tres annoying. They go off to almost anything, any noise at all. It's enough to make you kill your cat.
-- QuadAlpha, Jan 23 2002


I like this Idea. It is close but not exactly the same as others. I know that Holtek has an IC that can do this. Programable 1 word recognition and it repeats that word. Made in to a self adhesive button would be nice. Put it where you want it. hmmm
-- chu467, Apr 24 2003



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