If you’re concerned about safety of a loved one, a gadget announced last year is finally coming to Australia for below $50.
Your phone is very likely the thing to make you feel safe, but that won’t be the case for everyone. Whether they’re very young or from an older generation, or maybe they just don’t have the phone at arm’s reach, a phone doesn’t always mean safety, even if it can make you feel safe.
Personal safety alams can, however, usually because of their size and easy of use. They’re often simple devices that emit a big sound intended to draw attention, and not really focused on a generation of connected smarts like most devices.
But that seems to be changing.
Back at CES 2024, Australia’s security specialists at Swann showed off a concept made with that in mind: a personal safety alarm that could not only send out a large noise, but also trigger a GPS location and a message to family members citing where you are.
A year later, that gadget is finally launching locally in a second-gen model, it seems, with Swann announcing the Australian launch of the ActiveResponse Personal Safety Alarm, a gadget that sits in a slim trigger designed to make people feel safe.
The slim stick is easy to trigger — push the button to send a GPS location to someone, or pull the pin for a big sound and an alert — with a CR2 battery keeping the hardware running for up to a year.
“Swann was founded to give everyday people the tools to feel safe and protected no matter where life takes them,” said Alex Talevski, CEO of Swann.
“The ActiveResponse Personal Safety Alarm represents a next step forward in that mission, providing timely peace of mind in the face of threats, accidents and medical emergencies that anyone may experience while on the move,” he said.
Swann’s ActiveResponse alarm isn’t much bigger than a tube of lipstick and designed to be attached to a lanyard or backpack, making it easy to travel, though there is a catch: you need your phone nearby to make the GPS and messaging work.
Those features work with the Swann Security app on a phone, and so you need a phone nearby if you want to make those work. The loud 120 decibel sound will work without it, but the SMS and GPS coordinate need a phone nearby to work.
For kids travelling to school, it’ll mean keeping a charged phone in their backpack, while anyone else will need to keep their phone nearby, be it your grandparents looking to stay safe, or you possibly going for a run.
The upside to Swann’s gadget could well be the price, seeing Australian availability at $39.95 when it launches locally.
