Have you ever used apple airtags or similar products and found usefull?
What all products missing have been found with this product. The proud owners of these trackers what products do you pair these with?
Any story of finding out something valuable for you with it? If you are against it why should i avoid it at all cost?

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
    5·
    18 hours ago

    Airtags have four modes:

    1. Locate something nearby, using UWB.
    2. Leave something behind. Get notified later, when phone detects loss of signal.
    3. Lose something out and about. Mesh of Apple devices can detect via iBeacon/BLE and share location to Find My network.
    4. Send device a reverse signal via Find My network, to make a beep sound.

    I have them on my keyfob, in my backpack and luggage, and we put one on the cat’s collar in case it runs away. We’ve had lots of reports of missing cats and coyote sightings.

    For the nearby feature to work, you have to be reasonably close. Doesn’t work too well if on another floor, or you’re inside and the item is outside, or in a closed metal vehicle. Lots of wandering around until it finds a thin signal. Has never worked for me.

    For leaving something behind, it does send a signal, but it could be minutes later. Also, lots and lots of false positives. Tells me my backpack was left behind when it’s literally on the passenger seat next to me. Used to be worse. Each time I left home without the backpack, it pinged. At least they fixed it so you can geofence home.

    For the mesh signal, you need to be in an area with a few Apple devices going by – and this is important – during the scanning period for beacons. If any of those are not true, you won’t get notified, and the remote make-noise feature won’t work either.

    Our cat ran out once, late at night, so not many people were walking or driving around. We started scanning. Nothing inside or outside. I jumped in the car and drove around the neighborhood, hoping to pick up a ping. Nothing. After 30m driving around, came back. Saw a pair of eyes under a car right in front of the house. Possible she wandered and came back, but cat is also a notorious chickenshit. Likely was there the whole time. No signal, no notification, no beep even though we looked out there multiple times.

    Still keep the AirTags around and change the batteries, sunk costs and all. But I’ve sort of lost my faith in the tech.

    FWIW, used to have Bluetooth-based Tiles and Ecobees. Sorry, way worse. Which is why I went with AirTags and UWB. 🤷🏻‍♂️