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  • Hacker News
  • Google is reportedly launching an airtag competitor tomorrow. I'm interested to see the details. I have a pair of their headphones, and they don't broadcast when the case is close, which makes them easy to loose.
    by ortusdux
  • When I lost my phone I put in one earbud and walked around the area listening for the connection sound.

    Turns out it wasn't useful because someone else had taken it to lost and found within a few minutes of me losing it, before I knew I'd lost it. But it was a good idea.

    by inigyou
  • If you have multiple fixed BLE receivers, you can do full trilateration. This project integrates into Home Assistant using HA proxy BLE receivers to track phones moving around in your house: https://github.com/agittins/bermuda
    by luma
  • Weirdly Apple seems to have something like this built-in for finding an apple TV remote - but the same flow doesn't appear to be launchable for any other device
    by glenjamin
  • Post inspired by "Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength" 07.aug.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49215786 215 comments ?
    by HelloUsername
  • I thought unless an android or iPhone is beaconing, it only broadcasts ble on device wake?

    Maybe I'm misremembering, but for example my esphome proxies in HA will show nothing for ages at night while my phone isn't being interacted with.

    If the phone is lost, it's probably not super awake lol

    by ruskyhacker

  •    This is not a Geiger counter, despite sounding a little like one.
    I'm so glad they cleared that up!

    Jokes aside, I thought BLE RSSI was too noisy to be accurate enough for something like this.

    by thomascountz
  • 20 years ago I meant to write something like this, but so friends could find each other nearby in places like clubs.
    by stuaxo

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