Hello selfhosted community,
I need a privacy respecting alternative for an Apple AirTag. I recently bought my first expensive bike and i would like to know where it is, as it will be used by multiple people.
I know gps service costs something and I am willing to pay for it but I do not want any location data ending up somewhere it shouldn’t.
Thank you.
Meshtastic. Be sure to set it up to not broadcast your precise position over the default channel.
Here is an example.
https://www.seeedstudio.com/sensecap-t1000-tracker
AirTags work because there is a huge network of apple devices registering BT beacons. Meshtastic isn’t really viable unless there are other nodes around on the same channel, as you mentioned.
I have tried to use two LilyGo t-echos to GPS track my dog. Range is really poor in the mountains, so I basically couldn’t see the collared device unless it was within 100 to 150m away, which isn’t really helpful.
In a bigger urban area, more nodes didn’t help unless I was on the default channel, so same problem again, this timeline extra emf pollution.
Meshtastic is a great idea, but use cases are really limited.
The default channel is usually populated enough and I think nodes relay other channels using lora too.
My range to the next node is 7 miles.
AirTags work but chirp and thieves know to dump them.
Lucky you. I’ve got max about 900m (about half mile) by putting a node up on the mountain near me, and that was intermittent and message transmissions were delayed between 5 and 10 min.
Like I said, great if it works. Not a whole lot of good use cases, and op’s is not a good use case.
Tracking inventory is literally one of its primary use cases.
This looks really cool. I’ve heard of Meshtastic but don’t know the first thing about it. Time to do some reading…
Buy a few t1000 to see how it works and if you have any other nodes in your area. If you do you’ll have decent coverage.
The t1000 doesn’t have amazing battery life but I think there’s devices that are dedicated to gps tracking that last a lot longer.