[sam0x17]

This is cool as hell. Would love to see this re-adapted for regular end-user (non-business) use, as my husband and I use tile for this and it's sort of crap. Why is tile crap?

* the find-your-phone feature activates by accident all the time in our pockets, which can be pretty embarrassing. If I could I would just disable that feature as google home can find my phone just fine.

* when I actually lose my keys/wallet, the tile typically won't connect. In a meeting when my keys press against my wallet, it connects without fail.

* the batteries die pretty quickly, and the only recourse is to buy a new tile

* there doesn't seem to be (and should be) some sort of proximity tech based on roundtrip time -- make it beep rapidly as roundtrip time gets shorter (waiting for massive comments about why this doesn't necessarily indicate proximity)

[davidlstanton]

Our decision to go down the B2B route rather than the B2C route is predominately two fold:

- We think the product works better as a solution in the B2B space.

- At the moment we only really have the resources to focus on one product.

At some point through I'd really like for us to have a B2C offering but realistically it won't be for a while - sorry!

"there doesn't seem to be (and should be) some sort of proximity tech based on roundtrip time -- make it beep rapidly as roundtrip time gets shorter (waiting for massive comments about why this doesn't necessarily indicate proximity)"

To be fair to Tile, this is a limitation of BLE and the hardware on phones. Measuring round trip time would require hardware support on the phone and probably a much more expensive tracker. Instead what is available is RSSI or received signal strength indicator. It's an ok measurement but suffers from:

- Multi path, signals being reflected and arriving from different directions

- Antenna that aren't perfectly omni directional

- Signal absorption e.g. large bodies of water (usually people) not being great at letting signals go through them.

That said the new BLE 5.1 standard ratified at the beginning of this year provides angle of arrival and or angle or departure for bluetooth signals so you can tell which direction a bluetooth signal is coming from. We're eagerly waiting to find out if it will be supported on smartphones as it's an optional part of the specification and requires additional hardware. Honestly though it's a long shot - getting one antenna working well on a smartphone is difficult. Getting 4 (which 5.1 A0A requires) may end up being too difficult / not worth it for smartphone manufacturers.

[sam0x17]

Totally understand about the B2B thing,

Regarding BLE -- is that really a limitation though? Even if the hardware / API won't give you a good indication of signal strength, surely there is nothing stopping you from taking a timestamp, sending a packet to the BT device, taking a second timestamp when the response arrives from the device, and using t2 - t1 to measure "strength"? There are papers on how people have been able to triangulate a physical location based on three ping times -- this seems a lot simpler as it's the 1-D version of that problem. Worst case scenario you need a nano-second precision clock, but the principle should still work.

[sam0x17]

Clarification: researchers have been able to triangulate a physical location based on ping times to 3 widely-spread locations.

[bradknowles]

And you can do the same with signal strengths.

Basically, anything that varies with distance can be made to work.

[eb0la]

Another B2B advantage is you actually talk with people that makes decissions.

If they become customers, you know about the product directly from them and might even charge for some kind support.

In B2C it is very hard to know both your customers and all the expectations they have about your product.

[rikkus]

Newer Tiles have replaceable batteries. Also the app shows how close you are to the Tile and it seems to work. Also I seem to be able to find these, where with the older ones I had the same issue as you where I couldn’t find them when I wanted to.

I still press the button from my pocket and call my phone though. Grr.

[sam0x17]

My husband and I call it the "fat alarm" when it goes off. "Uh oh, my fat alarm is going off!"

[javawizard]

> If I could I would just disable that feature as google home can find my phone just fine.

You can disable this on a per-tile basis: https://tileteam.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207274527-Fin... - instructions are at the bottom of that article.

Note that it doesn't stop the tile itself from beeping - just the phone from ringing. I don't know why there isn't an option for that.

[sam0x17]

Still solves half of the problem for me, so thanks!

[bfirsh]

Newer tiles have replaceable batteries, which is great, but the find phone button is even bigger and easier to press accidentally. Arrgghh.

You can disable find my phone individually for each tile in the app, but there’s no way to disable for all tiles and it just stops the phone ringing so the tile still bloops.

[Causality1]

Not to mention Tile charges an ongoing subscription fee for zero-cost features like alerting you when you lose connection to a Tile.