Pebblebee’s AirTag alternative now doubles as a panic alarm

Pebblebee is turning its Clip tracker into a idiosyncratic information alarm for free. | Image: Pebblebee

Pebblebee has announced a new idiosyncratic information feature for its Clip determination tracker that’s compatible with some Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find Hub network. Alert is being introduced arsenic a escaped update to the Pebblebee app today, and the institution says it volition enactment with existent and aboriginal versions of the Clip without requiring a subscription fee. Pressing a fastener connected the tracker volition activate a large siren and flashing airy to alert anyone adjacent that you’re successful trouble, portion besides triggering the app to nonstop a notification to an exigency contact.

Activating the Alert diagnostic requires you to rapidly property the Clip’s fastener respective times, ensuring that random bumps won’t trigger it accidentally. Unlike the sounds that the tracker emits erstwhile you’re trying to find it, the 97-decibel siren has a much urgent code truthful that it’s instantly evident to those astir you that there’s a problem.

Through the Pebblebee app, you tin acceptable up a “Safety Circle” consisting of 1 trusted contact, who volition person an SMS connection erstwhile the Alert diagnostic has been activated. The exigency connection includes a unafraid nexus to the determination wherever the alert was triggered, which tin beryllium viewed successful a browser truthful that your contacts don’t request to person the Pebblebee app installed. The institution says it plans to grow the Safety Circle to aggregate contacts “in the adjacent future,” with continuous unrecorded determination tracking being a diagnostic connected its “product roadmap.”

The tracker’s siren and flashing airy volition proceed for up to a minute, but should it beryllium triggered accidentally, oregon if the occupation resolves itself quickly, the alert tin beryllium canceled by rapidly pressing the fastener again oregon utilizing a azygous agelong press. When canceled manually, your Safety Circle interaction volition person different connection letting them cognize it was deliberately stopped.

To guarantee you cognize however to usage the diagnostic up of clip truthful you tin reliably activate Alert during a existent exigency the Pebblebee app includes a trial mode allowing you to signifier rapidly pressing the fastener without alerting your Safety Circle contact.

The caller diagnostic is comparable to the SOS Alert that was introduced by Pebblebee’s competitor, Tile, past September. However, portion Tile’s SOS Alert tin interaction aggregate radical and adjacent fto you person Life360’s exigency dispatch halfway telephone an ambulance, it requires a subscription that starts astatine $7.99 a period — and doesn’t see the audio and ocular alerts.