Has anyone seen the KickStarter for INLO Presence? It looks pretty cool.
Thoughts?
All kickstarters look cool. It’s how they get your money. 
That said, this already exists four times. All 4 from companies that have patents. I doubt inlo will ever get to market.
- Room.me sensors. Introduced last year, this has pretty much all the same features as InLo Is promising except the map and crowdsourcing, and has patents on it.
- Estimote
One of the earliest ibeacon companies, they are very successful In the space with a well engineered product and a good SDK. I’ve been using these in my home for five years and I’ve been very happy with them.
They have a mapping feature which can map where someone is in a room, very popular with department stores but good for other use cases as well. Huge developer community.
https://developer.estimote.com/indoor/map-your-location/
- Xandem
Xandem has a successful commercial product for warehouses, I don’t think their residential product ever took off although it’s interesting.
- Zulu. One of the earliest commercial products in the space, they got a lot of buzz back in 2015 and logitech invested in them. Zuli is a good example of an item that had a lot of buzz but just never took off because of limitations. I’ve seen some consumer reports that the company is out of business, but nothing official.
https://www.amazon.com/Zuli-Smartplug-Control-Monitor-Individual/dp/B0158GV77K
These are each using different technologies and have different features, but it’s not an empty device category The way inlo implies with their “breakthrough technology” claims.
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Their Kickstarter failed.
But they are selling on their website https://www.theinlo.com/
I like this option better. If it doesn’t show up, you can get a refund or dispute the charge.
I agree with you that the field is not empty. But the RoomMe is a pricey option at $99 per device (which means $99 per room, right?)
The Estimote does seem similar, but more for commercial space. Right? I don’t like that they are secretive about pricing. How much did you pay for your setup?
I’m going to give this a try (if it actually comes out) and I will report back.
Estimote’s always been very open about their retail pricing, I don’t know if that’s changed recently. They do have negotiated commercial pricing for very large orders, but that’s typical even for things like laptops. When I got mine you could buy the developer kit of three beacons on Amazon for $99 and I split it With some friends.
Checking today, it does look like they have discontinued individual sales.
There are many more companies now making beacons, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.
You could start with radius networks, they are still selling to individuals:
https://store.radiusnetworks.com/collections/all/products/radbeacon-02-dot
Blue Charm also seems to get good reviews for DIY projects:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-BLE-iBeacon-BC037-iBeacon-configure/dp/B07FC5FMHW