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.
The only free wide-area location tracking system I know of is APRS, which is absolutely not private and requires a ham license and equipment.
Apparently launching your own satellite is getting more and more affordable.
Building the satellite is affordable. You can do it for the cost of a high end gaming PC. Launching that satellite is where it gets expensive.
Meshtastic. Be sure to set it up to not broadcast your precise position over the default channel.
Here is an example.
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.
My range to the next node is 7 miles.
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.
GPS is entirely free. What cost money is relaying that information back to you. Since you are talking about GPS I am assuming you want something more than just a beacon style tag. You are looking for something you can insert your own data only SIM card into that you can program yourself to upload it’s coordinates to a website every X seconds or whatever you choose. You also want it to have BLE for the beacon style of the air tag. Self hosting this is not going to be cheap each device would be around $10 a month for the data only SIM.
I have no clue who sells these off the self. You can get an ESP32 with GPS and a SIM card slot. This is basically exactly what you are looking for but you still need to do the programming and manufacture a case depending on the application.
It’s a cool project hopefully with this info you can find an OTS version.
What do people think of the Samsung Galaxy Smart Tag 2? It’s basically the same thing as the Apple tag, minus the apple.
This is too big for a bike, but I self host Traccar, and installed Sinotrack st901 in my cars years ago. SIM card cost is about 50 cents a month each.
Edit: check Mictrak MT710
