Before anyone gets the wrong idea I am one of those peoples who’s mantra is “I would rather have it and not need it than the other way around”.
In that vein I daily a backpack that has thousands of dollars in tools, electronics and survival stuff in it at all times. I’m talking I could survive a complete collapse of society for quite some time with what I keep in that bag every day kinda deal.
The one thing that concerns me is the bag getting grabbed one day. I could replace everything in there but I would prefer to avoid spending all that money and time setting it all up again. I keep it with me as much as I reasonably can, but obviously I can’t take it with me into places like concerts or events. During those times I have it stashed in a hidden compartment in my trunk so it’s unlikely it would get taken in a smash and grab, but I would feel much better if I was able to keep track of the bags location at all times.
It seems like the small gps tracker market is basically small tags like the tile or air tag and then it immediately jumps to like thousands of dollars and subscriptions.
I am aware that this mythical tracker might not exist at all, but if anyone would know of one it’s you nerds (I call yall nerds lovingly).
A friend of mine just used an old phone with “find my device” enabled. Is this too big?
I’m a fucking idiot… This is the obvious answer to my problem lol.
I have several old androids I could toss a cheap SIM into and just pay like a flat fee for a year service.
Thank you for pointing out the most obvious thing that I will be punching myself for not thinking of lol.
I’m like actually disappointed in myself for not having that thought cross my mind once. Haha
The comparably low battery life of phones could become a problem.
I can install a barebones OS and basically disable everything except GPS. Im sure I can get at least a day or 2 out of it. Worst case I just add another solar battery pack and wire it up to that.
If you are going the phone way and care to make the battery last longer, you can also install an app that keeps waiting to receive a keyword by SMS, upon receiving which it turns the GPS on, locates itself and sends the location back by SMS. It has dual benefit of not needing a data pack and making the battery last longer since the GPS or data is not on constantly. On the down side it’ll be tough to do live tracking by this approach.
https://www.theonespy.com/features/track-location-with-sms
https://youtu.be/FknRti6n_F8
These are just two links that came up using a basic search to do this. There are multiple listings on f-droid to help you not just get location but control the phone remotely over SMS.
Find My Device (FMD) (Locate and control your device remotely) https://f-droid.org/packages/de.nulide.findmydevice/
Simple sms remote (Control your device by sending text messages) https://f-droid.org/packages/tranquvis.simplesmsremote/
Finder (Remote mobile phone searching via SMS requests.) https://f-droid.org/packages/ru.seva.finder/ Cheers!
So Lineage on an old phone will easily go 5 days without charging.
If I were to disable a bunch of stuff, and force low battery mode (or lowest possible with location sharing still working) it would probably go longer, closer to 8.
You might want to keep WiFi on, it might help you get a location fix with less battery use than just GPS;
The problem with this (I would imagine) is that that thieves these days are probably savvy enough to look for and disable a phone ASAP, paired with phones being big enough that you can’t exactly hide one in a bag like you can with something AirTag-sized.
You aren’t wrong. The bag I am using does have a secret compartment I added that is pretty hard to find on accident and it can fit a phone. It’ll probably make it a little more likely to get spotted but it would take an observant thief and in my experience they are not the smartest folk around.