Searching for a Tracker

September 6, 2022

As if air travel was not causing enough concerns, we have the phenomenon this year of the piles of lost luggage. This made enough of a splash that when we flew back from Germany we decided to mail what would otherwise have been our checked bag. It was actually the same price, though it did take six weeks to arrive.

In this atmosphere, reading the Classens current story of sitting in the Lisbon airport wondering if their bikes would come struck a chord with Dodie, enough to interest her in the piece of technology that Classens mentioned a lot: trackers, in their case Apple AirTag.

At first I dismissed this as being an Apple only gimmick, and we are not an Apple household. But Dodie persisted, and discovered that there are non-Apple versions. Reluctantly I checked it out, and confirmed that Tile is the version working on Android. In fact it seems Tile preceded AirTag, even on Apple, until Apple muscled in.

Usually I am the fan of tech gadgets and Dodie is opposed. But she is freaked enough about possibly losing her bike that she wanted to head out Sunday evening in search of these Tile things. Fortunately Best Buy had the sense to close at 6 and not reopen until next day at 11. But sure enough, at 11 Monday there we were at their door.

In asking ourselves if these things would work for our situation, we had to ask a bit of how they work. The package of a Tile "Pro" says its range is 400 feet (125 meter). So Dodie legitimately wondered if we would be in Gatwick and the bike and tracker would still be in Toronto, how would we know that?

I had quickly read that these things depend on networking, but exactly what the architecture is was unclear. Similarly the Apple product uses the Apple FindMe network, however that works. Still we bought three and headed for home. On the way there was a lot of mentions of networked systems coming from me, and a lot of "what the hell are you talking about?" coming from Dodie. By halfway home we had convinced ourselves that these things had no hope, so we turned around. Back at Best Buy, the tragically unschooled staff assured us that beyond 400 feet there was no hope. So they refunded the whole thing. Back home, more study, and then back to Best Buy. (As you can see, we were fully packed, and had nothing to do for the next two days!).

So here is the thing. When a tracker is out in the world it will "ping" its presence. This needs to be picked up by an app that receives such pings, whether the Tile app or the Apple FindMe app. If the app recognizes the tracker as one that is being searched for (which it knows from internet linkage) then it can inform "headquarters" that it found a desired tracker and an email (in the case of Tile) will be sent to the tracker's parent app as to the whereabouts, which will also be plotted on a map. In both systems it all depends on a receptive app being in the vicinity of the silently bleating tracker. In the case of Apple, such an app is supplied with about a billion iPhones. In the case of Tile, they claim to have about 35 million.

Even with just the 35 million, we expect they will be concentrated in places like airports, so there could be a chance of a receptive app walking by a lost tracker. Dodie has her fingers crossed, while I enjoyed playing with the little tech toys. $150 well spent?

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	8
Comment on this entry	Comment	1

Kathleen ClassenIt will work, and is kind of fun. I think where they really shine though is when something goes wrong. Looking at the piles of luggage in the Lisbon airport, I don’t see anything that does not arrive with you turning up at your hotel in a timely manner, unless you can point out that you know it is there!
Reply to this comment
2 years ago