Does anyone know of a keychain style bluetooth tracker (wallet and device trackers are a bonus) that works with Android that ideally doesn’t require having an account with some company? And most definitely not with Google. Understanding that such a device probably won’t have access to Google’s Find My Device network or something similar. I haven’t any luck finding anything definitive.
Here’s the features I want in such a device:
- Find device via my phone (if in bluetooth range)
- Rechargeable/replaceable battery
- No subscription required
Less important but nice to have:
- Find my phone via the device (again, if in bluetooth range)
Here’s the devices I’ve tried/researched. Seems unlikely any of these will work. I’m hoping I’m either wrong and/or there’s some option I didn’t find.
Tile
I bought some of these. I had a phone with a custom rom and microG. Which let me circumvent a google sign in (still need a vendor account, unfortunately). But I damaged that phone while traveling and had to replace it quickly and didn’t research the replacement. This phone currently doesn’t have any custom roms available. With regular Google Play services as opposed to microG, the Tile app also requires you be signed in to Google play to work. Maybe I could get around this via the unlock bootloader > Magisk > LSPosed > FakeGapps > MicroG route and perhaps I’ll try, but I’d rather have a device that doesn’t try to force me in the first place.
Samsung Galaxy SmartTag2
So far this seems like the best option. From what I’ve read it requires a Samsung account but not a Google one. Lesser of two evils.
Chipolo
The FAQ for all devices in their current product line say they work with Google’s Find My Device app and their app provides extra features. Which indicates to me a requirement on Google.
Pebblebee
Their current Clip (keychain) product lists Google’s Find Hub app as a requirement. Their card and tag products do not.
Meshtastic. The SeeedStudio T1000-E is a credit card sized device that works with meshtastic
However, it doesn’t quite fit what you’re looking for. Since it doesn’t have a button on the device that will trigger an alert on the phone, etc.
Not a great solution, since op will need a second meshtastic device to find it if it becomes lost beyond BT range.
Meshtastic is a lot of things, and fun is one, but useful is… not really. This comes from 3 years of meshtastic use.
I mean, I was already resigned to something that is limited to a bluetooth device that’s in range since I refuse to use Google’s service and I don’t love the idea of being locked in to any other similar vendor owned solution. So for my purposes it seems to fit the bill.
I’ve only just started digging into Meshtastic (I previously had a vague awareness of the existence of mesh networks but no specific knowledge) but it is looks like just my kind of hobby. I also do have a potential use case for it. On a recent trip, my partner was having trouble with her eSIM. There were a couple of instances where we were apart but not a long distance from each other. If I’m understanding how this works correctly, this would fill that gap.
Keep in mind that meshtastic is also very small, so that might be partly why it’s not useful. It literally just hit one in a million for known nodes at least. One in a million is not particularly dense coverage.
I’ll research the device but at a glance this looks great!
The find phone functionality is more of a convenience. I can also do this via FMD (FindMyDevice) https://fmd-foss.org/
I updated my post to indicate it as optional.
Meshtastic is definitely a rabbit hole, but it is an extremely fun rabbit hole.