Hacker News Reader

Comment by Friday_ | Hacker News Reader

Why not build your own tracker that doesn't rely on Apple. You only have to have GPS, LoRaWAN, MCU, battery, and antenna, That's about it.

View on HN

Can you get onto a lorawan network without some kind of service contract? Seems like it would leave a paper trail for investigators to follow, whereas the pirate AirTags described in the article are anonymous commodity hardware using the victim's Apple devices for connectivity.

I don't know. Maybe you get signal from tracker ( everyone likewise ) and if somebody ask you if you are the owner of it, you just play dumb.

Because:

- using a cellular modem requires a high capacity battery

- if you hide a tracker well, it probably won't have a good GPS reception

Apple's BLE-based network solves both of these problems.

Those are not problems that needed to be solved.

Problem is: 1. Precise location of tracked object, now

This is actually one problem and Apple didn't solve it very well, airtag doesn't work in real-time. You only get updates when there are people near object that uses iphone.

> Those are not problems that needed to be solved.

An AirTag might help me find my keys if they fall out of my pocket in a restaurant restroom. A cellular-based tracker won't because (1) it will be out of battery, and (2) it won't have a GPS signal.

I guess its a good key finder, maybe best key finder there is. But we are seeing people explore other posibilities. Can it track vehicles, people, or pets? Some people say that this key finder is revolution. I dont think so.

> You only get updates when there are people near object that uses iphone.

Ok? In practice, this is most of the time. In most reasonable use cases (i.e. excluding the Sahara desert or some remote mountain).

> using a cellular modem requires a high capacity battery

The example third party AirTag clone described on the linked page is powered by a full size USB power bank.

Because it's a proof of concept using an ESP32, not because that battery capacity is fundamentally necessary for the idea to work.

It could easily be optimized for power and size. Sure, it will have to use more power than a vanilla airtag, because it's doing (slightly) more, but not enough to make a significant difference.

You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that.

The barrier to entry would be a lot higher though, as all that's needed here is 'microcontroller with Bluetooth'. And that really makes it dangerously easy.

> You also need a way to communicate back the tracking results, which presumably implies a SIM card and thus more opportunity to get detected (and linked back to you). But yes, in theory you can (and always could) do that.

I think gp included the lorawan for that purpose. No SIM required.

You'd also need a LoRaWAN network to hook into.

But most importantly, I doubt you could build a LoRaWAN tracker as compactly as an AirTag. A beacon would use significantly less electricity and therefore require a smaller battery.

Below is one of the smallest LoRaWAN modems on the market, which by itself is marginally bigger than an AirTag. Now add batteries, GPS, antennas, and an SoC to drive the whole thing.

https://www.murata.com/en-eu/news/connectivitymodule/lpwa/20...

There are some groups building 'armageddon' mesh-based hand-held communicators like Meshtastic. Converged hardware is already there. The network probably is too in more and more metros if you're not within a few km of what you're trying to communicate with/track.

https://meshtastic.org

Map: https://canvis.app/meshtastic-map

There's also the helium network (https://explorer.helium.com/) which has a surprising amount of coverage, especially in urban areas.

This looks interesting, but device itself looks like it wouldn't survive fall on the floor, let alone armageddon. Just joking.

The case is up to you. I plan on using a plastic food jar :)

Ah right, I had overlooked that, never having seen the word "lorawan" before.

I honestly have no idea how widespread LoRaWAN is, but I would be very surprised if it came anywhere close to the coverage you can achieve using Apple users carrying your uplinks around unwittingly. (Especially if you are attempting to track an Apple user.)

You or I could probably do that, but that's well beyond the technical capabilities of your average would-be stalker.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com