One of the hardest things while traveling is keeping track of all of your bags and items, especially if you are traveling alone. When you’re with a group, it’s easy to have someone keep your bags in their site – but traveling solo creates new issues, especially if you have to check our bags. Nestled inside my suitcase, in my carry on bag and also on my keys is a small little device that helps me keep an eye on everything just with my phone – my Chipolo.
Chipolo is a small bluetooth device that you can attach to virtually anything you want to track by its current GPS. Yes, there are other trackers on the market, but using the Chipolo is the easiest one I’ve had yet and has a few extra features packed inside. Chipolo sent me some of their bluetooth trackers to use on our trip and give them a real run for their money. We each placed a tracker in our suitcases and one each in our carry on bags and synced them with the app on our phone.
Once the trackers were synced to our devices we were able to name them, for me it was easier to name them by location so I knew which item I was tracking along the way. On your main screen you can see the trackers you currently have on your account and their locations if they’re not near you.
Occasionally, your tracker may not show that its within range and you can click on the tracker to see it’s currently location on a map. The current location will only show if your you have the bluetooth activated on your phone. If you do not, it may show that your bag is somewhere it’s not. Like my carry on bag is not currently in the English countryside, it is however sitting in my office.
My favorite to thing to do with the Chipolo is to use it to see how close my bag is at luggage claim, especially when I’m traveling alone. The Chipolo tracker will track your bag within 200 feet and you can even use the app to make it chime when it is within range. This makes locating my bag quick and easy and helps me get out of luggage claim a lot faster.
But Chipolo has other features built in, and it is for more than tracking your bags. I keep a Chipolo tracker on my keys at all times. If I cannot locate my keys I can use the phone app to make the tracker chirp so I can find where I stashed them. And the Chipolo works both ways, shake it back and forth and it can make your phone ring if you lost it in the couch or under a pile of mail. The same shaking feature can also activate a “selfie mode” – shake your Chipolo and it will use it as a shutter trigger for your phone. The timing hasn’t always returned the best photos for us, but with some practice, it’s a lot more fun than a selfie stick!
Chipolo has quickly become one of our go to travel tools, and it’s so small it doesn’t take up any luggage space at all.
