Apple Airtags - use on dive equipment for security?

[breals]

I've got an Airtag on my cat's harness. She is allowed outside for short periods (she prefers the indoors) but we want to know where she is before we locked down the house each night. The complications is that she hides and we used to scour the house for her to ensure we didn't lock her out. ANYWAY, I bought an Airtag for her; it's painful to use and when she got locked out, it didn't not help us find her. She was hiding and the Airtag would not locate her because "it wasn't bright enough"

I wouldn't rely on Airtags to find your stuff.

 

[Wibble]

I've got an Airtag on my cat's harness. She is allowed outside for short periods (she prefers the indoors) but we want to know where she is before we locked down the house each night. The complications is that she hides and we used to scour the house for her to ensure we didn't lock her out. ANYWAY, I bought an Airtag for her; it's painful to use and when she got locked out, it didn't not help us find her. She was hiding and the Airtag would not locate her because "it wasn't bright enough"

I wouldn't rely on Airtags to find your stuff.

Very interesting.

Wonder what "it isn't bright enough" means! The point of them is they're secreted away in a bag/case/wallet/whatever.

 

[kelemvor]

I looked that up. When you get within a certain range of the airtag, the phone resorts to using the optical camera to find the tag. It needs to have enough light in order to see the tag.

 

[breals]

Yeah, it's a weird quirk of it. It's not like it needs line of sight, it can be under a bed or behind a wall but if it's dark, it will tell you to turn on the flashlight or get more light.

It also relies on other Apple devices to tell you the location of it. I spent 30 mins searching for our cat one morning one street over, because that was the last time it pinged an Apple device. However, we eventually found her in our side yard shed, which is metal and acted like a Faraday cage.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[KenGordon]

I use them for house and car keys. We have kind of given up on the one on the dog as when she vanishes into the woods we are likely beyond BT range And she is moving too quickly.

Next time I fly I will put them in the luggage.

 

[Dody]

As with most of the Apple products, it works better if one uses the entire ecosystem: Apple ID, Iphone from 11 to 13. The Apple ID allows you to track the Airtag through the "Locate me" feature and not only BT, NFC or Ultra WideBand. The recent iPhones with the U1 chips will bring you to inches of the device once you are close enough to use BT and then you can make it ring or vibrate. You will have to rely on other iPhone users to precisely locate your iPhone. The beauty of it is that any iPhone close to an Airtag flagged "lost" will automatically send the location to Apple and a message will be sent to the Airtag owner. It's not bullet proof but it is a great product.
Edit: the Airtag is no GPS.

 

[azstinger11]

I don’t think AirTags are particularly useful in this scenario. As any iOS user will be alerted to the AirTag unless one of your iOS devices is nearby, or an android user has the app and scans.

Just this weekend wife and I drove to dinner. I forgot my iPhone at home but car keys have an AirTag, pretty rapidly it alerted my wife there was an AirTag nearby and she could make it play a sound. So for anti theft, I think it’s relatively pointless. For finding your own stuff it’s great, minus the fact that you can’t add family members (ie my wife can’t see AirTags associated with my Apple ID nor I anything associated with hers, despite the fact we can follow each other’s phones in the “Find My” app).

 

[Dody]

I don’t think AirTags are particularly useful in this scenario. As any iOS user will be alerted to the AirTag unless one of your iOS devices is nearby, or an android user has the app and scans.

Just this weekend wife and I drove to dinner. I forgot my iPhone at home but car keys have an AirTag, pretty rapidly it alerted my wife there was an AirTag nearby and she could make it play a sound. So for anti theft, I think it’s relatively pointless. For finding your own stuff it’s great, minus the fact that you can’t add family members (ie my wife can’t see AirTags associated with my Apple ID nor I anything associated with hers, despite the fact we can follow each other’s phones in the “Find My” app).

It’s not entirely true. There are two scenarios when other iPhone users will be alerted. 1) When the airtag is moving and is following the same route as an iPhone. 2) When an airtag stays close to an iPhone for a period of time. Note that Apple does not specify the period of time.
When an iPhone sends the location data to the airtag owner, the iPhone owner is not alerted. But it is right that it’s more useful for a lost item than a stolen item. I have read stories where people had tracked diving bags in airports and even in small cities where someone had taken the bag.

 

[PapaRod]

I put them our luggage, my backpack with our carry on dive gear, and my wife’s purse when we traveled recently to Cozumel, it was a nice piece of mind to see our bags go on and off the plane, and it would alert me if I left the backpack behind. Definitely works much better than Tile ever did.

 

[azstinger11]

It’s not entirely true. There are two scenarios when other iPhone users will be alerted. 1) When the airtag is moving and is following the same route as an iPhone. 2) When an airtag stays close to an iPhone for a period of time. Note that Apple does not specify the period of time.
When an iPhone sends the location data to the airtag owner, the iPhone owner is not alerted. But it is right that it’s more useful for a lost item than a stolen item. I have read stories where people had tracked diving bags in airports and even in small cities where someone had taken the bag.

In my highly unscientific testing its a pretty short window . When I have forgotten my phone my wife gets the alert pretty quickly, sub 5 minutes, usually closer to 2-3. I really like AirTags but I do want them to add family sharing or something to the tags. It's crazy that my wife can monitor where my phone/watch/laptop/ipad is but can't look for car keys with the airtag and gets the airtag stalker alert (which is entirely driven by the first issue that she is near an airtag without it's owner) if she takes the set with the airtag without me being in the car too.