I’ve literally never seen anyone else do that. In fact, if I saw your placed cart, I would assume it was abandoned, as I have seen that on occasion. (And, yes, I know they are abandoned–they’re still there an hour later.) I would not have thought anything of just taking an item out of your cart.
Heck, I had a lot of freetime at places like that, as I would be dragged along with my family. If I got bored, I sometimes would take an item put back in the wrong place and put it back. I could see myself starting to take your items back where they belonged, especially if they were cold food.
"I’m so tired of putting down my shopping basket and spending 1/2 hour finding it."
Beware of overly high-tech and complex Rube-Goldbergian solutions to such a simple problem.
Try this:
1–Using a black Sharpie pen, practice writing mirror images of words.
2–On your next shopping trip, bring your Sharpie and a pocket mirror.
3–At the store, look at the merchandise, then put your basket down.
4–Using your Sharpie pen, write a mirror-image reminder on your forehead.
4–Four minutes later, when you realize you’ve forgotten your basket again,
pull out your pocket mirror, look into it, and read what you wrote on your
forehead–for example: Sanitary Napkins
5–Then head to the Sanitary Napkin section and eureka!–your basket!
So–if I understand you correctly–couldn’t I use simple optics to invert the image that I’m writing on my forehead (something as simple as a spoon works at certain distances), and then have that copied on the mirror as well, which I’m carrying anyway? Or–get this–I don’t know, have that image copied onto something paper-thin and foldable which could put in your pocket or wallet and then glance at? Then the mirror is an expendable.
And then have that transferred, if necessary, to something even more readily available, like the back of my hand. And develop some simple 1 or 2 letter code for some common locations, like “SN” for the sanitary napkin display.
You’d think someone would have invented a system for that by now, because knowing me I’d buy it.
“Goldberg was fascinated by the advancement of technology and thought it humorous as people either embraced change and the benefits technology brought or were reluctant as it seemingly increased dependency and laziness. He personally believed people preferred choosing a more difficult route instead of completing a goal simply and directly. As he said, ‘the machines are a symbol of man’s capacity for exerting maximum effort to achieve minimal results.’ His inventions were interesting as they did the complete opposite of what most machines do–instead of making difficult things easy, they made easy things difficult.”
It isn’t as simple a problem to solve as one might hope. Right at the top of the thread (before things got silly) beowulff linked to the Tile. Trouble with it, and any other bluetooth or WiFi solution is that there is only range, and no direction. The trick the Tile uses to let you find lost things at a distance is to get any nearby cooperating iPhone to use its GPS to phone in the location of any nearby lost tile it sees. (The depth of privacy issues both this, and indeed the entire Tile product involve is truly wonderous.) Trouble with GPS is that it isn’t so hot indoors, and even if you get satellite lock, the precision is unlikely to be good enough for the OP’s needs.
OK for real cheap?
Raspberry Pi, plus Picam, and Wifi. Leave it in the basket and when you lose it, get it to send you a picture of what it sees. Wall of cans of soup? Bread? Easy, and off you go. Avoid letting the camera point upwards if you leave it on the floor. Very very bad.
High res camera pointing sideways. System reads the bar codes, looks up the product code. Tells you it is next to the haemorrhoid cream. You go ask the nearest (good looking, young) assistant where the haemorrhoid cream is, and thus get directed to your basket.
Instead of a camera, add a multi-axis accelerometer and optical gyro set, maybe optical flow, and have it dead recon its location around the shop. Then it can tell you where it is relative to when you set the zero point.
Something like a Pixhawk.
Keep the nav system in your pocket and have it detect when you leave the vicinity of the basket and have it navigate you back to the basket. Downside is that unless it knows the layout of the shop it may need to have you retrace your steps, which might be strange to watch.
Directional antenna - so you can get a bearing on a simple transmitter in the basket. Simple 2.4GHz. Downside, you need to carry the antenna. Alternatively, carry a roll of wire and go find the Pringles.
Put a really cheap old mobile phone in the basket and ring it. Use a custom ring tone. Even better, use a really loud and obnoxious ring tone, and the shop assistants will eventually get to know you, so when they hear it, they will grab the basket and bring it to you.
Very bright infra-red LEDs. Point them at the ceiling. Activate over WiFi link. Use the camera in your phone to look for the hot spot on the ceiling above where it is. Even cheaper, just leave the IR leds running, and have them blink a low bandwidth ident code. App in phone uses camera to look for the ident flashing on the ceiling. Use of an appropriate code would allow multiple baskets to all be identified in the same shop, and you could use a code that can be detected in very noisy environments. (Lordy, I could patent this one.)
Francis, the Tile thingie is not GPS, but Bluetooth signal strength. I think.
I cancelled the order because an acquaintance I met that very day–spooky, right?–wasn’t using one of his four-pack and gave it to me. I haven’t loaded the app (free) yet. When I do, I’ll post how/how well it works.
About the “expendable,” like the mirror in The Sanitary Napkin Method: as was suggested upstream, often the basket is removed and the stuff re-shelved by the time I break down and ask a manager or kind stranger staff person to help me look for it. Which means the tile would be not only not be in the right place but probably gone for good, or lead me to a garbage can.
Leave your iPad in the basket. When you need to locate it, use “Find My iPad” on your iPhone, and tell the iPad to start pinging. Listen for the ping, and you’re good.
We actually did that the other day at my workplace - a co-worker had misplaced their iPad, and we used MSM to tell it to ping. Got a call a moment later from a person in the room where the iPad had been left. Worked like a charm.
Guinastasia and SeaDragonTattoo, personal jabs at another poster are not appropriate for GQ. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Moderator Note
Leo, if you have a problem with another poster’s remarks about you, the right thing to do is to either report it or take it to the Pit. You should be aware of this. Engaging people like this merely serves to hijack the thread.
I like ATMB so much I will sneak some of it here. I am aware of “this.” I did “the right thing,” after Eyebrow farted after I said the thread had already got stunk up, and I held my peace. I believed my previous response was not nastier, stronger, or more out of line than many posted in a brief give and take to get a thread back on line, appropriate for a conversation/thread/room where it would be read. I know I/(“we”) shouldn’t feel like we’re tattling or running to Mommy and Daddy.
Sometimes Mommy and Daddy are busy, and Jr. decides that it’s not worth bothering them, and thought he was doing an OK thing. Sometimes Jr. doesn’t get a reply to his post to the mods after a while, and is only further reinforced in thinking that he was right in not getting het up about it since they weren’t; and sometimes Jr. thinks that the very first verbal thrust can be parried, no matter what forum, as the record shows, with some heat if necessary, and the thread is not really derailed at all, until–only by evident collapse or prediction of same–it’s truly time to call in the Marines.
But basically, if you, Colibri, were aware of my little note, it would have been nice to say so, even given that a public Mod Note is perforce intended to be understandably admonitory pour encourager les aultres.
[/end Poster Note]
The funny thing is, I myself was thinking of referencing the thread in MPSIMS (what, no mention of IMHO or The Marketplace?) about me forgetting I had a service dog, however briefly.
FTR, for those playing along, and now we can temporarily transport ourselves to more MPSIMS climes, but it’s apropos, and from now on I’ll simply cite this post when people similarly punch my buttons: I am blind in one eye, so, no he’s not mandatory, but I trip constantly on stairs in subways, which are one giant checkerboard linoleum floor, as far as I can tell; I’ve had Buddy for 8 years now, originally assigned to me because taking care of a dog, talking to people because of his friendliness and beauty, and experiencing the hourly awareness of what amounts to portable, approachable pure Joy is better than lying under your bed in a fetal position, too tired to commit suicide, and perhaps forestalling a few extra trips to a mental hospital for the umpteenth time in the last 25 years (hasn’t done the full trick, but in the main is successful); and, for the hat trick, I since developed the chronic motor disease cerebrospinal ataxia (commonly known as “drunken sailor’s disease,” so you get the idea) which pops in now and then.
Getting closer: I shop in NYC with tiny supermarket rows (perhaps unfamiliar to non-urban airport strip markets), I shop in Chinatown, eg butchers where traffic is barely unidirectional inviscid flow, with baskets of bones, meat, and offal lining your steps, I like to examine what I buy with two hands, and sometimes thinking about what I’m cooking that night suggests ad hoc additional ingredients that I don’t want to forget about and follow my minds path down unremarked new physical ones, and–my God, here comes the Answer…ready?..OK…not Alzheimer’s or (generic) “brain damage,” but a case of galloping Attention Deficit Disorder for which, apparently, the tweaker-worthy amount of Ritalin I take daily can only do so much.
So that’s why I posted the OP! See, if you only had asked nice!
