UKC

Hi All,

Having now lost a suitcase for an entire trip (it got delivered to the home address the day after we got back), its time to bite the bullet and get a tracker.

Any suggestions as to what we use ?

We don't have an up-to-date iPhone, but we do have a recent Android phone.

We don't want to pay for a subscription service, or buy a new iPhone. 

Any ideas ?

Thanks All.

Google are launching a version so that might be your option. 

https://www.pocket-lint.com/googles-item-tracker-and-apple-airtag-rival-cou...

I have a credit card sized one by Tile in my wallet as I'm always losing that in the house, car etc but it's less relevant now I rarely take it anywhere now that I use contactless on my phone for everything. 

They're not like GPS trackers (all of them, whatever brand), they rely on Bluetooth so the range is short, but they piggy back on the network or Apple or Android phones (or Tile apps) to anonymously share location. That means the bigger the network of users, the better it will be at tracking down your items actually out in the wild. 

Mmm, 10th May will be cutting it fine.

Maybe the Tile one is the one to go for, as its really only for airports and the like.

Had similar thoughts as I am currently waiting for a lost bag to arrive in Canada. It's not really lost, as it just missed it's connection, so both the airline and I know where it is. In your case how would a tracker have helped? 

I have a tile one that I use with my android phone. I love the little burst of excitement you get when it appears on your phone just before it pops out on the luggage belt 🤣

One thing to consider is that it only works when it can connect to the app via nearby phones,  though in my experience of using it at airports around Europe and USA it works well although there may be periods of an hour or so when it doesn't pick up where it is, I guess because it isn't near any phones. The peace of mind it has given me is definitely worth the price of the tile.

What?! This is the golden ticket everyone is looking for. Your suitcase goes walkies and the holiday insurance cough up for an entire new set of gear, technical clothing and anything else you packed. I think everyone I know who has had this happen has ended up being, on balance, in a happier place at the end of it all.

Not our golden ticket - had to buy replacement gear at steep prices, and now the bag is found we have duplicate gear. Not all purchases were honoured by the insurance company and with the excess we have lost out a bit  

That would be quite cool, especially when half the plane also has a black suitcase like ours, although it does have a coloured band for easy ID. But they can come off.

How many time have we waited and waited at the carrousel ?

I remember someone walked off with my very large rack sack at Gatwick Airport once. Luckily got it back two weeks or so later. 

The airline (LATAM) did not know where the bag was, and knowing its location may have helped its onward passage. Perhaps.

I was stopped by police/security with a member of the public in tow at Granada bus station, demanding that I show them the contents of my backpack.  Turned out the bloke had just had the exact same Lowe Alpine rucksack stolen!

You need a recent-ish iPhone or iPad to set-up a AirTag - ie to link it to your Apple account. Once thats done you can track it on an apple device, or using a reduced functionality Android app. They rely on the ubiquity of Apple mobile devices, though: the tag is sensed by any iThings (irrespective of owner) in the area, which send a location update to Apple.  No Apple devices near the tag equals no updates, but an airport is likely to have a high density of iPhones so they ahould work.

Tile devices are for finding your car keys or whatever. Your phone is the only one that can locate the tracker, and you have to be in bluetooth range. Theres no network of receivers, so for tracking a suitcase it wont help you do much more than find it on the carousel.

The other option is the kind of trackers that are used in cars. These use gps to fix their location and the mobile phone network to send it to a service provider. Usually needs a subscription and might not work abroad due to roaming restrictions. And strictly speaking, devices that transmit signals need to be in flight mode while the aircraft is in the air, which makes them useless for this purpose.

Cheaper to get a couple of Danger Biohazard stickers for your case instead...

I personally really dislike the mono-cultural Apple ecosystem - and refuse to have anything to do with it.

But, my personal dislikes aside: to the OP, what in practice are you trying to achieve by such tagging? Would knowing the whereabouts of your lost baggage have helped get it returned sooner than it actually was, do you think? (Genuine question.)

I'd be surprised if would things happen quicker. Airlines have systems for dealing with lost luggage and you telling them it's in Quagadougou won't make them get it quicker. If it's *really* lost and out of the airline's system I can see it may help

This isn't true. Maybe it worked that way at some point but Tile has been able to take advantage of other Tile users reporting back tag locations for quite a while now.

Apple definitely have the edge on number of active users in their network but Google results suggest people get on quite well with Tile and they do have some advantages. For someone not in the Apple ecosystem, they're almost certainly a better option, and they sound like a pretty decent competitor all round. Here's the Wirecutter review, they're generally a good source for comparisons like this:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/tile-trackers-review/

I use a "Tile" on my keyring, which is a non-Apple version of the same technology. It can be very useful for finding where you've put your keys down, or in reverse for finding where you've put your phone down, but I wouldn't hold out much hope of tracking a device that was no longer within signal range as it would rely on random interactions with similar technology to log sightings..

Thanks for the correction. I wasn't aware of that.

I'm not sure how much difference it makes in practice, though. There simply aren't going to be enough phones running the Tile app to give much chance of the tag being located. Contrast to AirTags where the detection is built-in to recent iPhones/Pads.

(For the record, I don't own an iPhone or iPad)

And pray tell how on earth are Apple meant to be able to write the AirTag functionality into the Android OS?

Well they've developed an Android app that interacts with AirTags to a limited extent and they could easily have made that app more functional. They also could have developed the entire system as an open standard and invited other manufacturers to join in. There's no fundamental technological reason why phones from different manufacturers couldn't all be interoperable for a system like this just like they are for phonecalls or emails and it would be to everyone's benefit if it happened. Apple made a business decision, as they invariably do, that they'll make more money by keeping it exclusive to their devices. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly entitled to do that, but let's not pretend it's anything other than a money making decision. Same as Facetime or iMessage or using an Apple Watch with an Android phone or the clever integrations between iPhones, iPads and Macs. The barriers to mixing and matching Apple and non-Apple gear are deliberate and carefully constructed to make sure Apple keep raking in money. Other manufacturers make similar calls, this isn't unique to Apple, but they're very effective at it.

As we were moving around it was hard to decide where to send the suitcase once found, and if found. In the end we said (before it was found) to send it back home as we were moving around a lot. LATAM was useless in finding the bag or communicating any useful information to us either verbally or electronically. We did not know where the bag was. Knowing its location might help deciding where to send it. All face to face communication with LATAM staff at SCL airport was via Google Translate (Queens English to Pigeon Spanish), and I feel although they were nodding in apparent sympathy, that any message was lost in translation. We only had 2 days at SCL before flying to AEP. We suspect the suitcase went from SYD to YVR (Vancouver) based on the stickers on the suitcase when we got it back.

Trying to achieve : just a simple way to show general location of a suitcase should it go walkabout.