I’m looking to put a tracker on my mountain bike. I use GrapheneOS.
What are your recommendations?
I’ve heard Life360 (which owns Tile now) is a privacy nightmare.
AirTags are unmanageable without an iPhone.
Never heard of Chipolo until recently.
Is there anything for GrapheneOS that would work well?
(Also: Does GrapheneOS have a Find My software equivalent?)
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He overhypes it but this is the best option I’ve seen personally: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JCDTpbpKC-g&t=414s&pp=ygUOb3BlbnNvdXJjZSBnb3M%3D
The FOSS equivalent of “find my device” is called… Find My Device. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.nulide.findmydevice/
That might be good for phones, but it seems like they want one of the external tracker devices. Those are only good if you have a large network of people locating items (unless you just want to find things in your house)
Indeed!
How about meshtastic with the Rak WisMesh Tag?
Would have to be charged every day or few. The BLE beacon tag batteries can last a year. I suppose one could install a dynamo and hook it up to that (would be more noticeable to thieves though).
I haven’t gone through all the modes, but apparently there is a tracker mode that from what I understand doesn’t really broadcast unless it receives a specific signal from a known device. So theoretically it might last a bit longer, but yeah, I definitely see your point.
As some said FMD (Find My Device) available on Fdroid is an option, but except real GPS trackers they will not work everywhere. The same goes with any airtag like system
If you can hide an old small android phone with a a SIM card in your bike, you can use FindMyDevice (FMD) available in f-droid.
If not you can use some pet tracking device, like FindMyCat. It’s a small opensource device in a collar where you need to plug in a SIM card.
But if you want a device which uses low power Bluetooth / mesh connection and which doesn’t require SIM card nor GPS. Then I don’t know any alternative which is not a privacy nightmare.
Someone else also suggested a pet tracker. It seems like this is the way to go for a hardware tracker.
But find my cat isn’t available yet (according to website), so are there any others you know of/recommend?
I back FindMyDevice. Simple setup, just give it permission (The necessary stuff works is easy to give permission on GrapheneOS) And give phone numbers for it to allow. I personally don’t have a second phone so I just put in my family’s phone number. and as simple as them texting “FMD Ring” and my phone started ringing. Same with “FMD Locate” Which gave a general (But not perfect) location. Very good app, only wish there was a UI on the other phones end.
There is a thing like that for Android but from what I can tell, it doesn’t work as well as the Apple version, at least so far.
Pretty much every method is going to use a central database which is out of your control and is, necessarily, a privacy vulnerability.
The best option would be a cellular implementation but those are going to be necessarily large and require regular charging. But such a device would be very obvious to any would-be thief.
The only privacy vulnerability there would be the same one you get with any cellular device; location tracking via IMEI.
I can’t imagine how such a system would work and also be privacy friendly.
The tags are picked up by other people’s phones and reported to a central service. The nature of the reported information unavoidably gives private data like your location to the owner of the service. You could technically build your own network, but you’d have limited users so it wouldn’t have the reach of the AirTag network.
Find my Phone software could work in a self-hosted/privacy friendly environment. You’d just need an app that reports its location to a server that you’re running. Something like this: https://github.com/LINKIWI/orion-server which seems to use MQTT to periodically report the phone’s position information to your own server.
I mean that’s not totally unavoidable, it could simply be encrypted communication sent directly to your device.
Yeah, I could imagine a system that could be created that would allow the same functionality but also be anonymous.
If there’s such a FOSS project going, I don’t know of it (but would be interested!).
Things like Google and Apple location services only work because they’re absolutely fucking everywhere. And it’s why a FOSS implementation would likely never work. Regardless of encryption or decentralization.
It would require a large user buy-in, for sure.
But, in the meantime, it seems like we could get a few nerds together to hack out how to put a system together that preserves privacy while allowing distributed location tracking.
I mean they already have
https://fossdroid.com/a/findmydevice.html
Apple calls two different things ‘Find My Phone’, the phone’s location tracking of itself and then there’s the entire network of Apple devices across the world that constantly monitor for the AirTag’s Bluetooth Low Energy beacons allowing you to find the AirTags (and any attached valuables) anywhere in the world.
There are many things that let you ask your phone where it is (or have it report it’s location to a server that you host).
There is nothing that matches the worldwide network of Apple devices which are listening for your airtag’s BLE beacon.
Makes sense. I will look into this, thank you. Still on the lookout for a hardware tracker though.
The small hardware trackers have a range of 10 meters. They literally cannot work without being a privacy intrusion like Tile/Life touch.
The only option is a tiny phone that you hide on the bike. You can go really small by getting a dog gps tracker. They work using cell service rather than depend on other nearby users running a tracking app that reports their finds back to Apple or Lifetouch so that you can login and see it.
Someone else also suggested a pet tracker. It seems like this could work for my use case.
Any ones you know of/recommend?
Sorry, no. I looked into them for my cats but they were all too large. There’s also the monthly cell phone fee.
I’ve looked at making my own because then I could use a sim card with free sms. Google esp32 gps. https://youtu.be/aytj77b42VM.
None of the commercial products use free sms sims. I ended up using air tags because my wife has an iPhone.
I am pretty sure most Graphene OS users rather don’t use location services at all. No auch service will be helpful to your privacy.
That’s fair. I suppose I’m wondering if there’s a “lesser of x evils” scenario.
Bruh, setup a self hosted traccar server, install the client on your phone, done.
Looks like this would solve it for my phone, but I’m still looking for a hardware tracking device to mount on my bike.
There may be some hardware devices that can talk to traccar
https://lemmy.world/post/19892771