Thanks to smartphones equipped with GPS we’re constantly reporting our position to social media, employers or anyone else who’s interested. Being tracked is simply a part of everyday existence for most of us. But what about the precious things in your life that you want to track, your pets or your children perhaps? Buying the cat an iPhone is a bit over the top – quite aside from the fact that they’re hard to use with paws.

The answer may lie in the Trax. Claimed to be the world’s smallest and smartest GPS tracker it allows you to monitor its location via a smartphone app. It’s waterproof and comes with a clip that can be attached to a pet’s collar, a child’s coat or whatever you want. In addition to location tracking it has a sensor that monitors speed and direction which means it can alert you if it’s dropped or if it exceeds a certain speed – so you’ll know if the dog has secretly got itself a motorbike.

The Trax app is available for Android and iOS. If you’re worried about the kids straying too far from home, it lets you draw virtual geo-fences on a map and can tell you when the Trax unit strays over the boundary.

Whilst its aimed at parents and pet owners, and could see an end to those photocopied pictures of missing moggies taped to lampposts, we can think of a few other uses too. Leave Trax in your car and you’ll always know where you parked it. Attach it to your partner and you’ll know if he’s really working late at the office or if he’s just sneaked off to the pub.

The Trax is due to be launched in September at a price of €185 which includes two years of data and roaming across the EU, US, Canada and Australia. If you think your dog is headed for South America, therefore, you’ll lose touch with him once he’s across the border.