Can confirm: telematics is about the most annoying, inaccurate thing on the planet!
If they’re old enough to drive then I’m going to be slightly less worried about them. Only slightly. That’s years away though.
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i think this is a good idea. for all that you can easily replace the cards in a wallet there are usually other items that have sentimantal value that cant be replaced. my sister has a little card that my nephew made her which she would be devestated to loose. granted probably best not to have it in the purse but…
it does seem a bit big though! id be more interested if it was smaller. taking it one step further if the tracker was just built in unnoticabely to the purse/ wallet that would make it awesome!
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I have them in the sole of their shoes, their belt buckle, their phone, their bag, their bike light and saddle. If one stops working I can always trace another.
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The devices linked above?
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very similar but they use GLONASS rather than GPS
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Both devices use Bluetooth tracking, not GPS. Has a useful range of about 20 metres.
Overall, about as useful as a chocolate watch.
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Came here to say the same thing.
Well, I was going to say “and how are you going to power it”, and then I read that you’d found something supposedly with 12mo life, I clicked on, excited, sure enough: it’s all lies.
It’s not GPS, and it doesn’t track.
You get close enough to one of these tags or cards, and then your phone will be able to tell you it’s nearby, and roughly how nearby.
The only legitimate use I can think of is locating a car/bicycle when you can’t remember exactly where you left it. Even then, you’d have to be pretty close, so it’d save you maybe a minute.
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I respectfully disagree - I have a tile in my travel wallet, the one that has my passport in it. My car picked me up one morning, about 5 mins away from home I thought ‘did I pack my passport?’. The suitcase is in the boot… Checked my tile app, last location home. Turned around, picked it up.
It also beeps - very useful when you can’t find your keys.
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Yes, from reading it, it’s your phone using its own GPS to store the position it was in where it last detected the card. The card itself has no GPS built in.
Well in that case, I see no value in it?
Yeah, I agree. I kinda like it, because it’s fairly clever, behavioural concept. There are some pet trackers, that are really utilising GPS, but many tracking things are just using bluetooth, and in many cases it’s all you need to find pesky car keys! 
@DaveTMG You can test it:
- Leave something in one place (home)
- Walk out of the range, and check where the item is.
- Disable bluetooth. Move item elsewhere (go to coffee shop/work)
- Without enabling bluetooth back on, check if item is at home or in coffee shop. If you enable bluetooth it will update position immediately, so it’s important to not enable it.
It is a referral link for personal gain. Whilst I am not against it, it should be disclosed. Here is information regarding the Chipolo referral programme.
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Wow, a free chipolo, gonna book my speedboat to the Caribbean today
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I know how tile works…
It does use the location services in your phone, but it also uses anyone else who has the tile app installed. The power of the crowd.
I’ve had my luggage tile notify me it is in the collection area at SFO, due to another tile user picking up the signal and relaying the info. It’s all anonymous from a user perspective, but you can say thanks through the app to whoever located your tile for you.
You simply couldn’t use gps in it - the power drain is way too high. A gps would drain the coin cell in the tile in hours, whilst the BTLE chip will run for more than a year on it.
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OK, that’s quite a nice touch if you have a sufficient user base to make it useful. It sounds like the way Fitbit do their synchronisation - anyone in range at a given time.
Obviously in SF and the valley you are never far from another tile user. What surprised me was that in the town I work in in Wilts, there are several hundred other tile users ‘close by’. (The app pops up a count every now and then when you open it).
In fairness, if you put that in all the Monzo cards that would make sense and might work quite well! 350,000 is not a small number!
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And if all 350000 Monzo users use my link I still only get 1 chipolo… nice one