So, I've had to do some travelling lately and ensuring something doesn't get lost or when I'm mad packing if I have everything, it's important. And in the past I'd been relying on Tile. Tile had cornered the market on tracking items for a time; the crux of Tile was that it worked so long as you had the app, and others around you had it as well (or some amount of users had it). The more 'sniffers' you had out there helping you look was better.
When Apple started to come out with their own tracking tags, Tile started to fall out of fashion. Less people out there using it made it slightly less as confident.
It made me happy when Google started their own Find Hub - so instead of hoping that people install Tile, we hope they'd turned on Find Hub on their Android device to do the work of looking around and (securely) seeing what they see.
Okay, all that to say that we, Android users, have a system for us that can track things, not just our devices, but tracking items.
Now, Nomad has a Tracking Card Air for us to throw in our wallet or whatnot and if we needed to find it, the app can find it for us.
The Tracking Card Air runs for $49CDN and works on Android's Find Hub.
To set it up, well I had a little bit of an issue, because to set it up you hold the button on the card and your phone should have a pop up on it saying that a card wants to connect to your Find Hub. For me, doing that meant it tried to connect to a few different devices all at the same time and confused it (I accidentally swept the thing away on my device, so getting it to go there took some jiggering).
For the device we get a battery that lasts 7 months. That battery is chargeable by Qi, and I cannot understate how convenient that is for us. My Tiles I have around the house use a CR1632 - which is hard to find and when I do it's like almost $20 at Shoppers (yeah, I could buy it cheaper online, but I'm never thinking about that before it's dead). Such a pain as the Tile never tells you when it's getting low, just one day it's not finding it. Gah.
So, this card, plop it on a Qi mat for a bit and then it'll last 7 months. What I'm waiting for is to see whether or not Find Hub will tell you when this card is now getting low as you can see the battery level in the app.
And it works... In the Find Hub, you can tell it to find or make a sound, and it does. What I liked on the app it might even tell me what device in my house might have seen it last. (When I'm away now, it's just saying it was last seen 'near Home')
In the app, what's handy is you can rename the device (so wallet, or passport) so it's easy to remember what you're looking for. There also is an option to 'share' this item with a trusted member so they can track it as well.
The device itself is pretty minimal. Compared to a typical credit card it is a little thicker, but not like you'd notice it in your wallet. Compared to the KeySmart tracker, it is a little thicker than that too, but we're talking a mm or 2... Throw it in a normal wallet and you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference.
[See photos below]
Reviewing something like this is tough. I can see that it's working, but I won't REALLY get to know how well it works until I NEED to know it's working, and I really don't want to lose my wallet and test it out.
What I'm hoping for is that I've put this in my Passport.
Not that I use my passport that much but when I do, I'm constantly trying to remember where I put it. So instead of randomly looking, I can just ask my Nest device to 'find my passport' and it should just cause it to ring loud.
Fun. Cheaper than another similar one out there (mind you, less battery). And sure you can probably find cheaper 'tags' out there that work with the Find Hub, but I'm noticing a lot of them are needing a physical battery that needs replacing. I'm not going back to that... Once I'm on wireless charging, I'm not going back to even cable unless I have to.
Check it out. Nomad's been an amazing manufacturer for a bunch of accessories that I use everyday still, so I love their quality.
https://nomadgoods.com/ca/products/tracking-card
Comments
Post a Comment