Emergency Beacon

So I was driving through Vermont this weekend and the wife and I were both playing with our iPhones, I've got a iPhone 3G and the wife has the original iPhone, and we were getting intermittent signal. I started to think of the poor CNet writer/editor and his family who got stuck in the middle of the wood out in north CA and died. Scarry thought to tell you the truth.

The wife and I started to talk about emergency supplies and creating some sort of emergency pack. We even talked about what we would put in such a pack and maybe we could sell it. The thing that then came to mind was some kind of emergency beacon. Thus the emergency beacon idea.

The basic concept would be small package, something you could easily store in the car, that when you activate would triangulate your location (GPS) and broadcast an SOS with your location. An after though was to throw in some sort of soalar panel. I think a basic model would just have lights indicating if the GPS locked in and then another light that indicates when the system is broadcasting the SOS. A higher end model would have a display with information like how many satelites the GPS can see, what your location is, and then that the system is broadcasting, and even battery charge/status.

I think this is an awsome idea, next stop is SparkFun to see if they have the parts. Of course the other search is to discover if someone else has done this. One of the keys would be "no subscription"