I lost a bunch of keys today. It sucks and it’s gonna cost me a lot of money to replace the locks. I want to to add an airtag-like device to my key ring in the future. However I don’t know of any device that works in a similar fashion, either through bluetooth or GPS, that works with Graphene and doesn’t require some kind of privacy invading online subscription.
Do you have any advice on privacy respecting alternatives to airtags?
What annoys me is that there were thin (~2mm) sticker-type Bluetooth tags about 15 years ago and cost a hell of a lot less (£10 for 3) than fucking
AirtagsTile. No battery, just a passive coil that could be found with Bluetooth signal and an app that shows how close it is. Only I can’t find anything on them, so it’s little more than a conspiracySounds kind of like UHF RFID, which are common in places like warehouses and can be done at a distance, but even higher frequency?
I imagine range was a huge issue. Unless you have an extremely powerful bluetooth tranceiver and a very high gain antenna (i.e. not a phone, a professional radio system), the inverse square law will mean you won’t have enough energy to activate the electronics in the tag after a fairly short distance. Would probably work for finding something in your house though.
Sticker tag sounds like NFC. Certainly a bluetooth tag is possible too. Thing is, Bluetooth range is a few dozen meters tops. Airtag works by turning the entire Iphone population into a giant surveillance network, so if any iphone anywhere detects your airtag, it informs the Apple mothership, which in turn reports to you where your airtag was just seen.
Only comparable long distance approach I can think of without that is a cellular tracker. Those exist (search: cellular gps pet tracker) but it’s a much bigger box with a subscription plan of its own. Someone else mentioned meshtastic so maybe that’s an alternative in some places, or a LoRA tag instead of a bluetooth tag.