Anyone who has ever attended a large music festival can relate to this: losing your friends in the crowd and being unable to contact them due to bad cell phone reception.
Fortunately New York-based startup LynQ behind wants to help solve this real life problem. The company managed to raise nearly $2 million on Indiegogo for a device also called LynQ that lets you keep track of anyone for up to 5 miles, without relying on a working cell network (or Wi-Fi or Bluetooth).
LynQ is smart compass slash tracker which operates across a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) network. This uses a mix of radio frequencies, a custom antenna, as well as a long-range low-powered chip to keep track of up to 12 people.
Never lose track of your friends again
The tiny device can be attached to your backpack or clothing using a carabiner clip and is weather-proof. It uses the company’s proprietary software to show you each users’ distance and direction from each other in real time on a small screen.
Users can also set boundaries for their group and will receive alerts when someone leaves the safe zone. A messaging feature is part of the package too, which allows group members to communicate with each other through commonly used messages.
So while LynQ will probably become festival goers’ new best friend, the device might also prove useful for families who have kids or love camping in the wilderness. Alternatively a caregiver looking after a person with Alzheimer will also be able to keep tabs on the patient more easily.
Now after 3 years of development and intense field tests across music festivals, theme parks and ski resorts, and US Government field experiments, LynQ is finally going up for pre-order for the general public on Indiegogo. Interested parties can purchase a 2-pack at the super early bird price of $154.
You need at least two LynQ devices to kick the network into action, but there’s no upper limit. Actually, there can be as many as 40,000 devices in an area without any detectable interference.
