“Losing things is a part of life. Accio makes sure you always get back what you lose, via voice.
“Accio” happened, basically because it was essential for the smooth functioning of my daily routines. Every morning, while getting ready for work, locating my bike keys and wallet would be a struggle. Yes, everything could have been solved if I could just decide to keep my keys at the same place all the time, but where’s the fun in that..
Hence I began looking for technologies I could use to solve my problem. The first set of ideas involved BLE markers and tags, but it felt like an overkill. GPS never was a feasible option, since I was sure that I’ll always bring back my bike keys home anyway; the problem was definitely local in nature. The ideal solution seemed to be Wi-Fi based, since it would meet my localization requirement. Power consumption would be an issue, but I decided to go along with it to see how it would work out. And so I chose an ESP-8266 for Accio, since I was slightly familiar with a NodeMCU, which is based on the same Espressif chip used by the ESP-8266, but with an FTDI chip on board, so as to enable communications with the computer directly as a COM port. The ESP-8266 module would save space, but requires an extra FTDI USB to Serial converter module to program or send and receive data.”