A 10-Year Battery for AirTag
elevationlab.com
elevationlab.com
Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained?
How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway?
If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, but that's going to take more time, during which the thief is even more likely to ditch the AirTag.
Anyway, you're really swimming upstream trying to think of aigtags as an antitheft device. They're really for something lost, not stolen. Generally, they are specifically designed to not work well in adversarial situations.
File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the police department non-emergency and explain the situation
So I say, shine on you crazy air tag tracking vigilante diamonds.
The danger is about the pointy shape.
I'd be careful climbing it, if you fall/slip it's way worse than barbed wire. (Not sure how to do it tactically)
I don't think it's that unethical to put it around the cat if it's obvious. It might be a danger in an accident or something.
I’m not sure that’s accurate. It may be true in large cities, but most people don’t live in NY or SF.
Yeah - the closest stat I can find works out to fewer than 2% of people per year are theft victims.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191247/reported-larceny-....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strate...
If you relativelly fit, and have some experience with actual fights or training in martial arts, it is not that stupid to try to recover your stuff.
If you don't feel confortable with the prospect of any kind of violent confrontation or don't have the street smarts to evaluate the risk potential of saidconfrontation, you'd still have the hope that the police would do something anyway if you have the location of your goods.
Really, at some time we need to stop glorifying cowardice and reclaim a little bit of dignity.
I mostly agree. I don't think its cowardice most of the time though. Its that laws now favor criminals if you attempt to do anything yourself. Its become public policy that "rich" people buying things can simply absorb the loss and the police don't even have to do anything because no one bothers to report it. The police win because crime stats go down, thiefs win because they get the goods, the victim absorbs all the cost and if they try to do anything the victim goes to jail for whatever charges that made the police have to get up and work.
Tbf, I am generally anti-police in the sense that they’re pretty institutionally bad at preventing or deterring crime in the current model, but I don’t really understand the argument you’re making here
That just reads like a general "this is why I'm a coward" excuse.
Also what you want is spelled "It's".
And getting into a physical fight with real injury potential because of an item?
If it is a cheap thing it is not worth it. If it is more expensive usually the law is on your side. Either way, there's no need for physical confrontation.
> the reason he resort to this kind of criminal activity is preciselly because he is not ready for the violent potential of more profitable criminal activities.
That's a gamble. What if the reason is that, although the thief _could_ be violent, they were smart enough to realize that they can get more results with less personal risk? In which case, your 'martial arts' training is meaningless when you have a knife or a bullet going through you.
Nahh, you just outsource your physical confrontation to a cop. You still belief in confrontation for resolving the issues, you’re just being a coward and not doing it yourself.
Anyone with actual experience will tell you that no amount of training will save you from the lucky stab/shot/unknown. Sure, you might win 9/10 times, but is that worth it? Sometimes maybe, other times no. Usually it's better to notify police and let the system handle it. If you handle it yourself, the system in many jurisdictions will fuck you just as bad as the real criminal unless you actively witnessed it or were attacked first.
I knew a guy that tried to stop someone from stealing his neighbor's car stereo.
He was extremely fit, young, and a fighter.
That didn't stop him from getting stabbed to death by the thief.
You can decide your life is worth a $100 car stereo, but I know mine is worth more than that.
Most people are not this
> have some experience with actual fights or training in martial arts
And significant amounts of people also have neither of these things. At the very least “martial arts” training is particularly unlikely.
I’m the only one I know in my circle with practical fight experience and it’s because I grew up in shitty places. That probably says more about the privileged area I now live, and the kinds of people it attract though to be fair.
And yeah maybe any reasonable human can beat up most tweakers, but one could have a knife or gun. Even if that’s a 5% shot, my life is worth more than 20x my bike.
Really, at some time we need to stop glorifying cowardice and reclaim a little bit of dignity.
A lot of those thiefs are not hardened criminals
However, an AirTag attached to my keys _should_ be small and it's easily accessible so I don't mind swapping the battery as needed.
- These are going to be huge with boats and canoes
- Toolboxes owned by professional builders, carpenters, plumbers
- Important crates in self-storage centers.
- Museums
- Film sets (think big $200k cameras)
Worst case scenario I report it to police directly and it tells them exactly where it is.
If something is stolen, if I don't know where it is that makes the problem 10x worse. At the very least the airtag shows where that item is (unless it has been found and thrown away).
Yes, and then wait 6 months for the police to get around to picking it up ...
Maybe my batteries die completely before the second notification triggers.
During the most recent American election I saw at least three news stories on television about campaign sign thieves being tracked down through the use of AirTags put in one of the signs. To my surprise, in each case the police were right there, and in two of the cases, the signs were still loaded in the thieves' cars. So it does seem to work.
Anyway, you're really swimming upstream trying to think of aigtags as an antitheft device.
They aren't anti-theft devices as in padlocks. But the more often that thieves start wondering if the thing they're taking might have an AirTag in it, they might start reconsidering some of the petty thefts.
It's like a surveillance camera. A camera, itself, can't stop a crime. But the possibility that someone's watching can act as a mild deterrent.
Not really. "Survivorship bias" is just the HN cliché of the quarter, and doesn't apply in nearly as many situations as posters on this forum would like.
There were plenty of other stories of campaign signs being stolen, both in the most recent election, and in previous ones. I'd call it more "perception bias." You only know about the AirTag campaign signs stories because you're viewing it through the lens of HN, and not a broader view of media coverage of the issue.
It's good for society, and (in the evolutionary equilibrium) results in massively reduced defection, if people are willing to take on high risk to aggressively punish defectors.
you discover something has been stolen (or lost), and not knowing exactly when it happened but curious about that too, you immediately try to look up where it was last seen and if it's still tracking. What's the problem with that scenario, sounds perfectly reasonable.
he wants the long battery not because the thief is going to carry it around for 10 years, but simply so that it will more likely to be charged and location tracking at the time it is stolen from the owner.
Unless you're ignoring/suppressing the low battery notifications for months, that's already overwhelmingly likely.
in the story the guy told, his batteries were dead; he wishes they weren't. People are allowed to have different preferences, it's not a plot hole in the story.
- To change a battery, you need to not only see the notification but also be physically proximal to the device and have a fresh battery available. It can take some time to meet all these conditions and sometimes you simply forget.
- A single air tag only needs the battery replaced roughly every six months. However, the rate of replacements increases as you are managing more air tags. It's easy to be replacing a battery every few weeks.
- Replacement fatigue is a thing. At some point, we just get lazy.
I keep my BBQ on my front patio, directly in front of my battery-powered Ring camera. The battery on that camera needs to be recharged and replaced every two months. I try to get to it as quickly as I can - ideally during the low-battery state and before the battery dies completely. One time, however, I got lazy/forgot. Two days after the battery died, my BBQ was stolen.
Re: antitheft device
You're right. Apple markets AirTags for recovering lost items, not stolen ones. Nevertheless, they can be very effective for recovering stolen items. My local police department will aid in recovering stolen property. If the item has an AirTag that pings a location, an officer will investigate. In the case of my BBQ, the officer was willing to look for it same-day but, alas, I did not have an AirTag on it.
This product actually helps as it effectively hides the air tag. This makes it less likely that a thief would find and discard the airtag. They'd only be looking for it if their iPhone notifies them and, even then, they may not be able to discriminate which item contains the tag. Best case scenario: they discard the entire stolen unit, keeping the air tag with it.
I think it's also worth saying, these batteries aren't the standard AA batteries most people on hand, they're 2032 (I believe? or 2025) "quarter batteries" which isn't something a lot of people just keep around. So in addition to being physically proximal, once they've figured out how to open it up and being surprised by the "weird battery," they've also got to remember which it was when presented with a wall of similar looking "quarter batteries" at the store (see: my lack of assurity even having previously replaced these).
This might be slightly tangent but I used to think that. Except now I have a kid. Do you have any idea how many crazy weird battery sizes some of these new toys take? I think I now have like 4 or 5 different sized button batteries in my inventory.
"Back in my day" everything was either AA, C or D. These days, that isn't the case anymore. Only "big things" take "big batteries" like AA->D or they have a few built-in 18650's and a generic charger onboard.
Surely it's something that airtag owners keep around in bulk? I don't have any airtags/tiles/etc, but I can't imagine owning just one. As soon as I have one, I might as well have 6 or 12. If I'm replacing 2*n batteries per year, even if n is just 2 or 3, I'm buying these things in bulk!
> They're really for something lost, not stolen. Generally, they are specifically designed to not work well in adversarial situations.
What you do with that information is a whole other topic outside this scope.
I've recovered or helped recover several stolen items located with an AirTag and I'll keep on buying them as long as they're good for both.
So far in the cases I've been involved, the thief wasn't aware of the AirTag. In some cases, they had iPhones on them. I'm not sure why they did not get an "AirTag is following you" notification, or why they ignored it.
I don't use the Apple ecosystem as my primary, but I do have a bunch of tags I use in different cases for different items. Some of my items are things like motorsports vehicles or trailers and other things that are around but often out of sight.
If something were to go missing I may not notice immediately. It also seems the batteries in AirTags die faster in areas where climate control isn't the norm. Changing these out every year is a pain because some are hidden in areas that aren't easy to get to.
I hope these work well. And I was pleasantly surprised by the price point. Already ordered!
Also... I already own ElevationLabs Surface Mounts that I use and they are well made products. I love finding brands like this because it's not the norm on outlets like Amazon anymore. So when I find a good product I'm more than happy to keep buying their products, the premium is worth it.
We’ve found the AirTags work just as well as LTE/4G GPS trackers —- with no-ongoing costs, better battery life (we get 6-9 months on the AirTags, 4-6 weeks on the GPS trackers), and AirTags are 1/5 the cost of an LTE tracker.
This product would work well for us.
because life gets in the way. You have a bunch of batteries and forget where you put them, or you walk inside and get distracted.
I have a tag in my suitcase, which is/has run out of battery. I dont use it that often, so I should really replace it. but I have forgotten.
We recently recovered a laptop simply because it was tracked. Took the location to the police and they did the rest. It’s most definitely an anti-theft device in my case
Air Tags are also concealable, and on my backpack I have one inside the strap. You can’t tell it is there.
Many people routinely clear out all notifications due to the noise, and Find My notifications are part of that.
It's a thing in Minneapolis, though the Kia Boys thing was still very real here, I don't know how much they've kept it up.
Also, thieves are dumb. Don't expect them to find all the tracking devices in minutes.
Maybe. I agree it's a risk I'd ask myself more than a few times if I'm willing to take these days, but in my youth and when I was less economically secure I never had a problem taking matters like these into my own hands.
Every time I've tracked down a stolen item (phones were the most common with early tracking apps, but before that I've gone after stolen bikes, Discmans, etc.) the thief simply gave up the item without so much as a verbal altercation. The surprise that someone was crazy enough to call them on their bullshit was enough to shock them into just complying. Perhaps some shame as well, I'm not certain.
This has been true since my early teen days when I worked for a small retail store where the owner was way crazier than I ever have been. He took me along on some "repo" trips where folks had written bad checks against expensive items. These were generally in bad neighborhoods and I was certain he was going to get shot - but he never did. Some yelling was the most I witnessed and every time we got the items in question back safe and sound - usually with the person in question helping to load them into the truck.
I'd probably still track an item down and knock on someone's door if I was confident it was the correct location. These days it's basically your only recourse, and despite the relatively minor economic loss vs. my income at this point in my life I think it's important for societal reasons. When everyone simply gives up and lets the criminals and petty thieves "win" without so much as challenging on them, society rapidly crumbles. Relying on law enforcement is a last resort, even though the modern day take is they are the front line response. We see how well that is going. Poorly.
If I owned a retail shop I'd also confront any shoplifters and back up any of my staff who decided to do the same themselves. I understand this might end up costing me more money and make insurance difficult. Punishing such behavior for "liability" reasons is utterly asinine. It should be rewarded, but not encouraged or forced on employees by ownership. When I stopped shoplifters in the 90's at the shops I worked at, it wasn't because I thought my low pay was worth the personal risk. I did it because it was the right thing to do and I knew the owners had my back if anything bad happened. Firing clerks for giving a damn about society is one of my huge pet peeves of modern life. And yes, I am well aware of the risk and horrible outcomes that rarely happen in such situations.
So tldr; I see it as a duty to society to make an attempt at challenging these things for myself and friends that ask for help. Yes, that does incur some personal risk to my safety that cannot be squared with the economic reward. It's a tradeoff I, and others, have calculated for ourselves.
It's utterly corrosive to actual hard working folks doing the right thing to be forced to watch some asshole professional thief push out a cart full of power tools from Home Depot. Knowing full well that they would be fired if they so much got in the way of the cart. It's ridiculous we've normalized such things and justified it with the liability fairy. The executive class has entirely failed society on this point. If someone wants to take on the personal risk, the response should be high praise - not punishment. You get more of what you incentivize.
Some of the petty thieves will think twice if they hear about other thieves getting beat up. Many of them will simply respond with violence.
Look at Latin American countries where thieves will shoot you dead for an iPhone.
The bicycle thieves are going to steal no matter what. They have to score their next hit. Better that they can do that armed only with an angle grinder rather than a pistol, too.
And if someone decides to turn a bicycle theft into a murder, well, the bicycle thief can usually "live off the land" much easier than you can. When you are used to living on the street and all you need is your next hit, it's much harder to catch you for murder, even if you can be identified.
In a fight where you have more to lose, are an order of magnitude more likely to be held accountable, and your opponent is irrational, effectively anonymous, and probably more practiced in violence than you, escalation seems unfavorable even if it leaves you with a shitty feeling.
Of course, I get it from Apple's perspective, they dont want AirTags to be used to tail others. However, that precludes it from being used for theft tracking.
For example, I use an AirTag on my bicycle. If someone steals the bicycle, they are literally informed "an air tag is following you" https://support.apple.com/en-us/119874
There are a lot of things I'd love to put long-term AirTags on (luggage, snow-blower, childrens' backpacks) but if theft isnt really deterred, then the case for a bulkier AirTag is quite reduced.
They'd rather make AirTags less generally useful than make them both more generally useful + open to stalking occurrences and lawsuits.
Of course I'm not saying Apple shouldn't try to protect people from stalkers using their control over their products, I just don't see why it would make Appld responsible if someone misused their products.
- Me or other people need to be around (since airtags jump off others' devices)
This removes use cases like tracking lost marine goods, tracking lost drones, etc.
- Item being tracked has to be big enough to be worth the extra size/weight of the long life battery wrapper
This removes most common use cases like wallets, remotes, etc.
- Item being tracked has to be something you actually lose w/o wrongdoing. Makes sense for backpacks, purses, parked cars.
But, most capital equipment wouldnt be "lost" it would be stolen, so that is out.
https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/20-surprisingly-practical...
I use an airtag for my wallet and apple remote.
I use an AirTag on my e-bike - there’s quite a few hidden mounts out there that look like normal rear reflectors or slot in between a water bottle cage and the bike frame. It’s also trivially easy to pop the AirTag open and remove the speaker so it can’t beep.
I bought my AirTags before there were any compatible third party options, but the non-Apple AirTags don’t have the UWB chip inside and don’t support the precision finding feature which would also make them more difficult to find.
> Of course, I get it from Apple's perspective, they dont want AirTags to be used to tail others.
I'm also not a fan of having to go back to Apple and pay a fee for "battery service", when the current fix is a CR2032 battery that's under $1.
Isn't that too late? If you disabled that AirTag with your phone, you are probably the thief. Now we got you fully I.D.ed.
It seems that the safest bet, for a thief/criminal, is to not take any iPhone (or phone) on him while committing the crime.
Go back to the page you linked -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119874 -- the bottom of this page has a screenshot of those instructions.
These won’t inform, I believe.
Also, thieves are dumb.
I threw one in the trunk of my car (just in case - I ordered a 4-pack and I had a spare one), and every single time I drive somewhere it chirps loudly when I'm exiting my driveway, making its presence immediately obvious without any delays, and despite my phone being with me in the car.
Nearly all my hardside cases have an airtag stuffed in one of the "Surface Mount" kits from ElevationLab. it looks like a pressure valve on the other side, and I might replace them with Security mounts if I'm really worried. Having those was a FANTASTIC way to track my cases as I left them with a (trusted) friend to be shipped along some other Very High Value gear. Being able to see what was going on (and know when it had reached its destination) was invaluable. On the way back, I could see my luggage as it slugged its way through the airport luggage handling system. It's not real-time but good enough for rough location.
A friend of mine was able to locate their stolen vehicle down to the block and then drone-find the vehicle from there, call the cops, and ended up busting an interstate chop shop in the process. The AirTag consistently got gasps of updates from passing vehicles and the neighbor's HomePod.
All this because she had hidden an airtag in the gas cap.
There are airlines that are encouraging people to put airtags/tiles/samsung trackers on their checked luggage because it helps them keep the airport handlers in check. A prime example of this is flying with guns (yes, you can fly with guns!) and how having an airtag made it EASIER to recover the firearm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHyb2amIkzo (This happened AGAIN, by the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBngUc3rmY0 -- Yes, airlines are TERRIBLE about handling these things!)
That same company also makes the 10 year AirTag battery. I am surprised that no one has released a 3D model to print. It would be popular with DIYers.
They'd rather do anything than pay airport handlers better lol
I have them on tons of my devices, including my kids personal items that go to school, etc. and they never chirp, and I can and have found items that were misplaced in public locations (but not actually stolen).
Does it even chirp then? This is news to me, I have an airtag in my car and have certainly left it for 2 weeks during vacations. I've never heard the airtag chirp unless I make it play a sound through "Find My"
Something is off for sure, but it's not like there are any user-configurable parts here. I literally just threw it in the trunk - and it's not like there's a right and a wrong way to do it. :-)
I guess it's because I don't have a garage and my car is parked in a carport, about ~100 feet/~30 meters away from my apartment, so it "normally" doesn't sense my phone "nearby". Then, I suspect, when I walk down and sit in the car (which takes just a minute or two) there is not enough time for it to reconnect with the phone and realize the owner is around. Because an AirTag on my wallet doesn't do this. But that's just my guess - I'm too lazy to pull an SDR and listen to the radio traffic to confirm.
If you can't find or remove the air tag, then the option you have left to not be tracked is to separate yourself from the tracked thing. In the case of someone being stalked, that's inconvenient (that doesn't do it justice, but not really important to my point). In the case of someone who stole something, that's actually the desired outcome.
Imagine a situation where you get in a car and a few minutes later it says there's an air tag following you.
If you're being stalked... you can drive straight to a mechanic who can take all the time they need to find it, take a taxi over to the police and report it, etc.
If you just stole that car, now you know you're on the clock. Once someone's looking for you and that vehicle, there's a really good chance they're going to find it. You can take it to a mechanic, but a reputable mechanic might have some questions. You can try a less reputable mechanic, but they're gonna be pissed when the cops come knocking asking about the stolen car sitting over there and you might not be going back there any time soon. So if you can't find and remove the air tag relatively quickly, what options do you have left? Probably makes more sense to abandon the vehicle and try another one with a lower risk of winding up in jail.
I _know_ where the air tag is in my suitcase and it would take me tools and ~15 minutes to remove. How long is someone going to spend at that versus just tossing it?
> You can try a less reputable mechanic, but they're gonna be pissed when the cops come knocking asking about the stolen car sitting over there and you might not be going back there any time soon. So if you can't find and remove the air tag relatively quickly, what options do you have left? Probably makes more sense to abandon the vehicle and try another one with a lower risk of winding up in jail.
Depends on the skill of the chop-shop or it's folks and where you are.
A fun thought experience would be how much suspicion a flatbed tow truck with some form of faraday cage around the car, below a cover would get from LE.
Agree with your general 'deterrent' concept, I think the main challenge a lot of folks run into is getting lazy with placement. Glove/console boxes, the 'pockets' on the back of front seats, are all stupid easy. Technically anything in the interior, probably can be 'found' with sufficient detection capability.
No, you put that thing somewhere weird and ideally a PITA to get at.
This honestly gives me the idea of finding the right spot in my WRX front headlights to make it not visible; If the spot I'm thinking of will work, they'd literally have to pull off the front bumper to even get at it...
For small items where the airtag is merely present, it can be useful from the perspective of being alerted when an item is left behind or taken away from your surroundings. Much theft crime is opportunistic, such as forgetting a wallet behind in a restaurant, or dropping it in a street. Airtags are useful in that regard as the "left behind" alerts are reasonably timely, and tracking an item down works well. This works because you realise it's gone and find it before someone else does.
While there are still plenty of examples of people using airtags for recovery of stolen goods, that's not the main product intention as it is very easy to discover and disable a loose airtag. Some larger items however (e.g. certain bikes) have airtags built in which aren't easily disabled, there are also mounting cages which serve a similar purpose - in these circumstances it is a legitimate antitheft device because the ability to easily disable it is removed.
I use airtags and my most common use of it is to ask siri to "jingle my keys", which alerts me to whichever coat or pair of jeans I've left them in (my second most common use is receiving an alert that I've left my umbrella behind somewhere).
I also remember one occasion of leaving my keys in a taxi, realising immediately, and chasing it down the road - the taxi never saw me, and I never saw my keys again, with an airtag that would have played out differently. These kinds of situations are far more common than dealing with thievery.
As long as you do a good job placing/hiding it, the thief can't easily find and remove/disable without the speaker.
Yes.
> Are you referring to tile?
No.
Ten years is a very long time in tech. I wouldn't be confident that the Airtag protocol will be functioning in 2035, and there are already rumors of a new Airtag and possibly a newer protocol coming up.
Add a new Airtag v2 protocol to the next iPhone and sell new Airtags only using that protocol. Why should you buy them? They could have different improvements you would like.
Start deprecating Airtag v1 in 3-4 years - and only sell new ones. There are now 3-4 iPhone generations that can handle the new version.
The next iPhone in 6-7 years doesn't support Airtags v1 anymore as it is obsolete now for many years.
Voila, they killed Airtags v1 in less than 10 years without killing the entire product line by switching to a new version. Is that unrealistic? No, thats their normal way how they deprecate stuff. It still works but only with old hardware or by not getting new updates anymore (iOS, macOS).
But this is an accessory line. Apple is pretty good at keeping accessories working for as long as possible. AirPods v1 still work. A Magic Mouse bought 10 years ago still works as long as the battery isn't dead.
I suppose you could contradict me by providing a list of the products Apple has deprecated this way.
Can you?
The best scenario would be an industry standard that is widely more interesting than AirTags and works around the current compromises, letting Apple expand support to a wider audience. E.g. if the stalking problem had an elegant solution.
I'm sure Apple will innovate and come up with something newer/better/etc at some point. But it's unlikely the gen1 devices will go away anytime soon. Even if the real life is only... 5 years, that still saves a number of battery changes for devices that maybe you don't want to deal with regularly.
And with the fact that Apple had enough demand to increase the limit from 16 to 32 per account ( https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/12/airtag-limit/ ). Clearly people have bought into the ecosystem in a big way. 30 Airtags * $25 each is $750. I don't think they'll decommission the gen1 system anytime soon with that much investment. Plus Apple is surprisingly good at supporting their hardware for a reasonable amount of time. The iPhone XR from 2018 is still supported by iOS 18.
Well, they certainly _might_ be functioning in ten years from now. Conservatively, you get 5 years of use out of this, which isn't bad for $15-20, depending on your use case.
I'd agree if it were any company other than Apple. And if Apple goes under by 2035 then AirTags will be the least of our concern.
I highly doubt they do that unless they are remove airtags completely from their product line.
(Or hook up an oversized external battery like this one, but tune the voltage to ~2V so it always looks like a nearly depleted CR2032 battery!)
Source: I'm in a similar industry
The promised ten-year life is better than the e.g. 4-year life you can get out of a GPS/LTE NB-IOT with lithium primary cell and deep sleep, and with fewer compromises around tesponsiveness to commands (primary-battery asset trackers are usually waking up like once every 6 hours). Still, standalone asset trackers have a number of features that make them more suitable for theft scenarios than airtags, not least of which is the absence of the anti-stalking feature of airtags which means they're never really a concealable option.
The major difference left is consumer-friendliness... Most asset trackers are provided by vendors with pretty hefty ongoing fees, and more oriented towards commercial customers like fleet operators and construction. Big difference in ease of purchase and use. It does make you wonder about the market for a really consumer-friendly solution, though.
I'm sure standard rolled screws would be just fine...
The 'nice' thing about CNC screws is that it's cheaper to do short runs. (which, on the military side, can help on some 'security by obscurity' lengths for revers engineering).
That said Rolled screws are almost always gonna be better unless the die is fucked.
The irritating ones are in the bags/check-ins I stashed/stored snugly, and now I have to take them out to replace the battery. Of course, the bearable thing is that the battery lasts for about a month after the warning, so there is that.
I think I'm complaining about something which is not a big deal.
I’m not sure if this much bigger device is any benefit just to make it last 10-years and forget about it.
"Number of batteries" is not the right thing to measure. Maybe volume isn't either, but it's got to be closer.
Those aren't alkaline batteries. Energizer makes AA/AAA-size lithium primary batteries, which is what they are using. They wont leak and have a 25 year shelf life.
https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/l91.pdf
And I don't think they'd get complaints about alkaline batteries leaking. I think pretty much anyone (even those who don't understand batteries), would tend to blame the batteries themselves, not the device they're in.
The CNC screws mentioned in other thread appear to be part of their design language btw.
https://object.ceph-eu.hswaw.net/q3k-personal/5143b5491fca11...
Usually wrapped in electrician's tape.
1. NRF52 board from some scrap given by a friend, running forked/ported OpenHaystack firmware
2. AA battery holder from junk box
3. AA batteries from junk drawer
If my math is correct, this should last until AA self-discharge, ie. around 10 years. Yes, it works with Apple's FindMy network. Yes, I've flown with it.
It is a registered trademark. As I understand it, common words or phrases can be protected within the same area. Colours too - https://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/t-mobile-magenta/
10 years is also long enough that perhaps the tracker might stop being supported before its battery runs out.
Also there's stupid legislation in the UK at least around making smoke detectors with replaceable batteries. Took me quite a while to find some.
They won't burn because they contain metallic lithium (and not lithium salts like rechargeable cells) and don't contain easily flammable organic solvents (yep, like rechargeable cells). There are videos on YouTube of people disassembling them with no problems (for example, to extract metallic lithium for chemistry experiments).
One thing I’m curious about battery leakage. Many of the batteries of my remotes and similar devices seem to leak after a while (including one I heard pop and got very warm). These are devices that do get frequent usage, so they aren’t just sitting without any discharge (but also the drain for a remote would be very minimal).
Would this device experience the same, given how little power the AirTag needs?
Lithium primary cells tend not to get all leaky with age like alkalines do. (They'll keep your remote working approximately forever, too.)
I do wonder though: Do AA batteries actually have a shelf life of 10 years even without supplying any current?
I've got an old pinball machine. Those use AA batteries to store highscores and settings in a battery-powered RAM chip. Typically the batteries must be replaced once a year or at least every two years, largely because of self-drain, and it's a common occurrence of them leaking, which can quickly destroy the 30 year old circuit board they're on. That's why most pinball collectors suggest to use Lithium AA batteries: you get 5-10 year lifetime, no danger of leakage.
Would be kinda funny if 10 years from now the author gets his stuff stolen again and then discovers said memory leak crashed the Airtag 9 years ago. As Elon Musk likes to say: "The most ironic outcome is the most likely" . (OP I hope your stuff does not get stolen again, its just a joke)
Considering the nature of product there is no interactive interface, it doesn't perform any critical operation like motor or heater control which couldn't be easily interrupted and resumed a fraction of second later after the reboot. In case of memory leak or some kind of memory allocator error it would also be safe to reboot. User wouldn't even notice if this happened.
So even if something goes wrong, chance of it being uncrecoverable seems low. It would need to be either some kind of persistent storage bug causing it to get stuck in a bootloop (in which case battery change wouldn't help either), or high level logic error preventing normal functioning while keeping the main loop running without crash or getting stuck (writing code in higher level programming language wouldn't prevent a logic error).
There is also no guarantee they person who stole the bag wouldn't dump the bag(with the hidden AirTag) and just keep the gear or that the police would help recover it even if you gave them the location(many times the don't).
People who live in a high-trust society and not a shithole? I leave $10k of stuff in my car all the time, and it would be super inconvenient if I couldn't.
This is a basic safety drill. And it doesn't apply to expensive things only. You don't want your window broken for a sport bag with a sweaty t-shirt used in a gym like it happened to my friend. Any kind of bag left visible in a car is a risk.
You are a terrible person.
Personally I'm able to risk the battery dying since the tag is on an inexpensive item I lose frequently, but I understand the annoyance of replacing the battery often.
If they wanted to be really clever, they could easily find space to disguise it as a usb hard drive or something (I mean they could literally stick a USB hard drive in the thing, they are so tiny nowadays).
> Just discard the AirTag's back plate
I mean, first-world problem. But if it could be less frequent, of course I'd take it.
Also, have you ever made an insurance claim? I have. A claim is really bad for your insurance rates with most insurance companies.
The advantage of "lithium" is high rate discharge, not longevity right?
I also put lithium AA/AAA batteries in remotes these days - anything that might get stuck in a drawer for years at a time and needed again for a random task. My A/V receiver remote is rarely touched, but when I need it I really need it. Too many times have I went to grab some device like that only to find the batteries have leaked and corroded a critical component on the PCB.
Camera bag design seems to have moved on from that, and a sling design seems to be more popular.
The sling lets you swing the bag from your back under your arm to in front of you. There is a zipper towards the side that lets you securely access the camera and accessories.
So pretty easily you can get your camera out, or later put it back without removing the backpack.
https://www.incase.com/products/dslr-pro-pack?srsltid=AfmBOo...
this is a bit big and heavy.
This is another case of bad UX by a company praised for its great "product design skills".
This is precisely how an AirTag works. It reports its battery status[1] via a notification to the user on an iPhone.
Yes that's what its for
What a nonsensical fear to have.
Aha, but that's not what AirTags are for, according to Apple at least.
On https://www.apple.com/airtag Not a single mention of "theft" or "stolen".
It will even politely inform the thief you have a tracker in your stuff:
> AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone else’s AirTag finds its way into your stuff, the network will notice it’s traveling with you and send your iPhone an alert
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple will come down on them with their legal team for promoting usage of the AirTag that's not according to their intended use.
My bet is that in 2/3 years this device will stop working already.
Just change the batteries if you AirTag once a year. Especially if you are using an AirTag to keep watch over 10.000 dollar equipment.
I have personally run these cells buried underground, and gotten 4.5 years out of 4 of them, though my application is just for fun and likely not as power conservative as an AirTag.