As far as I know, no Find My compatible third party trackers support UWB position finding. So, this is a key differentiating factor for the Airtag.
I am shopping for a card shaped wallet finder. Currently, for tracking my wallet, I found an old 5 year old Tile recently that I hadn't activated. I use a slim wallet, so it has thin flat aluminum sides, and I used some 3M adhesive to mount the Tile onto it, which is possible with the Tile but not with an AirTag since the AirTag is too round to make that feasible. Plus i think the tile is actually even a little thinner than the AirTag, it looks like 6mm to me.
This works really well actually, and also lets me find my phone in a pinch by clicking it, which funny enough the airtag wouldn't let me do, but I don't care about that, I care a lot more about the UWB direction finding.
Clearly the best path forward is to do surgery on an airtag and shrink it down into a 3 to 4mm thick 3d printed card shape, there are many designs available for free to print on your own or for purchase on Etsy and other places.
My question: does anybody know of a design for this that can incorporate 2 or maybe even 3 or 4 CR2032's? Or even CR2025's if we're pressed for space. We *clearly* have the physical space for supporting this with a card form factor.
Anybody interested in hacking on this with me? Clearly the way is to wire the batteries in parallel. It allows to make it work with any number of batteries. My idea right off the bat is to lay out a bank of batteries where they are in contact with one another on the positive terminal, so only one wire is needed for +. We should be able to have an airtag with UWB findability prowess that lasts 4 years, with replaceable batteries, this is kind of the holy grail of bluetooth trackers.
I expect Apple to release an AirTag 2 in card form factor so there is a chance this could become obsolete soon but I think being able to support 3 or more CR2032's would catapult it into relevance regardless of Apple's eventual AirTags 2 design wins.
I am shopping for a card shaped wallet finder. Currently, for tracking my wallet, I found an old 5 year old Tile recently that I hadn't activated. I use a slim wallet, so it has thin flat aluminum sides, and I used some 3M adhesive to mount the Tile onto it, which is possible with the Tile but not with an AirTag since the AirTag is too round to make that feasible. Plus i think the tile is actually even a little thinner than the AirTag, it looks like 6mm to me.
This works really well actually, and also lets me find my phone in a pinch by clicking it, which funny enough the airtag wouldn't let me do, but I don't care about that, I care a lot more about the UWB direction finding.
Clearly the best path forward is to do surgery on an airtag and shrink it down into a 3 to 4mm thick 3d printed card shape, there are many designs available for free to print on your own or for purchase on Etsy and other places.
My question: does anybody know of a design for this that can incorporate 2 or maybe even 3 or 4 CR2032's? Or even CR2025's if we're pressed for space. We *clearly* have the physical space for supporting this with a card form factor.
Anybody interested in hacking on this with me? Clearly the way is to wire the batteries in parallel. It allows to make it work with any number of batteries. My idea right off the bat is to lay out a bank of batteries where they are in contact with one another on the positive terminal, so only one wire is needed for +. We should be able to have an airtag with UWB findability prowess that lasts 4 years, with replaceable batteries, this is kind of the holy grail of bluetooth trackers.
I expect Apple to release an AirTag 2 in card form factor so there is a chance this could become obsolete soon but I think being able to support 3 or more CR2032's would catapult it into relevance regardless of Apple's eventual AirTags 2 design wins.
Last edited:
