At this year’s WOMAD festival our unique finder wristbands helped families and friends find each other onsite. The wristbands proved very popular, with the trial batch of 500 being reserved within hours of them being advertised on the festival website.
How finder wristbands worked
Finder wristbands work within the festival app. Pop on a colourful upcycled wristband and your approximate location on site can be seen by authorised user in the Festival App, updated every few minutes.
The wristbands are comfortable and fun to wear. A Blispa registered design, each is unique, being made from funky upcycled ties which hide a small low energy bluetooth transmitter. They are available in a removable version, for comfort or a secure version if it is important it can not be removed.
Unique comfortable designs The wristbands are comfortable and fun to wear. Each is unique, being made from an upcycled tie
Data security and privacy You control who can see each wristband by entering an authorisation code into the app.
Wristband nearby The app shows when the wristband is nearby. You can follow any number of wristbands, so see all your famly and friends
Location on site Updates every minute show the last location on site, crowd sourced fromother app users.
6 hours
Time till pre ordered wristbands sold out before the festival
400
Wristbands used across WOMAD
10,000
App users onsite, providing around 1,000 crowd sourcing wristband location readings during the day
How it works
The location of the wristbands are crowd sourced from all the festival app users onsite. With thousands of app users on site there are lots of opportunities for the wristband to be spotted.
Finder uses Bluetooth, and it is NOT a GPS tracker. This means it doesn’t drain phone batteries too much, but can only show a rough location. This depends upon the wristband being close to other phones and beacons on site rather a precise GPS coordinate. It cannot be detected off the site or areas where there are no phone users.
For the uptodate location to be seen in the app, the phone user must have an active data connection. (Wi-Fi or data). If you are not in range of a connection then the location information cannot be updated until a data connection is available.
However the wristband location will still be being reported by other phone users, so once you get a data connection again the location will be updated. Event Control will also always know the most recent location information.
Data protection and security
The wristbands transmit a unique ID which is reported to our servers by the crowd of festival app users. This data is anonymously gathered and held in our secure servers.
We do not hold any details of the wearer, and the wristband carries no personal identification details for the wearer. In the app the viewer can enter their contact details, so that if the wristband wearer is found, authorised members of the site security team can access these contact details.
Finder wristbands being collected at customer servicesFinder wristbands proved popular with all ages.
Families and groups used the to help find each other onsite, and they provided added reassurance for those caring for more vulnerable attendees.
Supporting event security and welfare.
If a wristband wearer is found authorised event control staff can identify carer contact information. Should it be required authorised personnel in event control can also access wristband location data.