If you’ve ever experienced the panic of leaving behind your phone in a coffee shop or misplacing your keys when you’re late for work, you’ll be interested to learn about Cobra Tag, a 2-way communication device and alarm from Cobra Electronics.
The heart of the system is a fob that can be attached to a laptop bag, keys, purse or whatever you want to make sure you don’t lose. A companion app can be downloaded for Android or Blackberry phones (plans for other smartphone OS apps are in the works). Charge the fob via USB and turn it on, then make sure your Bluetooth radio on your phone is active and paired with the Coba Tag fob. Now, the system is active and if you walk further than 30 feet from the item with the fob attached to it, your phone will ring to notify you that you’ve forgotten your item. You can also force the Cobra Tag fob to ring by pressing a button on your phone.
If you’ve walked away and didn’t hear your phone ring, the Cobra Tag will record the GPS coordinates and make note of the time the fob was separated from the phone. It can email or text you this information or even send it to you via Facebook or Twitter. If you’ve misplaced your phone, simply press the button on the fob and it forces your phone to ring. The Cobra Tag fob is a tiny item, measuring 2 5/8″ x 1 1/8″ x 1/2″ and weighs about the same as a typical automobile fob.
As you can imagine, there are plenty of nice options that the Cobra Tag allows, including the ability to select a specific song or ringtone for when the Cobra Tag exits your phones radius, shrinking and increasing the radius for alert, automatically locking a phone when the fob leaves the radius area, and even automatically showing a previously entered message when the phone locks. Finally, each phone can register up to seven Cobra Tags, which seems sensible, because eight fobs at $60 each would just be too much.
In today’s mobile society, there is no shortage of solutions for trying to keep your portable electronics and valuable safe. But Cobra Tag is unique in its two-way communication, which, as an invisible tether, is possibly the best solution yet.
Cobra Tag retails for $59.95 and can be purchased from Cobra Electronics.
Disclosure: GeekDad was sent a sample unit of Cobra Tag.
