Idea

Proximity sensors on wireless earphones that start beeping if one gets left behind

Image credit: Photo by Jessica Lewis Creative from Pexels

Contrived _voice Mar 14, 2022

Please leave the feedback on this idea

Originality

Is it original or innovative?

Feasibility

Is it feasible?

Necessity

Is it targeting an unsolved problem?

Conciseness

Is it concisely described?

Bounty for the best solution

Provide a bounty for the best solution

Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.

Wireless earphones that stop playing music when they get a specified distance apart and instead start using beeps to show where they are in relation to each other.
Why?
Convenience, usually, when you lose a pair of earphones you start with only one, somewhere in the house or road. This way as long as you have one earbud, you can always find the other.
Makes this product more user friendly
It shouldn't be that easy to lose something that expensive.
How it works
Iphone has a "find your airpods" feature , what I'm suggesting is a design simplification. Letting one earpod find the other without needing to use the phone at all. The smallest micro proximity sensors in the market are between 4 to 8mm which is within the acceptable size of most wireless earphones. The sellers could make high end earbuds fitted with them and sell them at a different price for anyone in the market for them. The earphones could just beep more rapidly as they got closer to each other and stop once they were in contact again.

[1]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207581

[2]https://www.omch.co/product-category/micro-proximity-sensor/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwz7uRBhDRARIsAFqjulkvx2EjbVPl48c9rIl3YzlPeu4xT-vtswD_mrsz0lds3Y2jAZC_2bMaAiyDEALw_wcB

gadgets music

Creative contributions

Maybe the linked proximity sensors are not what you need

jnikola Mar 15, 2022

Hi! I think the idea is great because I lost my AirPods earpiece two months ago and it was quite an expense to buy a new one. 
I just want to comment on the "How it works" part. Proximity sensors already exist in the earpieces like AirPods. Their mission is to detect when an earpiece is in the ear so that they can save power when the earbud is not in use. The "Find your" feature from Apple relies on the last known location where your iPhone had a connection with a lost earpiece. When you come to that location, the sound plays.
What does it mean? It means that maybe what you need is not a proximity sensor, because that's something different. The devices you linked in the text use electricity or infrared light to detect movement or presence of another object in close vicinity. It wouldn't work for earphones. What you need is a location tracker, antenna, or a Bluetooth signal receiver/sender inside every earpiece, that can "communicate" with the other earpiece. If you go with any of these, then the easier way is to use a phone to track the location/signal. Since I am not a specialist for this, I am not sure if it could be done without a phone, but I know that, in that case, you would need to have a device that can send and read signals in every earpiece, which would probably affect it's size and battery life. 

Please leave the feedback on this idea

Contrived _voice2 years ago

J. Nikola, You found me out there. That was an actual concern with this one. I needed something small, not always on, independent of the phone type you preferred and super practical when using the phone wasn't a viable option. The find my AirPods feature relies on the cell connection which gets difficult when you're somewhere with a really low signal. I remember this device once that could find anything electrical as long as it was on and I was going with that angle but I couldn't remember exactly how it worked. Have you seen anything like it or anything more practical for this case?

Please leave the feedback on this idea

jnikola2 years ago

Contrived _voice I understand. While I fast-searched for solutions, I didn't find anything that suits this case, but I'll continue searching. We'll find something that could make it work.