Tile find and track things

I vaguely remember back in the 80’s as Rubik cubes were popular, the miners were striking, and Thatcher was invading the Falklands the height of technology was a keyring that would beep in response to a whistle.

This technology has been brought into the modern age with a cool little blue-tooth device named a Tile

From the site:

Never lose anything again

Are your things always running off? Not on our watch. Tile is a tiny Bluetooth tracker that helps find your lost stuff in seconds. Attach, stick, or place Tiles inside everyday items and keep track of them in our easy-to-use app.

Ring your things

Ring lost items just like you’d call a lost phone. If your Tile is within the 100-foot Bluetooth range, it will play a loud tune until you find it.

Ring your phone

Can’t find your phone? Press any one of your Tiles to make your lost phone ring—even if it’s on silent.

See where you had it

Give your memory a break. The app automatically records the last time and place it saw your item. So, if you left it somewhere, you know where to look first.

Ask others to help

Still can’t find your Tiled item? Expand your search using all Tile apps in our community. This feature is 100% private, so no one knows you’re looking for a lost item but you.

I’ve picked up a few and am looking for things to track 🙂

So keys, and wallet are obvious, then I thought what would actually be useful to track?

I thought what do we look for most? The TV remote was a top contender, as was my drone, but my first choice is one of my cats; the one that doesn’t seem to mind wearing a collar.

Now there is one issue with the Tile device, the app has to be open on your phone to log the location, and blue-tooth has to be active with GPS, that can drain battery life.

At first I was a little despondent about this until I had an epiphany; I’ve found a use for my Nexus 7 🙂

I can leave the N7 at home each day charging and it can be used to track the cats coming and goings.

One tile left, and I decided with this one I’d track the most valuable thing I own, the car… well wife’s car really. So apart from hiding another Tile in the interior of the car I want to know where it is, and rather than relying on other Tile users having the app open I thought I’d use another of my redundant Nexus devices, my N4.

As a bonus I have access to a public wifi network for no additional cost, so the N4 doesn’t need to be using 3G / 4G data that costs $’s… If I were using this as a security device rather than an exercise in geek then I’d probably go with a prepaid sim card.

So now I get to keep track of a few important items, I’ll post an update on how long I keep having the app live on my main phone (N5x) when out and about; thinking I might be able to use Xposed to open the app on boot. Having the N7 always live while in the home is a big bonus and makes the Tile’s a usable solution for now.

I am off on an overseas grand tour later in the year, and am tempted to drop a tile in my luggage to keep track of it in transit. It will be cool to know when it’s arriving on the conveyor 🙂