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by mikepurvis 492 days ago
From an implementation point of view, I'm not sure how this could work unless the new Pebble either has wifi (not out of the question) or there's a mechanism to pair multiple of them to a single phone and clearly mark out which are kid-devices vs primary.

As a parent, I totally get you though. Ultimately kids should learn to pay attention and stay on task without the crutch of a digital nag, but it sure would be useful to be able to send them reminders or even do something like have their devices hooked up to a shared family calendar, so they could get certain periodic reminders automatically ("it's Friday morning, don't forget your toonie for popcorn day at school!")
2 comments
illwrks 492 days ago
I wonder is Apples AirTag networks could be utilised to send data, that would remove any need to have a data/wifi connection and it would also have an inbuilt way to keep tabs on a young child. And for most parents a short message is all that’s needed to send “Running 5 mins late, see you soon” etc.
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mikepurvis 492 days ago
That's a fascinating thought, since obviously it is bidirectional + there's already the ability to send a small custom payload when an object is marked lost.

If I was Apple I'd be extremely cautious about opening that up, though. Not everyone would be excited about the idea of their data plans and bluetooth bandwidth being used up to enable a free texting plan for every kid within twenty meters.

Think of how that would play out at elementary schools, with hundreds of students piggy backing off a handful of teachers' iPhones.

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illwrks 492 days ago
In my mind I was thinking it would be a more locked down parent/child relationship. So a parent could send a simple message to a child and child to then have predefined responses, ok/yes/no or perhaps a simple character input limit, whatever fits in the dead space of an AirTag message.

Then by it's nature it would be no more of an issue than a standard airtag ping.

I guess longer term you might have LoRa/meshtastic type networks that would make more sense.

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summermusic 492 days ago
> From an implementation point of view, I'm not sure how this could work

This could probably be a plugin for Cobble, the new Pebble companion app, which is capable of performing bridge tasks (like checking the weather or a to-do list).

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