East London had a fresh piece of tech presented in one of the shops – BitTag which updates the Bitcoin price of the item real time.
Well, maybe not the “real” real time but closely enough – the price in digital coins is updated once a minute according to the current exchange rate. The latter is being supplied to the device via Bluetooth. Currently the BitTag’s page mentions only app for IPad that would check the price of Bitcoin and channel it to the tag.
However, I guess if the thing lifts off we, the app would be ported to Android, Windows Mobile etc.
The device is pretty simple, considering it doesn’t need much complicated electronics to complete the tasks required of it. Current prototype includes: a LiPo battery – self-explanatory, Bluetooth low energy (BLE 4.0) module for the communication between BitTag and IPad, OLED display, accelerometer – shaking device makes it display a QR code for the current price, Microprocessor. The body of the gadget was 3D printed.
The creator of this novelty is Samuel Cox, who has been designing concepts for various tech pieces. The list of his ideas is full of surprisingly interesting stuff like a bottle that tracks how much you water you drink a day, turning red when you’re thirsty. If you believe you are hydrated enough, then a bike lock that is opened by a mobile app might interest you. However, it’s Samuel’s first work that in some way uses digital currency.
When asked about the cryptocurrency, he answered that he sees it’s tendency for being a trend but the lack of infrastructure to support it prevents people from using it on the everyday basis. That and the ever-changing price.
Even though the creative technologist (that’s how Samuel prefers to call himself) wants the BitTag to be widespread, he understands that the price for it is much higher than a piece of paper that’s used. Because of that, he believes a technology such as this would be more suitable for small shops, whose owners would like to adopt a new gimmick to attract customers. In other words, Walmart is not Samuel’s target.
With a Bitcoin’s price tendency to feverishly rise and fall, this tech seems useful but I don’t think it is going to be so. Of course main benefit of the BitTag is quickness with which the shopping can be made. No queues to the shop assistant behind the cash machine. Speaking of the latter, I believe it would be much more useful to implement an additional display to the thing, which itself would connect to the Internet and translate the Bitcoin price it calculated a moment ago into a QR code. A simpler concept and maybe not that elegant but much closer to the real world.
Anyway, I wish Samuel a good luck with this and his other prototypes.
Oh, one last thing, I we here at Cointelegraph are really interested in Your opinion. Let’s accept by default that a shop owner that would buy an amount of such gadgets is a Bitcoin enthusiast. So, assuming that you run a shop would you choose many BitTag or the aforementioned “BitcoinCashier”?