“Watch out for thefts, watch your belongings. » It is by reading this sign, not really encouraging, at the entrance to a Spanish beach of Loret de Mar, that Brice Cavelier, an electronics engineer from Toulouse, had the idea for his portable mini safe. Called UpLock, this solid rectangular plastic shell can hold smartphones, papers, car keys or cash. Waterproof and sandproof, its owner can activate it with a code. And, once activated, if the “box moves”, an alarm – whose volume is adjustable anyway to spare the ears of summer visitors – starts to howl. “One of our users who travels in a van had put her in her seat when a thief broke the window. The alarm scared him away, ”says the co-founder of the start-up UpFiner.
Patrick, a Lyonnais, who often travels to Brazil with his wife, has swapped his “travel trunk”, American-made and more massive, for the lighter version Made in Occitanie. He stores passports and currencies there, and uses the steel strap to attach it to radiators, in the hotels and rentals where he passes. “It’s reassuring, because it’s easy to be tempted to steal objects from a room, and easy to use”, confides the traveler who has not had to suffer the embarrassment of an untimely trigger so far. . The only downsides, he wonders if the alarm, pushed to its maximum, will remain audible if he swims away with the sound of the waves and would like to be able to control his UpLock with an app.
Enough to challenge Brice Cavelier and his partner Flavien Joly, “very attentive” to user feedback. In one year, they took their invention from CES from Las Vegas to Barcelona – triggering a real enthusiasm in the Catalan capital plagued by pickpockets. They have sold around a thousand copies of their UpLock worldwide and are preparing to unveil its version 2 at the show. “Live Tech” of Paris which opens on June 14.
To dance or order at the bar
This evolution*, still with its resounding static alarm mode, is both more girly and more geeky. UpFiner has in fact entrusted designers from Caussade (Tarn-et-Garonne) with the task of imagining all kinds of sheaths with shoulder straps that “clip” around the box, transforming it into a clutch. What to jump on the dance floor of a guinguette without fear of dropping your car keys while waddling. The new secure pouch can also be connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone or smartwatch. “If you go away to have a drink at the bar, she goes to safety,” explains Brice Cavelier. And you are immediately notified if your objects take a tangent.
The Toulousain denies sharpening our paranoid tendencies. He just observes that most buyers have already been victims of theft and have stopped “thinking that it only happens to others”.
* Recommended price 129 euros