4 ms·
Tiles need Bluetooth to work, not Wi-Fi.
by chipsa 4y ago
Tiles need Bluetooth to work, not Wi-Fi.
- josefresco 4y agoWow. I feel like an idiot. Despite mentioning "GPS" several times in their copy, it does seem that Bluetooth is the only way to "find" a device. I still don't understand how the "GPS" part of their trackers work. Anyone have details? I'm going to remove them and attach to "household" items instead.
- tyingq 4y agoThe GPS part is just the tiles talking to any tile-enabled phone. The GPS is only in the phones, like: Any tile-enabled phone -> sees a tile -> sends a packet to the Tile mothership with the tile UUID + phone location. (Plus perhaps some nuances like guessing a more specific location for the tag based on bluetooth radio data)
- sorenjan 4y agoTile and Airtags works the same way. They broadcast a unique serial number over BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), and phones and other devices nearby detects those. The phone sends this serial number together with its location to a server, which then tells the registered owner of the tag where it is. To find it locally the simpler ones just use received signal strength over Bluetooth, Airtags and iPhones have a more sophisticated system with a higher frequency radio with better localization, I don't remember the details. It's this first system where other devices take part in a huge sensor network that makes Airtags so powerful, there a lot of iOS devices out there and crucially they all run this code in the background. Tiles will never work as well, because you won't get the same number of people willingly running their app all the time. It's a network effect more than a technical problem.