Before anyone gets the wrong idea I am one of those peoples who’s mantra is “I would rather have it and not need it than the other way around”.
In that vein I daily a backpack that has thousands of dollars in tools, electronics and survival stuff in it at all times. I’m talking I could survive a complete collapse of society for quite some time with what I keep in that bag every day kinda deal.
The one thing that concerns me is the bag getting grabbed one day. I could replace everything in there but I would prefer to avoid spending all that money and time setting it all up again. I keep it with me as much as I reasonably can, but obviously I can’t take it with me into places like concerts or events. During those times I have it stashed in a hidden compartment in my trunk so it’s unlikely it would get taken in a smash and grab, but I would feel much better if I was able to keep track of the bags location at all times.
It seems like the small gps tracker market is basically small tags like the tile or air tag and then it immediately jumps to like thousands of dollars and subscriptions.
I am aware that this mythical tracker might not exist at all, but if anyone would know of one it’s you nerds (I call yall nerds lovingly).
A friend of mine just used an old phone with “find my device” enabled. Is this too big?
I’m a fucking idiot… This is the obvious answer to my problem lol.
I have several old androids I could toss a cheap SIM into and just pay like a flat fee for a year service.
Thank you for pointing out the most obvious thing that I will be punching myself for not thinking of lol.
I’m like actually disappointed in myself for not having that thought cross my mind once. Haha
The problem with this (I would imagine) is that that thieves these days are probably savvy enough to look for and disable a phone ASAP, paired with phones being big enough that you can’t exactly hide one in a bag like you can with something AirTag-sized.
You aren’t wrong. The bag I am using does have a secret compartment I added that is pretty hard to find on accident and it can fit a phone. It’ll probably make it a little more likely to get spotted but it would take an observant thief and in my experience they are not the smartest folk around.
Active GPS burns through battery pretty quickly. AirTags and the like work because any iPhone that walks within range will share the location anonymously.
I have no problem charging the tracker as long as it can last like 3 days between charges.
I use a GL300 tracker paired with a Hologram SIM. Its a bit involved to set up as you need to run a traccar server somewhere and program the tracker for it, but hologram is like $1 a month and the trackers battery life is several months on a charge.
Look into pettracker on github and buy the hardware on Ali express. Configurable ping frequency and swappable batteries if you order 2.
Why not tile or AirTag?
Those trackers rely on pinging off nearby devices. I need it to tell me where the bag is regardless of what’s nearby the bag.
Plus they let people know the device is near them after awhile.
Where in the world will that bag be that isn’t near a device?
If you’re concerned about theft, a phone will immediately be reset or discarded, while a tag or two might be missed.
Also the power requirements for anything that uses gps and cellular radio are going to add a lot of heft.
This is a solved problem, you’re adding requirements that aren’t needed.
You’re kinda glossing over the part where it notifies the thief after awhile if they have an unknown tile or air tag near them for too long. In the case of stolen bags it is beneficial to me that the thieves are not made aware of any GPS tracking. And most people don’t put trackers in their own backpacks so if I am able to hide it in such a fashion that they are unable to notice it right away it makes the odds of me getting my stolen goods returned much higher.
The bag weighs like 40 pounds already so it’s not really weight that I am particularly concerned about haha.
Then you probably want something like this, which both silences the airtag and adds years to the battery: https://tryandbyte.com.au/products/elevation-lab-timecapsule-airtag-10-year-battery
You’re fantasizing.
?
Check out https://landairsea.com/. Reasonable price for a solid solution.
Those look cool but charging more for more frequent location updates is incredibly cringe.
Yeah, aren’t they just using GPS? Feels cash grabby
Yeah I can understand a subscription cost for something like this, but charging nearly 4 times as much for frequent location updating feels like intentionally making a product worse so you can try and justify the cost of the “full” service. Idk.
