Agree, not quite bold enough to try the tire thing. I have duct taped an airtag under the saddle for now.
Or insist that the person borrowing your car temporarily grants you Find My Friends access with their iPhone, as this gives near real-time location.
I have a bike bell that incorporates an AirTag—you’d never know. It’s not available anymore, but I’m sure there are similar items.
2 Likes
I keep hoping for some decent options to track glasses– I’m mildly nearsighted and I frequently take my glasses off and set them down, especially when doing screen work. There’s the Orbit Tracker Orbit Glasses/World's smallest Bluetooth locator to find your glasses but unfortunately it’s a little too chonky to attach to the glasses I have.
FYI, there are loads of no-name-brand Find My tracking items available on Amazon now.
I have at least two rechargeable flat bank card type ones myself, but there are also loads of AirTag-sized ones or similar available for a fraction of the price of Apple’s or known branded ones. AFAIR, the card ones I got were both less than £12 ($15) each.
I agree.
I’ve been very happy with this no-name Find My compatible card for my wallet. Charges with any Qi charger. Loud speaker. $20.
1 Like
@Pohutu You might want to check out Elevation Lab’s line of products. Lots of mounts for AirTag version 1 and I’m sure they will update for V2.
1 Like
That’s some cool gear, thank you!
As I’m just now exploring tracking devices, this surprised me. I got a card and round plastic tracker from Cardolo here in the EU and they have been pretty accurate.
For instance if I turn off Precise Location for the Find My app, it can be miles off. With Precise on, is it rather precise, within tens of meters or less. (I wish there was an intermediate step, ‘sort of close’ or something).
So I was thinking the third party device was pretty accurate. Then I thought, oh maybe it’s ‘precise’ because it’s linked to an iPhone with precision turned on, and because of Bluetooth it knows where its phone is.
As I’m still learning how all this stuff interacts I’m not sure it’s much of a downside for third party devices not to have the precision feature, as they need to be linked to a device that itself can have precision turned on. For me it’s been fine but I tend to have a kind of outlier lifestyle and rarely lose track of wallets, keys or gadgets.
The thing that hasn’t worked with the Cardolo (and maybe even AirTags the same) is the ‘left behind notification’. I thought this a cool feature, especially as I was planning a trip to staff a trade show booth for 4 days. Alas, it wasn’t working upon turning on and email with manufacturer said it more or less relies on having ‘Significant Locations’ turned on also. As much as I dislike that, I turned it on and after a couple of days was still not getting left behind notifications, so I gave up.
The Precise Location setting is YOUR location, not the object’s location. So, if the phone places you some distance from where you really are, the distance to your tag will be quite inaccurate.
If an AirTag is used instead of a generic tracker, a Find Nearby button will appear on the Find My screen for the tag. At 50 feet or so, with an original AirTag, it will show a weak connection and a distance. So, you can wander a few steps in all direction until you see the distance shrinking. At about 25 ft, the display changes, with an arrow pointing toward the tag while continuing to show the distance. At about 6 inches, the display changes to FOUND. If it’s hidden in couch cushions, you can have it beep for the final catch.
My wallet tracker can get me to 50-75 ft, but it doesn’t provide anything more precise. At that point, I need it to start beeping. However, the beep is rather faint, so I’m sort of left to my own devices at that point. If an AirTag could fit in the wallet, the Precision Finding feature would guide me as above.