Don’t you hate it when you buy a new pair of sunglasses because you lost your old pair, only to lose them too and start all over? Australian eyewear company Tzukuri hopes to end this hopeless cycle with smart sunglasses that won’t let you leave them behind.
A tiny Bluetooth Low Energy chip embedded within the sunglasses allows them to wirelessly talk with the Tzukuri app on your iPhone. The app will alert you when you’ve strayed 16 feet from your sunglasses, 32 feet, and 50 feet. After that, the app will keep track of the last location it had for them, so can head back later and retrieve them.
Interestingly, the app works the other way around, too. If you leave your iPhone on the counter, for example, the app knows that your sunglasses are moving away while your iPhone is sitting still, and triggers a loud ring as a reminder. The app also knows when you’re at home and when you’re at work, so it doesn’t constantly send a notification to your iPhone whenever it and your sunglasses part ways.
As for power, Tzukuri embedded a solar cell on the Bluetooth chip that keeps it constantly juiced. If your sunglasses need to recharge, a notification will pop up on your iPhone, telling you to do so. According to Tzukuri, you’ll need to put the sunglasses in the sun for roughly an hour.
If you want to nab these shades, you can pay a $50 deposit to get in on the first batch, which will go for $250 a pair. Afterwards, the price shoots up to $350. Tzukuri says the sunglasses handcrafted “by the best artisans in the world” in the Japanese prefecture of Fukui. They will come in six designs, each after iconic figures: fictional lawyer Atticus Finch, President John F. Kennedy, designer Tom Ford, Beatles legend John Lennon, actress Grace Kelly, and writer Truman Capote.
While the sunglasses will be available by year’s end, they will only support the iPhone 4S and up. In its FAQ, the company says that it will not support Android until Bluetooth Low Energy becomes ubiquitous.
