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.
I use tile but can’t say its privacy respecting necessarily.
I mean, the bug and the feature of an Apple Airtag is the ubiquity of their devices and their ability to backchannel BLE over cellular networks using millions of end user devices with their pseudoconsent.
Just by the nature of how that expansive network functions, there is no similar alternative that you can control the privacy of.
The alternative would be a GPS transponder intended for vehicles, such as LoJack, or something similar. They are going to have power and subscription requirements, usually cost $1000 for the hardware etc. And in that scenario you still have to “trust” the vendor to a degree.
Apparently launching your own satellite is getting more and more affordable.
Cube and micro-sats!
My pet tracker can be set up to only send location when asked for it. It uses a SIM card (pre paid), plus you can call it to listen to the surroundings or have it blink or make noise through the app.
The app requires the phone numbers of the people who are allowed to query the tracker.
I don’t know what trackers are available in your country. I found several who had subscription-type deals to have the tracking actually work. I hate subscriptions, so will always choose to pay more upfront to control my usage and cost. It’s a lot more expensive than any sort of air tag.
With the one I have I can delete the app after setup and only text the number to get gps-coordinates when I wish, but the app works great for my needs.
It also triangulates with WiFi etc to give a more accurate reading. All such settings can be changed in the app.
Can’t speak for privacy aside from it can be set up to only send info when queried and only to preselected numbers. Kinda depends what you mean by privacy respecting.
It does need to charge (varies greatly depending on weather, queries, settings etc) often.
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.
I see they’re promoting something called the Helium network. What’s the relationship between that and Meshtastic? Are they completely different things?
Helium just used the same radio technology as Meshtastic (LoRa) and that’s about it. Helium was some lame attempt to develop a mesh network tied to a cryptocurrency as incentive for users to deploy nodes. AFAIK Helium is basically over.
Meshtastic is free and open. The hardware and tiny amount of electricity are your only costs to get involved. A lot of devices are efficient enough to run on a 1 watt solar cell and single 18650 battery.
The reliability will depend on where you’re located and how many nodes are running in your area. If you happen to be in a particularly dense area, you might also look into MeshCore, which is essentially the same idea but designed to scale a lot better.
I have helium nodes near me. Not sure how blockchain fits in, but they offer money if you donate your wifi or LoRa, and you can buy service to use that wifi or LoRa.
I like the idea but WiFi doesn’t have the range to be very useful except maybe in an apartment building.
Do note though that MeshCore is proprietary and has a licensing cost to unlock all of its features whereas Meshtastic is open source and free as in freedom.
look for gps tracker with a sim slot and a cheap sim card. However, these probably need to be charged on a reguar basis.
The problem is that GPS signals are weak, and generally need a line of sight to the sky. Phones don’t rely on GPS alone, but also get location data by triangulating base stations and/or querying databases of WiFi SSIDs over the internet. And AirTags don’t contain either a GPS receiver or an internet connection: they’re just simple, low-power Bluetooth beacons which send an encrypted ID to any nearby iPhones, which add their locations and forward it to Apple.
Basically, all the smarts are in Apple’s infrastructure (including the numerous privately-owned devices running Apple’s location services). Replicating this without a network of roving receivers is a nonstarter.
My internet provider offers up to 4 sim cards per account. They cost once 10€, without a monthly fee. However they have only 300mb of high speed traffic. But this should be just fine for a tracker, no? Just have a look in your customer portal. Maybe you’ll find something there too
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.
