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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

elevationlab.com

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#81

Post by jmull »

I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story...

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.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#82

Post by _yb2s »

drdaeman wrote: post #56

Are AirTags actually useful for anti-theft purposes? 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.

There is something wrong with your configuration/setup, it is not supposed to start chirping unless it is out of range of your phone for at least 8 days, and not in one of the predefined geofence regions you can setup where it won't chirp.

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).

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#83

Post by mikestew »

avree wrote: post #19
dcdc123 wrote: post #18

Cool idea for a product but you either have to be a serious airhead or just lazy to miss or ignore all the low battery notifications. Also, that case should have a spot to store the back plate. > Just discard the AirTag's back plate

It's a cool hack, but a terrible idea for a product. There are more components than the battery that will fail over a 10 year period (both in hardware and in software) - which is why ignoring notifications, and assuming that this product solves your problem is a big issue.

Your smoke alarm has a ten year battery.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#84

Post by echoangle »

kube-system wrote: post #68
carlgreene wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but only if you remove the speaker which is well documented on YouTube

Even if you do that they will still notify a thief with a notification on their iPhone.

Only if a thief has an iPhone or manually installed the Android App.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#85

Post by post-it »

ronsor wrote: post #75
dmajor2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they have been rendered useless for that purpose through software updates because of the almost 100% overlap of the use cases of 1) stalking someone 2) and tracking a thief.

Wait until they realize the almost 100% overlap between the camera's use cases of 1) spying on people and 2) recording nature

Nature cameras are relatively hard to conceal (from humans), whereas AirTags are very easy to conceal.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#86

Post by buescher »

The third time someone calls to complain that the alkaline batteries they put in this leaked, they'll wish they used a soldered-in 3V lithium primary cell. Even though that goes against a certain ethos.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#87

Post by jo909 »

_yb2s wrote: post #74
jerlam wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now mandated in California. No more waking up in the middle of the night and crawling up a ladder to find out which of your smoke alarms decided it was too cold and decided to sing its low battery chirp.

Does that fix it or make it worse? If you have 10 smoke detectors and they end up randomly staggered so this happens once a year, and you can't replace the batteries anymore... that seems worse than the old system which completely eliminated this issue if you just replaced them all every year or two on a schedule.

Remember that you are supposed to replace the entire thing because the other components like the sensor or simply capacitors also age. It is a very cheap safety device and simply not worth taking any risks by stretching it to say 15 years instead. The proper way would be to replace them while they were all still fine by making a note in the calendar.

There are two cases:

Your products are faulty and at least one has not made their intended 10 year lifespan. I'd change them all for better ones.

Or

They have reached their lifespan and you only noticed because the first one failed. I'd replace them all.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#88

Post by Grazester »

Who leaves 10K worth of anything in their car? I get antsy leaving my $200 laptop hidden under my seat! This person is crazy.

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).

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#89

Post by xattt »

Grazester wrote: post #88

Who leaves 10K worth of anything in their car? I get antsy leaving my $200 laptop hidden under my seat! This person is crazy. 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).

Usually, cars are worth more than 10K and they are often left out in the street!

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#90

Post by SSchick »

roger_ wrote: post #50

This solves one of my biggest issues with AirTags and I'd be tempted to buy one if AirTag 2s weren't right around the corner...

Pretty much this, I hope they retain the form factor, I would very much buy 3-4 of these for my luggage, I previously duct-taped airtags inside of the case but they died within a year, this would help a lot.
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