Trackr/Tile

[IVB]

Just bought a Tile, will give it a try after IVB's review.

 
Careful, listening to me is a slippery slope. Soon you'll be yelling "ok i know the car keys are somewhere in these two rooms but where the hell are they? Oh here they are, in the sports closet. WHO PUT THEM THERE? oh wait me? crap. never mind."
 
Or the time the wife freaked out about leaving her purse at the restaurant, only to have me pull up the app and immediately realize she left it in the trunk. And was still somehow my fault (She didn't need it since I told her I had my wallet).

 

[LarrylLix]

I just found my other two trackR coins, linked them in and out the water resistant cases on them.
 
I went back t the trackR website and did some reading, looking for a windows app to install. None, but I did find one in the Windows app store for $0.99.
 
Re-reading the trackR website, I noticed that most of their advertising is outright lies.  I noticed a demo finding car keys in the sand outside with the sound generated by the coin itself. Now the website claims "up to 85dB".  dB is a relative measurement and I suspect the promoters were not that ignorant of the how the dB scale works, but may have purposely mislead prospective customers into believing you could hear one of these signals outside from more than a few feet away. I have three and in the house the sound is so minute I doubt I could hear it, sitting beside, when the TV is on. 85db is not 85 dBm, and they haven't specified what the 85dB is relative to.
 
 
Not one of three trackR coins I have can be found by BT on my mobile Android phone or my Android tablet BT more than bout 15 feet away. The claim is when one is lost if it comes within 100 feet of another BT running app it will be located. BS. Not very likely.
 
I stuck one in my wife's purse today before she drove into town to do some shopping. I intently watched the app show me her last location recorded was at home.  She walked around town for several hours and not until she arrived home and we took her purse close to my running BT app on my mobile phone did the app locate her location back to the same spot again. I don't believe the app on the tablet ever saw her across the room in 15 minutes of being within 20 feet.
 
To be fair we do live in a small town with only four or five trackR registrations showing on their maps. Who knows how often they update the missing ones that people just gave up and tossed them out, and/or the batteries died. Having them registered in my apps since Father's day I still do not show up on any of trackR's maps.
 
Would I recommend them to anybody? Not to my worst enemy.
Total project failure or scam? I'll let readers decide. I'm not impressed one bit.
 
On my junk list. The biggest problem is how to I toss them in the bin and not let my gifting son know with a smile?
 
This kind of "we can code anything" junk makes me angry that somebody paid real money for it.

 

[mikefamig]

Interesting, one rave review and one hate-it review. It'll be interesting to see how BraveSirRobin does with it.
 
Mike.

 

[IVB]

Interesting, one rave review and one hate-it review. It'll be interesting to see how BraveSirRobin does with it.
 
Mike.

 
I don't use trackr, I use Tile. 

 

[mikefamig]

My mistake.

 

[pete_c]

I think the tiles thing is a great idea.
 
Relating to cellular technology tracking / et al stuff was already there in the early 2000's.  It wasn't really utilized because the telco's didn't make any money off of it.  It was pushed much after 2000 (after it becoming a life safety issue and then it was mandated) and and the costs for basic adds went to the consumer like it was a freebie originally from the telco.  It wasn't originally some paranoid methodology of big brother watching you; it was only a life saftey thing.  And because the telcos used to make money off of copper and many folks had migrated to cellular technology we now pay taxes on each cellular phone we own.  I was playing with geotracking with early 2G/3G phones and it worked great because it utilized cellular tower and GPS triangulation.  Now you don't really get to look at that stuff any more on your cellphone.
 
That is the way many things work today. 
 
IE: the migration to HD (broadcast or whatever) was a mandate rule handed down from the FCC.  Every broadcaster in the US did not want to change because it would cost money and would ding their pocketbooks.  That said the changes happened at a slow pace and was paid for by the consumer with the sell of premium HD (when it was already a standard broadcast).  That said we were already some 20 years behind in this technology as the EU was already using it way long time ago.
 
The rules keep changing and basically only deal relating to profit margins and nothing else these days.  I have used Direct TV here from the get go (along with cable and broadcast television).  The DTV purchase by AT&T has been a joke.  They are in the slamming mode similar to what they did with their telco stuff.  They are doing it indiscriminately because they can get away with it and circumvent basic business etiquette.  The new rules put in place for DTV consumers only deal with profit and nothing else these days.  Our last (hopefully never again) service call to AT&T satellite customer service stated that we lease the equipment (not own it anymore) and if it breaks we have to pay for it no matter what the garbage installed is.
 
In the last few days I have been dealing with Frontier.  I had earlier installed Verizon FIOS which has worked fine now for 7 or so years.  My internet has been down now due to a change Frontier made which only relates to slamming so that can up their profit margins and nothing else.  What a joke. 
 
More changes now with a la carte video stuff and really all of the resources relating to this only deal with DRM / profit margins.  That is the way it is.
 
Here I am old fashioned and now going back three homes have always left any keys on a key hanger by the front door.  Cell phones typically stay by the door and are shut off as they are not a needed appendage and I am not tethered to it (I do not need a cell phone to function in life); but that is me.  I also do not need a video camera in my refrigerator to know what is there via my cell phone.  I just typically open the refrigerator door and look.  (basically I have no want or need to move my automation dependencies to the cloud - that said I have used it when needed (international travel) but not depended on it).  Similar to having to be able to look at my thermostat on my cell phone.  If the base cooling or heating infrastructure is shit then a $500 thermostat isn't going to fix it.  I don't understand why folks do not see this?

 

[LarrylLix]

Where's your sense of adventure in all that?

But right on! There definitely is such a thing as abuse of technology.

Open your wallet! We have an idea we want to try out with your money.

 

[pete_c]

Really it is all about money these days relating to the new start up companies.  Why bother if you do not make money at it. 
 
That is why I enjoy Cocoontech as many folks here do the DIY thing and play with new technologies, however and whatever mechanisms are used. 
 
I like that IVB has brought up a new product called Tiles.  It is an example of what you can do today with a tablet / cellular phone.  Many years ago here checking out a construction site after hours and with no electricity I personally went to check on it climbing ladders in the dark et al.  I left my car keys on the top of a rafter when I first got there.  When I was done I had to retrace my steps for about an hour looking for for my car keys. 
 
Not too long ago I was involved in a (guessing here) over a billion dollar gas facility a few hundred miles away from the city of Lima Peru.  The facility installation and use would help the economy of Peru.
 
The location was self serving with sleeping quarters et al.  We RF tagged the employees such that a more efficient work environment was set up for them.  It was really all about resource use and monies.
 
Did run in to some issues at the facility as it sat on a tectonic plate and one earthquake reversed the progress time and money wise some 3 years in only 5 minutes.
 
Here recently while playing around with my Openpeak Jogglers installed RTC battery backed up clocks doing that bit banging thing.  I am amazed with a little bit of soldering and using a tiny RTC clock what can be done with the device.
 

 
Lots of folks here like to do this sort of thing and really DIY automation done right is very inexpensive.  You just have to know how to do it via software and hardware tinkering. 
 
I got my RFID working now up to almost a mile away and that only related to playing around with antennas and RF stuff. (and no cellular dependencies on it which I really like).

 

[IVB]

Re: the $500 thermo, value isn't always the same across folks. Otherwise I could say
- a 200 horsepower 8 cylinder ford Mustang isn't going to do anything except suck gas given the national speed limit laws, it's not like you can legally go much faster than my 4 cylinder Toyota.
- that $5 latte isn't any better than the $2 dunkin donuts one.
-That 3500 square foot house is just overkill if you only have a family of four, it's not like you can use all that room regularly.
- Grass lawns.

I could go on, or talk about what the thermo can do to help triage base issues, but I've already curmudgeoned enough

Plus as a former salesman we used to say that that it's not up to me to tell you what you value, I'll present the product or service and let you decide.

 

[IVB]

Shit now I miss my 4 cylinder Toyota. I used to hang with the gear heads and their GTOs in high school in that, that was fun.

 

[pete_c]

Understood IVB.  It is all about the sales methodologies. 
 
The owner of Fiat today wants to buy GM to turn them around.  He is using his sales tactics to get to them.
 
Re: the $500 thermo, value isn't always the same across folks. Otherwise I could say
 
Folks believe in just about anything (much new technology) these days whether it is right or wrong or good or bad.
 
Folks in the SW purchased the London Bridge way long time ago.  Only it wasn't the London Bridge. 
 
Just saying that this stuff has always existed. 
 
It is easy because mostly folks are not HVAC installers or dealers and not contractors building new homes and not computer IT or software folks or security folks.  So you have a company that builds a $500 thermostat that tells you it will save you energy.  Well and let you remotely control it via your cell phone which really doesn't save you any money anyways.
 
A $500 thermostat will not ever fix a home built that leaks hot air in or cold air in or is energy efficient or compares the on and off times to a geographically close home using the same thermostat.  All it will do is have you wondering why your heating or cooling bills are that much higher or lower than near by thermostats and making efforts to fix that (thinking you are doing that today; eh?)
 
Personally too it is the sell of the eye candy which has worked now as folks are putting thermostats where everybody can see them rather than where they should be installed which makes them much less effective but the look nice on the wall.
 
Many years ago a company sold a pet rock and made much money selling it.  I don't recall that the pet rock had any function.
 
In the 1980's during the gas crutch Ford built a turbo charged 4 cylinder Escort for sale only in Europe that ran circles around 4 cylinder Escorts in the use relating to both gasoline/diesel use and raw horsepower.  Had a friend bore out the cylinders on a Ford Pinto once; it cranked a bit after that.
 
Personally here purchased a new Mazda Millenia in the late 1990's.  I liked it so much that when the engine went bad on me around 140k; I purchased another Mazda with the same engine and took that engine out of it and put it in my car.  I did have to flat bed tow it some 2000 miles as I found the automobile online.   When I was doing this folks told me to purchase the same engine built in Japan and sold in Canada because it was better on gas and horsepower and longevity than the original engine.
 
In the 1970's had a new Pontiac Trans Am (with an 8 cylinder) and girlfriend had a new Ford Mach 1 convertible (with an 8 cylinder).  We always traded cars at that time.  Her father owned a petroleum company and we had unlimited gasoline resources. They sucked a lot of gas and really just tipped over 200HP.  I used the fuel gauges as clocks more than anything.
 
I could go on, or talk about what the thermo can do to help triage base issues,
 
Here had a friend in the HVAC business that taught me how to do that with an old circular Honeywell thermostat of old which could be purchased at the time for some $10.  You do not need a $500 thermostat to do this.  There are HVAC folks around this forum / Homeseer forum that just monitor temperatures on every piece of their HVAC systems using old 1-wire technologies just to check the efficiencies of what they have in place today.  IE: you can purchase a Maxim 1-wire temperature sensor today for about a penny.  You can connect a bunch of these sensors to a $35 dollar RPi2 and monitor every piece of your home for less than $50.

 

[IVB]

Apologies i'm not being clear.
 
I understand everything you're saying. But my point is that they may place $490 of value on being able to see & control heat from their smartphones and to hell with the energy savings, they can control it from their phone WooHoo! Does that make sense? Well not to me, I do it for automation purposes, but I disagree with many choices folks make. (I'm still shocked that anyone in their right mind ever bought MainLobby to put on top of HomeSeer, that was the stupidest package ever built with arrogant jerks running the system. Gee Ma Lookey See What I Can Do With Muh Phone And Its So Purty! CQC is blatantly FAR better than both HS & ML combined. But hey its their money, go spend it)
 
For example,
1) since the time I made that post, I had to run some errands involving 40 miles of highway driving. I have an $18K (off the lot brand new no trade-in) Nissan Rogue. There was light traffic. A BMW 5 series, camaro, and Jaguar F-type all followed me, we were all doing about 80-90mph. They were struggling to keep up, I ended up dusting them. Why would you possibly spend more than $20K on a car (I put in a $2500 stereo system immediately after purchase) when you're not going to get there any faster or be any more comfortable? Are these people silly, you're wasting your money!
 
2) My house is 1650sqft and on a .09 acre lot. For a family of 4 we're totally comfortable. Why in gods name is anyone buying a bigger house on a bigger lot than that? You just don't need it, you're wasting your money!
 
3) My buddies are all having their mid life crises right now. One guy bought a $2500 Fender & amp kit. I bought my kid a $300 Fender that's almost as nice. He wasted his money!
 
My point is that 1-wire or RPi is more work than many are willing to do. Ew actual wires? Circuit boards? They'll spend $490 to avoid doing or even seeing that. Every one of us is guilty of spending money on something others would consider stupidly wasteful.
 
Then again, I'm clearly a shlub in most ways, most folks would do well to ignore everything I say  

 

[LarrylLix]

Weeds, and waste, is in the eye of the beholder.

One man's garbage is another man's riches.

 

[pete_c]

IVB understood and see that you are a bit sensitive; which is not a big deal.
 
Yes here purchased Homeseer 1 in the late 1990's and Mainlobby in the early 2000's.  I have never really had issues with it.
 
Having written the above and using it now for over 15 years I understand the way it works. 
 
Over the years have checked out other automation software.
 
I understand that you enjoy and like using CQC.  That is good. 
 
Deans automation software is a well written and worth the investment.
 
I also understand that you utilize a remote controlled by your telephone thermostat for automation purposes.  I am not knocking that.
 
Here I still do remote control stuff at home via my cell phone and started doing this stuff with the first GPRS internet connected phones using them on my travels many years ago.  It got a bit old and low on the WAF when I did this while business traveling because I would play with the automation more than use it.
 
I personally like to tinker with automation and personally learn the most getting to the bits and pieces that make it work such that I am always playing with it. 
 
The car and the house thing are personal choices as with most folks. 
 
Most important about things you have are not those things or material goods but rather your health such that you can enjoy life.

 

[IVB]

That's my point. Why are you judging / deriding people's decision making process about buying a $500 thermostat instead of a $10 one when you've made choices others wouldn't?

In my advanced age I've decided I don't give a crap what other people spend their money on. You think MainLobby is worth it after hearing about the alternatives? Cool. Don't mock others about what they spend money unless you don't mind being mocked you for where you spend money.