I lost a bunch of keys today. It sucks and it’s gonna cost me a lot of money to replace the locks. I want to to add an airtag-like device to my key ring in the future. However I don’t know of any device that works in a similar fashion, either through bluetooth or GPS, that works with Graphene and doesn’t require some kind of privacy invading online subscription.
Do you have any advice on privacy respecting alternatives to airtags?
Have a look at meshtastic. The Seeed T1000-E should do what you’re looking for, although the battery life would not be great for such a project.
Unfortunately having a private option is completely antithetical to the way these things function.
Your only other option is traditional trackers with GPS/modem and a cell plan.
A few answers say “they aren’t private by design,” but don’t really go into the “why.” There’s the obvious “it’s an electronic tracking device, duh” reason, but there’s also a more nuanced reason:
Airtags are able to be picked up almost anywhere because they connect to the nearest bluetooth-enabled Apple device, and then send location info across the internet to you. Without this functionality (the ability of any and every Apple device to locate it), they wouldn’t have any way to send their location back to the owner.
Your best “privacy respecting” alternatives are something that uses meshtastic (and hoping there’s enough repeaters near you), something that uses cellular data and GPS (which is about as privacy-respecting as Airtags are), or just a key finder/beeper (which only works within a small radius)
I’ve found smaller, cheaper alternatives by TrackR and Findr, but a promising yet expensive alternative is Chipolo - supports Apple Find My, Google Find My Device, and Chipolo companion app, however the tracking data is supposedly E2EE
