[bloopernova]

I hope in the future we can determine the position of beacons to within a cubic metre or less.

My wife has ADD and she loses items often. Tiles aren't very loud and are flaky, we don't have an iPhone to use Airtags. I'm too exhausted to try to master the math needed to locate Bluetooth beacons, but I wish I could. I'd love for there to be a "just add 4 small Bluetooth boards" kind of software project, but it doesn't seem to scratch that itch for most open source devs.

[varenc]

AirTags and an iPhone 11 or newer should exactly solve this for you. Lets you locate AirTags to within a foot.

Rather than using Bluetooth connection strength, it uses Ultra Wideband for precision location. This works on time-flight using the speed of light delay like GPS. When you open the Find My app it very quickly knows the exact distance to the AirTag, and then as you walk around it uses your observed change in position to determine the exact direction the AirTag is from you.

It's really cool tech! You need to use the "Find" feature in the Find My app and not the "Play Sound" feature. And it requires an iPhone 11+ with an H1 Ultra Wideband chip in it. Cost is probably on-par with setting up various bluetooth boards around the house, and way more accurate. Though not as much hackery fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband#Real-time_locat...

[crazysim]

My partner and I are also Android only and honestly, I'm thinking about simply picking up a smashed up iPhone 11 or 12 mini and exclusively relegating it for precision finding needs with AirTags.

I don't think there will be equivalent alternatives, at least not ones with ultra wideband precision location functionality, availability, acceptable price, and robustness.

On the other hand there does seem to be some UWB support in some Android that might work with Tile's UWB: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-enable-uwb-on-android-a...

[mook]

My understanding is that the Motorola trackers have UWB but phone support isn't widespread yet. I haven't looked deep enough to see if that satisfied your other criteria though.

[namibj]

https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/uwb#uwb-e...

[izacus]

> I don't think there will be equivalent alternatives, at least not ones with ultra wideband precision location functionality, availability, acceptable price, and robustness.

Why are you so confidently spreading misinformation? Samsung SmartTag+ exists for years now with this precision and capability for Samsung Android phones.

[pests]

Sometimes people are just incorrect and no ill intent.

[izacus]

I just don't get why I see so many of people on this very site (surprisingly usually Apple or Tesla fans) that so confidently spread misinformation about things they don't have knowledge of and didn't even attempt to check.

Where does this wish to spread baseless misinformation come from?

[baxtr]

How come the first thing you assume is ill intent?

How come you are so certain what the person was trying to say without asking a clarification question first?

[pests]

Sometimes people are just wrong. There doesn’t have to be an ill intent behind it. Educate and move on. What else can you do?

[izacus]

Which is exactly what I did. And it made people here angry.

[Kirby64]

I wouldn’t call Samsung smart tags equivalent. They’re locked to Samsung phones, require other Samsung phones (that have accepted the terms of service for broadcasting location) to be nearby, and also seem to have limitations around finding if you’re in an area with no network connectivity.

It’s got ultra wide band finding which is nice, but you really need every single android device to have a truly comparable network.

[raffraffraff]

They're also unreliable in my experience. My mother has a galaxy phone and new galaxy tab, so I got her the Tag 2. I set this up for her and around 2 weeks later she said she couldn't find her keys. The "ring" option disappeared from the app. In order to get it back she has to find the keys, and re-pair the tag. Yep, find them by yourself to fix the ring function. Also I found the directional finding to be dreadful. And overall the device has a less than desirable delay. My tile pro is much better in every regard. I thought that the Samsung would have a better coverage but it turns out that the software must be installed for it to work! So it's restricted to Samsung devices that have that software installed.

[kbaker]

Hopefully the next few years will see Bluetooth Channel Sounding take off more. Promises to give every BLE device a similar (but less accurate than UWB) distance estimation feature.

https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/feature-enha...

[lolinder]

I also have ADHD, am also constantly losing things, and I've had success with the Pebblebee tags. I have a tag on my keys and a card in my wallet. The noise is loud enough that I can hear it on a different floor in an old home with thick brick walls.

[UncleEntity]

I'm guessing the 'math needed' is for using stationary beacons to triangulate your location. Even Apple just sends the location of the receiving phone which is why there are stories of the cops showing up at some innocent person's house because the neighbor kid found some headphones on the bus.

Anyhoo, back in the day I was messing around with beacons and can tell you it's fairly easy to get them working. I wrote a small program to get my laptop to act like a beacon and used some random "bluetooth tracker" on my phone which would give the approximate distance to said beacon. Then it's just a matter of walking around watching the distance measurement.

[stackskipton]

That’s AirTags with modernish iPhone now.

[willseth]

AirTags are generally loud enough to solve that problem. I wish they put the same speaker in the ATV remote.

[varenc]

The new ATV remotes support semi-precise location finding. Not as precise as AirTag and UWB, but the Find My app will tell you as your get closer to your ATV remote. I'm assuming it just makes use of Bluetooth connection strength. Sadly only the most recent remotes seem to support this.

[CharlesW]

Not the same, but there are a few options for remote cases which support AirTags: https://www.elago.com/products/2021-apple-tv-siri-remote-r5-...

[shermantanktop]

I’m also a misplacer-of-items. I hot glued an AirTag to the inside of my glasses cases but was frustrated at the poor signal. Turns out most cases are made of thin metal. Switched to a case with a cardboard core and it works great now.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

If you know that the item is inside your apartment, you only need the UWB part, which is quite orthogonal to this project.

[namibj]

I'm looking at setting up a trial system for 39c3 to allow hunting down tools given out from the logistics department (pallet jacks, ladders, if cheap enough pallets that get left unattended). Timeline for that is 10-11 months from now for when hardware has to exist and work.

I'd think of 2 or 3 AA batteries stuck to a small UWB PCB and stuck with tape of suitable type to the tool.

Are 10$ each doable? I don't see why not, but can't find any board akin to a Bluepill or ESP32-VROOM or PiPico containing the HF part.

The idea would be with base stations that can see each other well enough to synchronize and perform role-reversed pseudoranging to the tracker.

[franga2000]

While definitely not as cool, this might be achievable with the same indoor positioning method the c3nav app uses, which would probably be accurate enough to track larger items at least to a few meters. After that, you can hopefully spot them easily, or maybe even use Bluetooth hot-or-cold to track them down further.

An ESP32 with a battery controller (wemos clone) + a little pillow cell would be around 6€ each (less if you buy in bulk).

[namibj]

1) It's actually not that good, sadly. 2) It's not up that early, as it depends on much of the networking to be set up before the WiFi works. The UWB system would be set up in around 1-2 hours just walking around with a load of wall wart/radio unit pairs and plugging them into sufficiently convenient outlets around the facility. They self-organize by ranging each other, and then you just take a device with UWB and RTK-GPS that's hooked up to the free (login-walled, but free) synthetic reference station service from the state's surveying bureau, and range in the fine locations of the base stations from a few points by pretty much just walking around the building's perimeter/fresh-air-access-doors to catch both GPS and UWB base stations.

If the base stations are fixed units that mechanically hold to the outlet, noting down with a reference image for easier finding where exactly they're plugged in lets one skip the GPS walk step for next year.