Hello selfhosted community,
I need a privacy respecting alternative for an Apple AirTag. I recently bought my first expensive bike and i would like to know where it is, as it will be used by multiple people.
I know gps service costs something and I am willing to pay for it but I do not want any location data ending up somewhere it shouldn’t.
Thank you.
AirTags work because there is a huge network of apple devices registering BT beacons. Meshtastic isn’t really viable unless there are other nodes around on the same channel, as you mentioned.
I have tried to use two LilyGo t-echos to GPS track my dog. Range is really poor in the mountains, so I basically couldn’t see the collared device unless it was within 100 to 150m away, which isn’t really helpful.
In a bigger urban area, more nodes didn’t help unless I was on the default channel, so same problem again, this timeline extra emf pollution.
Meshtastic is a great idea, but use cases are really limited.
The default channel is usually populated enough and I think nodes relay other channels using lora too.
My range to the next node is 7 miles.
AirTags work but chirp and thieves know to dump them.
Lucky you. I’ve got max about 900m (about half mile) by putting a node up on the mountain near me, and that was intermittent and message transmissions were delayed between 5 and 10 min.
Like I said, great if it works. Not a whole lot of good use cases, and op’s is not a good use case.
Tracking inventory is literally one of its primary use cases.