Long Island sisters develop app to help parents keep an eye on their children in public
MANHASSET, Long Island -- It's no secret that kids wander -- so twin sisters on Long Island have developed an app that will help parents keep an eye on their children in public.
Like many parents, Kim Gavin knows all too well that time is of the essence when a child wanders away. Years ago, her 3-year-old daughter walked away from a party.
"It was five minutes of not knowing where she was, it was really scary," Gavin said Friday.
With the hope of no parent experiencing that same fear, she and her twin sister and business partner, Renee Winiski, developed the Monkey KID Sensor app.
A sensor alerts a parent on their phone if their child wanders too far away. But the sisters know it has to be something that pleases the kids too.
"How do we put this on a child and they can't take it off, place it where it makes sense," Gavin said.
So they ended up going with a shoe. The beacon sensor is threaded on and a parent can program the perimeter on the app up to 170 feet. When the child gets out of that range, the parent's phone will sound and vibrate.
"We call this loss prevention, not loss recovery. We don't want to have to find our child, we want to get them before it happens," Winiski said.
The Monkey KID Sensor app uses Bluetooth technology so it can be used anywhere. It costs $40 for a sensor or $99 for three.
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