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).
The problem is conceptual.
There are two types of tracker devices.
AirTags, and similar devices in the Google ecosystem, are short-range Bluetooth beacons. They don’t actually have GPS receivers of their own. They rely on the swarm of other Apple / Android phones in the world that have their Bluetooth radios active. One of those phones picks up the beacon, and sends a report up to Apple / Google with its current location and the beacon signal strength. That is how you can find your stuff, because some random person’s phone called in a sighting. Because these things are very simple, just a very low power Bluetooth transmitter and nothing else, they can run for a year on a coin cell battery.
The other is an actual GPS tracker. This device has a GPS receiver to determine its own location, and a cellular radio to transmit that location elsewhere, often just by sending a text message with its ID and location to some server. This however is physically larger because you need a battery, GPS antenna, cellular antenna, and a cell phone style radio chip. That all uses a lot more power. Most of the ones designed to last for months have a power brick holding 4-8 D-cell batteries, or a large lithium pack. Obviously that is not some tiny thing you lose in a pocket. Those are usually magnetically attached to the bottom of cars. Or, in the case of fleet telemetry, it will be hardwired into the vehicle. But this sort of thing necessarily requires a subscription fee because it has a cellular radio. That cellular thing needs an account with a carrier.
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 comparably low battery life of phones could become a problem.
I can install a barebones OS and basically disable everything except GPS. Im sure I can get at least a day or 2 out of it. Worst case I just add another solar battery pack and wire it up to that.
If you are going the phone way and care to make the battery last longer, you can also install an app that keeps waiting to receive a keyword by SMS, upon receiving which it turns the GPS on, locates itself and sends the location back by SMS. It has dual benefit of not needing a data pack and making the battery last longer since the GPS or data is not on constantly. On the down side it’ll be tough to do live tracking by this approach.
https://www.theonespy.com/features/track-location-with-sms
These are just two links that came up using a basic search to do this. There are multiple listings on f-droid to help you not just get location but control the phone remotely over SMS.
Find My Device (FMD) (Locate and control your device remotely) https://f-droid.org/packages/de.nulide.findmydevice/
Simple sms remote (Control your device by sending text messages) https://f-droid.org/packages/tranquvis.simplesmsremote/
Finder (Remote mobile phone searching via SMS requests.) https://f-droid.org/packages/ru.seva.finder/ Cheers!
So Lineage on an old phone will easily go 5 days without charging.
If I were to disable a bunch of stuff, and force low battery mode (or lowest possible with location sharing still working) it would probably go longer, closer to 8.
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.
Maybe a LoRa node with a GPS module and install Meshtastic on it? It’s got a “tracker” mode.
Heltec makes fairly inexpensive ones, but you’ll need to supply your own GPS module.
The RAKWirelss Wisblock is modular and basically snaps together; they’re a little more expensive, but they’re also more power efficient and can be smaller when adding the GPS.
You’d need to be in range, but with a decent antenna (can possibly sew it into the bag), range can be several km.
Hmmmm… I appreciate the ideas. I don’t think I’m technically proficient enough to make my own custom system. I can build computers and repair electronics, but I have never made anything on my own unfortunately.
If you are thinking about a phone with service, I am unsure how much the service will run you. But maybe a pet tracker would be an option?
I have a tractive tracker for one of my dogs. It is $144 / 2 years or $6 /month.
How frequently does it update location?
Every 2-60 minutes, and unlimited live tracking.
Honestly that is tempting… I could hide it inside the medical pouch pretty well too I think. Hmm… I have some choices to make.
Meshtastic node with a GPS radio perhaps. They’re not that expensive and work off the grid. Might need a bit of manual assembly depending on what you get but nothing too difficult.
You got here ahead of me. Meshtastic has some limitations, but in a relatively populated area it works surprisingly well. GPS trackers using Meshtastic require far less power than their cell-phone equivalents, which means they ca be smaller, longer lasting, or some of both. They can also be a good bit less expensive. Meshtastic takes a bit of learning, but it isn’t difficult and there are plenty of resources.
Look into pettracker on github and buy the hardware on Ali express. Configurable ping frequency and swappable batteries if you order 2.
Google recently opened their ecosystem up to find-my-device tags like this, they’re available from providers like Chipolo. Last I heard they weren’t very good yet because despite there being tons of Android phones around for them to work with they’d put some restrictions on them that made them ping less frequently.
They’re also not GPS tags, they ping nearby Android phones via Bluetooth and the Android phones report their location to Google. But if you’re worried about a bag being stolen (as opposed to, for example, being located if you’re lost in the wilderness) then that might be enough.
Yeah my only concern is being able to see the location of the bag really. I think I’m just going to to do the old aindoid phone stashed inside with find my phone enabled.
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
I think its the cellular part that increases cost the more it is used. Not the gps. The gps has to get off the device somehow. Could easily be free if you got the updates by physically attaching to the device but would make it very much pointless.
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.
