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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#111

Post by kube-system »

wholinator2 wrote: post #95
kube-system wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is your item and how hard is it to search? If you know a bag has an airtag in it, it won't take that long to find.

True, a suitcase could be quickly dispatched but you could hide it very very well on something like a car.

Maybe, but is any old car thief on the street going to hang on to a car they know has an airtag in it? They probably were going to joy ride it for the afternoon, maybe commit some other crime, wreck it, and dump it regardless.

I have an airtag in my car, but I don't think I'm going to get much value out of it other than finding my car when I forget where I'm parked.

If you want to catch a criminal in the act, you usually need to observe surreptitiously or they'll change behavior.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#113

Post by npretto »

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).

Surely going to lunch with 10k of equipment is safer, especially when you'll need to go to the toilet.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#114

Post by unsnap_biceps »

chili6426 wrote: post #106

I have a AirTag in my car so I can find it when I park in an unfamiliar city or an airport parking lot. I'm imagining a rechargeable version I could plug into the cigarette lighter and it would theoretically last as long as my car does.

I plan on getting one of these TimeCapsules (what a silly name) and modify it to be rechargeable.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#115

Post by IshKebab »

duxup wrote: post #48

At 10 years I kinda wonder what the odds your AA batteries become problem occasionally (leaking, etc) long before the Airtag... although they are Lithium batteries.

I think leaking is relatively rare, but based on my experience of "10 year" smoke detector batteries they usually don't last anywhere near that.

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.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#116

Post by homebrewer »

riffic wrote: post #55
duxup wrote: post #48

At 10 years I kinda wonder what the odds your AA batteries become problem occasionally (leaking, etc) long before the Airtag... although they are Lithium batteries.

are lithium batteries known to expand or catch fire in the AA form factor?

I think you misunderstood GP. Lithium AA batteries are very reliable and keep charge for at least ten years (the standard metric is losing approximately 1% per year), that's what he's saying.

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).

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#117

Post by samatman »

hatsix wrote: post #108
samatman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not at all in line with how Apple operates, it's diametrically opposed to it in fact. I suppose you could contradict me by providing a list of the products Apple has deprecated this way. Can you?

It's exactly how Apple operates. The last Apple device with Firewire was produced in 2012, though it was sold for several more years. MacOS 13 (2022) dropped the Firewire CoreAudio driver (as well as other, more niche support for Firewire). So... exactly 10 years. If you're going to put me in a bucket, I'd be in the "Apple Hater" bucket, but I honestly think that the way that they do this is fine. It would have been…

Apple sold the first widely-available computer with USB connections, the iMac G3.

> To replace the removed ports, the iMac has Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, which were faster and cheaper than Apple Desktop Bus and serial ports but were very new—the standard was not finalized until after the iMac's release—and unsupported by any third-party Mac peripheral.

  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#Design
It would not be possible for them to jump on a bandwagon they started any earlier than they did.

> The last Apple device with Firewire was produced in 2012

Thunderbolt supports the Firewire protocol in the transport layer. So this means that people who need to support a Firewire device need a dongle now. Apple used to sell the adapter, apparently it's been discontinued, but they're still manufactured by third parties, and the originals available on the secondhand market. Which, given that Firewire is dead and buried, and no one is making new Firewire stuff, is also where you'd need to go to get something expecting Firewire to begin with.

I do not see this as the problem you seem to.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#118

Post by criddell »

tonymet wrote: post #109
jmull wrote: post #81

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, bu…

order results from consequences. it's ok if you want to be timid, but don't shame others for helping restore order.

Is fear of punishment the main reason you aren't out there stealing the things you want and killing those who get in your way?

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#119

Post by drdaeman »

_yb2s wrote: post #82
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 locat…

> There is something wrong with your configuration/setup

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.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#120

Post by pinkmuffinere »

_yb2s wrote: post #82
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 locat…

>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.

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"

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