Utah team designs high-tech alternative to child leashes

SALT LAKE CITY — Know a child who is prone to wandering? A Utah team developed a way to ensure kids don’t make it too far without their loved ones knowing.

The group of students from Brigham Young University, the University of Utah and Utah Valley University worked together for close to two years to create MyKid Pod and Kiband. The Bluetooth trackers connect to smartphones, letting parents choose how far their child can roam before an alarm goes off both on the phone and the band.

“From perspective of parents, we don’t want anyone to have to waste time looking at a map on their phone,” said Kaitlyn Spell, KiLife Tech’s director of public relations. “... You can just hear where they are with that very awful beeping noise and then you can find them right away.”

The idea for the two bands came after KiLife Tech’s CEO Spencer Behrend temporarily lost his young son at Provo’s Fourth of July parade in 2013. The young boy slipped away and after a few stressful minutes of looking with friends and family, they found him at a playground in a nearby backyard.

The experience prompted Behrend and his wife, who have five children, to explore their options.

“When you’ve got four other kids, you don’t want to tether everyone together and then walk your kids the way you’d walk a dog,” Spell said. “They tried all of the different solutions on the market and nothing worked, so they set out to create the two products we have now.”

The MyKid Pod was recently released at a price point of $34.95 on the company’s website, with the Kiband slated to come out sometime in the fall of 2016. The MyKid Pod was designed with children between the ages of 3 and 10 in mind. Instead of GPS, which often doesn’t work indoors and can struggle to pinpoint exact locations, the device employs a 70 decibel alarm to let people know where children are when they get too far.

Spell said the device came in handy when she was out on the porch playing with a toddler who decided to take off.

“We were able to hear that alarm on her MyKid Pod and we knew just the direction she went and were able to go get her really fast and avoid any of her riding into the road on her little tricycle or anything like that, because of that alarm,” Spell said. “It does its job so well, and I honestly can’t think of a better way than the alarm on the band.”

The Bluetooth devices have a range of about 10 to 200 feet, according to Spell. She said parents can open up the accompanying app to shrink or enlarge the distance allowed at any time. There is also an alert button on the app to make the band’s alarm go off, as well as a panic button on the band for the child to hit if they feel lost or uneasy.

The loud alarm is useful not only for helping parents locate their kids, but also for letting others in the community know something is wrong, according to Spell.

“If something absolutely terrible was happening, like in the event someone was trying to take your child, other people are not only going to notice something different and wrong is happening, there is also that audible alert that alerts everyone too,” she said.

There are already several thousand people on a waiting list to be notified when the Kiband is released, according to Spell. She said it is a more robust version of the MyKid Pod, offering added features like a water alert and movement tracking. It will also start vibrating when a child approaches their boundary, so parents can teach them to turn around before they get too far.

Up to five Kibands can be connected to one app. Spell said the team is currently working on an update for the MyKid Pod app so multiple devices can be connected to it as well.

Contact the author at ncrofts@ksl.com or find her on Twitter.

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