Can these be paired with the actual Apple Find My app and found in the app?
Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
21–30 of 117 posts
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#22This is amazing. I love Apple AirTags but they are so bulky and an odd shape. I would love a AirTag the shape of a credit card to go into my wallet. I would love a smaller AirTag to go on my cats collar.
Use this for my dog, it is super minimal...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09DCVFNFF/
Only thing is that I found that I needed to wrap the airtag itself with some clear tape to keep it from twisting itself out of the holder.
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#23This is amazing. I love Apple AirTags but they are so bulky and an odd shape. I would love a AirTag the shape of a credit card to go into my wallet. I would love a smaller AirTag to go on my cats collar.
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Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#24https://robu.in/product/nrf51822-cfac-r-bluetooth-3-1edr-ble...
Will this chip work ?
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#25This is amazing. I love Apple AirTags but they are so bulky and an odd shape. I would love a AirTag the shape of a credit card to go into my wallet. I would love a smaller AirTag to go on my cats collar.
You can buy third party "Find My" compatible tags for about $5 from Temu or Aliexpress. Although they're about the same size as regular Airtags, they're:
- easier to take apart (if you want discard the casing), and
- cheaper
I took one of the ones I have out of its casing to see what could be made thinner, and I found that most of the thickness was due to:
- The batter holder (CR2032)
- The speaker
- The button
The speaker and button could probably be dispensed with after initial setup. The battery holder could be removed, and the power supplied from the side instead of the top (if you want a thin card-like form factor).
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#26Haven’t done the research but I wonder if you can use this to piggyback with tiny arbitrary data data payloads.
I saw someone use this to track his mail state. They have a contact sensor inside their mailbox that rotates the broadcasted key based on the trigger count. If the key changed, aka a new different device is visible, you know mail has been dropped in, very clever !
That is a fascinating project. Here is the link if anyone else is interested:
https://hackaday.com/2022/05/30/check-your-mailbox-using-the...
I wonder if the creator had neighbourhood style mailboxes down the road? If not this seems quite complicated solution for an object that is probably with range even BLE.
I tried building a mail sensor a couple of years ago where the mailbox was a fair distance from where I was living. I was not able to create a solution that didn't either have false positives or false negatives. For an outdoor object jostled by wind and rain it is harder than it seems.
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#27Would there be a way for the bluetooth device to rotate its broadcast keys in a predictable way to avoid the iphone notification of "unknown airtag close by" messages? Seems like this could be exploited for surveillance.
Sure, that works.
One can also just cycle through a sufficiently large bank of pre-allocated keys, such that a findmy receiver doesn't see the same key too frequently.
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#28This is a technically interesting project, but is there any situation at all where it's worth using? It seems like it just allows you to build airtag-like devices that sorta work on the Find-My network with some rough edges, but I can buy proper AirTag clones in various form factors for a couple bucks - far cheaper than I could ever make a custom bluetooth device using this project. Am I missing a use-case?
Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#29Re: Openhaystack: Build 'AirTags' – track Bluetooth devices via Apple's network
#30This is a technically interesting project, but is there any situation at all where it's worth using? It seems like it just allows you to build airtag-like devices that sorta work on the Find-My network with some rough edges, but I can buy proper AirTag clones in various form factors for a couple bucks - far cheaper than I could ever make a custom bluetooth device using this project. Am I missing a use-case?
If you had a laptop with Bluetooth, you could install this on it and find it if it were lost, I think.