Why the D.A.D. Bluetooth/GPS Crowd Alert™ is Revolutionary

TigerLight is and has always been about effectiveness in real life situations. TigerLights achieved the highest effectiveness of any non-lethal defense device with the Series I and II TigerLights in major law enforcement studies. See LASD Study.

When it came time to develop a device for the civilian market, nothing changed. We have written blogs and articles. Their have been many other articles and television newscasts wherein users of the product have given detailed explanations of why the D.A.D.® 2 is, by far, the best non-lethal personal protection device on the planet.

However, the purpose of this article or blog is to briefly explain why the D.A.D.® 2 GPS Crowd Alert™ app, activated by a bluetooth module inside the D.A.D.® 2 device is revolutionary in the sense that it has the potential to greatly impact person-on-person crimes in our world.

We will briefly explain the physical components and technology in the D.A.D.@ 2. The D.A.D.® 2 communicates a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signal to the Apple and Android Mobile app via Laird's BL600 module which uses Nordic Semiconductor's nRF51822 chipset that provides ultra-low power consumption with outstanding wireless range at 4dBm of transmit power. Laird’s BL600 module is fully certified by the FCC (USA), IC (Canada), CE (Europe) and MIC (Japan) for use in these countries and regions.

This is done in a unique way that is part of what makes the device so effective. The device is “force-indexed” meaning that when you put it on your hand properly, everything is automatically in the perfect position to operate the device even in a sudden, unexpected, physical attack. Your thumb rests against the rim of the opening to the spray/alert actuator (spray button), which is one button. The flashlight button sits under the thumb knuckle and has a momentary mode that can be activated with the underside of the thumb knuckle without moving the tip of the thumb away from the spray/alert actuator. You can rotate through the five modes easily and lock in a mode by pushing the button down farther, until it clicks.

The spray alert actuator is, of course, on top of the pepper spray canister. The canister sits on two pressure calibrated spring posts that hold the canister above a small button that is linked to the Bluetooth module that is in a compartment below the spray compartment. The springs on the two posts require less pressure to compress than the springs inside the spray canister. Therefore, it is possible to push down the entire canister and activate the bluetooth module without releasing the spray. This is important because there may be situations in which you do not want to release the spray, but you do want to send an alert.

My daughter passed out while pulling her 1 and 3 year-old daughters in a bike trailer and passed out, collapsing semi-conscious in the gravel alongside a country road. Before everything went black, she was able to send an alert from the D.A.D.® 2. It was on her hand while riding the bike. We received the alert immediately and were able to save her from a potentially deadly situation for her and her daughters, our granddaughters. In fact, she was still in the hospital for several days as a result.

In another situation, Kortney Blatter and her friend were attacked while in Italy and used the D.A.D.® 2 to incapacitate the attacker. An alert was immediately sent to her parents and others, who were able to contact their host family and give them their location and time of attack. Although it was not needed in this case, if the attacker or attackers would have been able to abduct them, the police would have known right way who was attacked, where and when, rather than finding out days later after they had been taken to a far away place.

The ease of use and the hand strap that secures the device into the firing position, make it so even a person with little to no training can operate it while under stress.

The initial version of the D.A.D.® had some issue with unintentional alerts being sent out when a person would drop the device onto the flashlight end. The centrifugal force would cause the canister to exceed the force required to compress the springs under the canister and would activate the app on the person’s mobile phone.

Additionally, there were very rare occasion in which another Bluetooth device would set off the app. We experimented with increasing the spring strength. That proved to help some, but if made strong enough to prevent actuation in a hard drop, it would make it too difficult to compress with the thumb. Instead, we found that by creating a specific length delay, it would stop alerts caused by drops, but activate every time when using the thumb, without even thinking about it.

We still had to eliminate the other problem with other Bluetooth devices activating the D.A.D. app even when the D.A.D. was nowhere near it and had not been activated. We did this by using a more expensive, but unique UUID (Universally Unique ID) so the D.A.D.@ 2 app would only be activated by a D.A.D.@ 2, any D.A.D. that was within Bluetooth range. This is not accomplished by pairing. We do not want the app to be paired to one D.A.D.® 2 only. If there is only one person with a D.A.D.® 2 and he or she sends an alert, we want every person in the immediate vicinity with the D.A.D.® app, to also send an alert. This could be very beneficial in the event of a school shooting or many other situations.

Another significant advantage is accuracy. As most of you know, GPS location technology is not perfect. That little blue button sometimes is moving all around your location or there is a pulsating circle that is covering an area that might be hundreds of meters or more in diameter. This simply means that the location has only been determined within a distance. Sometimes the distance is very short, but sometimes the distance can be a mile or more depending on the reception or interference in the area. This has nothing to do with the device or the app, but with Apple or Google location services which rely on several technologies to triangulate the sender’s location. 

In my mountain location, we found that about 80 percent of the time it would pinpoint my location exactly, but about 20% of the time, even in the same location, it would be off, sometimes only a little. It would maybe show my location at the other end of the house, or across the street, but sometimes, it would be a quarter mile away. It was very frustrating. I know this caused some people trying to sell alert devices a great deal of grief. For months and months I expressed my desire for a solution to this issue. We developed one.

Now, when an alert it sent, the app is able to determine if it is pinpoint accurate, or if it is accurate within a certain distance. We knew that the longer we gave location services technology to triangulate the sender location, the more accurate it would normally get. So we told the app not to send the alert unless it was within 20 meters accuracy. If not, it would allow the process to continue until it was within 20 meters or 30 seconds elapsed. If thirty seconds elapsed, it would send the alert, but would estimate the distance within which the location was.

Using this new, proprietary technology, not only did we greatly enhance the accuracy, but we also found we were able to send alerts from locations we previously could not send an alert at all. It might take 16 - 24 seconds to broadcast the alert, but it would not only send, but be very accurate. This was a huge development.

We also wanted to make it redundant, so we decided to make the app so it would send the alert via the app, text or email. Sometimes one or the other might be delayed, but rarely all three. 

We saw that every other alert we found was sending the alert to people in the apps alert contacts. While certainly good for some situations, we realized that the people receiving the alert from someone being attacked, might not be close enough to help quickly enough, just like 911. Although the police can set it up so they get the alerts directly, they may not be close enough to affect the outcome. We also put in a 911 button on the alert so a person receiving the alert could alert the police in the area and give them the location and time of attack, as well as a description of the person being attacked. However, we knew the reality was that only people in close proximity would be able to get there quickly enough to help stop the attack. We could not rely on friends and family to always be close enough to help, so we invented Crowd Alert™.

Crown Alert™ has the potential to have a bigger impact on public safety than anything ever has in our modern era, maybe ever…period. Imagine a college campus where there is an average of one rape per day reported. Now imagine if every time someone attacked someone else, every person on that campus, students, teachers and security, would immediately know who was being attacked and where they were….EVERYBODY!

There would likely be hundreds of people there to help, within seconds. What do you think the attacker would do when he noticed 100 people running at him, or ten guys banging on his door? Once this happened a couple times, I believe that attacked of any kind on that campus or any similar environment, would cease. Who would risk attacking someone knowing they had a near 100% chance of getting caught, stopped and put in jail. Maybe a few would, but not many.

It would be no different than some guys walking across campus and hearing a woman screaming for help. If they were a bunch of pansies, they might run away and call the police, but most would risk their safety and try to help while also alerting the police.

These are some of the many critical capabilities that make the D.A.D.® 2 such an incredibly needed device. Get yours at tigerlight net. It is worth far more than you will pay for it.