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Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

(undetectag.com)
114 points pompidoo | 1 comments | 15 May 25 15:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source

I developed a device that turns an Airtag on and off at specific intervals. Current Airtags are detectable right away and cannot be used to track stolen property. That device allows you to hide an Airtag in your car, for example, and someone that steals your car will not be able to use some app to detect it. The Airtag will also not warn the thief of its presence. After some hours, the Airtag turns on again and you can find out its location. It’s not foolproof, as the timing has to be right, but still useful.

What do you think?

1. gojomo ◴[15 May 25 19:14 UTC] No.43998321[source]▶
After I saw third-party "10 year battery enclosure" offerings for AirTags, was wondering when other workaround customizations like this might appear.

Other impactful variants might be:

* senses whether another 'sibling' AirTag is present, if so, stays off. If not, waits X hours & then turns on.

* has its own motion sensor; only after X minutes of being stationary, it waits Y hours to turn on briefly

* has its own clock & (original-user-known) randomization seed; turns on at pseudorandom intervals the original user can predict

* low-power/low-bandwidth receivers so cheap & tiny now: could wait for national or even global unit-specific 'wake' request - perhaps even with parameters for duration/intervals – before powering-on AirTag portion