Anyone who doesn't want to wait to see if they win the contest can check here to acquire one of their very own on the website "he doesn't mention" 😉: www.redteamtools.com/under-door-tool-concealment-belt/
Having been on both sides many, many times, I'm smiling at the desk agent's use of the "If I tell you what almost certainly happened and then without directly saying so, make it seem like there's nothing else I can do to follow this up, will you accept that as good enough and go away or will you keep standing there until I eventually have to find out what _actually_ happened to your luggage?" technique. "Thank you, I appreciate you're trying to be helpful and giving me the benefit of your experience, but what I need right now are facts - someone to confirm exactly what happened in this particular incident, and to reassure me that the case is under proper supervison now. With the item in question being a firearm, I'm sure you can agree it's really important we get this sorted as a matter of priority."
I had a similar with an airline years ago. Guy showed up to drop the bag and didn't even confirm my ID. I asked him if I should sign something and the response was basically "why?" 'oh, I don't know, maybe because there's a gun in there?' "Our paperwork doesn't show that... well, have a good day!"
Hi Dev, any chance you could throw an Android tracker in the case too for your inevitable next lost case? I'd love to see the relative performance of the android vs. air tag.
I second this--as grateful as I am for my Tiles, they're really only useful if I myself am close enough to ping them. Would love to see if there are any alternatives that offer anything close to AirTag
Tip for people trying to track postal shipments: do not put an AirTag in a regular letter envelope. The machines that process letters will rip the envelope and you'll lose the AirTag permanently. Put whatever you're sending that you want to track (even if it's just a check) in a bubble mailer or a small box. It'll cost more, but you won't lose the AirTag under some sorting machine at a postal plant.
Airtags have saved my ass; I ship prototypes I design to my customers and always include an airtag with the package. Even if I don't get the tag back, $20 CAD is super cheap for the functionality and peace of mind.
@@BanditLeaderA lot of people do already have iPhones though. And iPhones definitely cost a lot more than a cheap android but when you get to high end phones it’s not really that much of a difference. You can get a brand new iPhone SE from apple for $430+tax. Cheap? No. Wouldn’t say an arm and a leg and if you’re concerned about losing stuff in the magnitude that Deviant is or OP is with shipping prototypes, it’s probably not that much of a dealbreaker. There’s also the Samsung smart tag which I haven’t personally used. Samsung has a great chunk of the android market but they tend to be on the higher end so probably not getting one much cheaper than the SE but their trackers are pretty good apparently.
@@IgnisInfinitus yeah but google has "find my device" or whatever its called, which is compatible with ALL android 9+ devices. and there are way more android 9+ devices in the world than iphones, which makes pinging your tracker much more likely, which in turn means you get more frequent and up to date info on where the tracker is. there already are several android trackers equal to if not better than the apple airtag
@@BanditLeader That makes some pretty big assumptions about the cost of what I ship :) But of course, it does require an iPhone but I'm sure the Android variants work just as well and are probably cheaper which still makes the use of them for this purpose still awesome!
We had a custom rifle built for our son by a gunsmith in Montana go missing by USPS. He shipped it priority to our state, and it went missing at a large USPS processing facility in another state. After two weeks, he called the facility to get answers and they told him to file an insurance claim. What was concerning was that they didn't see the problem we saw, a weapon went missing from THEIR facility! They had no intentions of doing any investigation into it!! The best part was he (gunsmith) was actively involved with many organizations from law enforcement to federal agencies, on a daily basis. He got on the phone with the post master of that facility and told him he would file the claim on the purchased insurance but would also be calling Mr. ??? With the ATF to report a missing firearm from their facility which he considered to be a very severe situation that they were not investigating. The gun was found and shipped 2 days later!😂
Once upon a time in my 20s, for around 6 months, for some reason a large courier company in my area had my phone number instead of one of their drivers. I couldn't answer my phone during the work day, so I would come home to these voicemails from the delivery depot for someone else's job. The dispatcher would call through and because he reached voicemail would give the driver an earful for never answering his phone, then conference call the voicemail back with the customer call. So I got these snapshots of this dispatcher lying out his ass about the status of people's deliveries. I guess he kept the driver in on these so they could get the story straight. So personally, I would accuse them of lying. They don't have the data and they say whatever they have to in order to placate the customer and close out the call. Incidentally the calls didn't stop when I managed to answer one and say I wasn't the driver. They apparently thought I sounded like the driver and didn't believe me. The calls only stopped when I answered one and told them that I quit and I wasn't going to return the truck.
On the 900Mhz tags Delta uses, they're commonly available and an open standard. The data format is where it gets proprietary, and no one will agree on that. I hate saying this, but we need the FAA to set a standard for live baggage tracking and data interoperability so that the airport and vendors can all contribute and leverage the data.
Fortunately, I don't think this particular instance involved anyone being malicious. But nonetheless, you're right, us being vigilant and taking steps to guard and track our things is never a bad Idea.
TSA should get involved with tracking potentially dangerous items and conduct urgent investigations of airlines and airports that mishandle items and refer them to law enforcement for violations. Maybe do something useful.
@stupidburp while I understand the impulse to propose this, I would say that in my view the mission of a TSA is to prevent threats to the aircraft. A missing firearm is not a great thing, but it does not pose a risk to the aircraft. Weapons in the cabin, explosives in the baggage hold, and things of that nature are the TSA's purview. They can get a perfect track record on that first, then I might be more interested in plans for them to expand their scope. 😉
Delta "lost" a six foot long, 6" diameter rod case (full of rather pricey fishing equipment). People were running around like crazy, as it was logged as unloaded. Someone thought it wouldn't be OK on the carousel, so they put it in the lost/untagged luggage room. Took them two hours to figure it out.
As a "never Apple" guy, I wish there was something competitive with airtags. Yes I know there are similar products, but the userbase is so tiny they're not nearly as effective.
There are tags now that use Android's Find My Device network. I just started to use Pebblebee. The only issue is that Google is still rolling out the network for third party access, so it's a little slow compared to Apple's network.
Never Apple because it is more invasive.... which is why airtags work better :) Am tracking luggage soon and will use airtags - tracked by an Apple device not connected to me
The android find my device service uses non-opt-out Android 9+ devices running google services to report the tags and devices location. The two main product lines are the Chipolo Point and Pebblebee Universal, the latter being compatible with both apple and android services with one device, and rechargeable.
A mesh network of Airtag base stations is desperately needed, especially in rural areas or for people who use them to track pets. I've done extensive research on the matter and can't find a cheap low-energy way to make it work, best I came up with is old Apple Watches (the models with WiFi+GSM) connected using the cheapest cellular plans, remove the straps etc and then placed around trails or forests charging off solar powered battery banks that have the Apple Watch compatible wireless charging dimples. You can glue it all together into a tidy waterproof package, cover with a bit of army camo medical tape and hide in a tree, will give you a decent base station for any tags detected for a 6 months or so going past before it needs servicing.
I really appreciate you sharing your flight stories, good, bad and ridiculous. I haven't flown since 2007. One thing that hasn't changed is TSA is still the most likely suspect if something poofed from a person's luggage. Some people zip tie their valuables together, which is pretty funny, and it works. I love hearing about ways to frustrate thieves in authority positions.
4 or 5 years ago I was a gig driver. One app called Roadie offered gigs delivering luggage from the airport. I'd bet that is how airlines are still delivering luggage and why it is so difficult to coordinate the delivery.
TSA doesn't care. As long as it's not on you when you try to get through security or board a plane. I've had a different but similar situation with several PCP rifles one was a .50 caliber! If you don't know what a PCP Rifle is ? It's an extremely powerful Air Rifle that needs about 3000 psi from a special tank to charge it. I had a house broken into and around $10k in PCP rifles were stolen along with a compressor and a Portable tank for them. The police wouldn't even show up to personally investigate. Even when I made sure they understood they were not Toys like their little siblings. The .45 and .50 are just as powerful as a regular rifle.
You know what would really get the airlines to get off their butts and handle firearm baggage properly? If the ATF got involved the same day that a bag with a firearm goes missing or doesn't arrive at its destination.. and I'm literally talking about a hotline that passengers can call directly to the ATF as soon as they arrive at their destination and find that they're firearm did not arrive with them. With an actual local ATF agent responding and coming to the airport to handle everything with you as you argue with the airline to figure out what happened. I bet you would get a lot of shit done a lot faster with an ATF agent standing with you to get this done.
That's funny that you believe the AFT would actually want to help you, the common citizen. They'd probably confiscate it themselves and have it destroyed.
I picked up a couple of bottles of Oak and Eden whiskey on my last trip. Only one made it home in my bag, someone in TSA or baggage decided I didn't need two. I guess it could have been worse I could have lost both.
Flying out of Seattle I arrived 2:30 early. After checking in I was taken to the usual security point. They announced they were heading to lunch. Missed my flight as a result.. But… They offered to let me surrender the firearm and not miss my flight..
@ yeah, I took it as anti gun as I am not prohibited.. I think they just wanted go to lunch. I checked the firearm and received it back at my destination.
The "find my" system used by airtag works because apple uses iPhones and other apple devices out there as a big crowdsourced scanning platform. In other words the usefulness of airtags _depends_ on having lots of iphones out there, so it make sense they're not willing to allow android users to use the platform. Google has a similar "find my device" network using android devices and there are third party airtag-like products available, so just use those instead of airtags if you want to use an android app. Obviously would be much better for consumers if apple and google were to agree on a shared tracking platform between apple and android devices, but I'm not sure why they would do such a thing
A couple of years ago I had to do quite a bit of flying all over Canada for work. I had seen one of you videos about using air tags and decided to invest on a couple of smart tags for my luggage. I was very glad I did. My second flight after purchasing it the airline sent my main bag back and forth across the country twice before they were able to locate it in their system. Even though I was able to inform the customer service representative of its location each time it landed. Very irritating and a pain being without your belongings for over a week. The airline kept telling me to go buy what I need and submit the receipts for reimbursement. That was easier said than done when the very small community that I was in didn't have a clothing store and the closest store was a 45 minute boat ride and then a 2 hour drive away.
Yeah, my default would be “um, I think that’s a violation of the law and your contract of carriage- I suggest you deliver my bag, meanwhile, I’ll have my lawyer call you in a minute.”
He set the whole thing up to get in range so he could clone a bunch of security badges and get high res photos of their keys. Don't want to be too memorable when all their computers mysteriously lose every font except wingdings.
Eh. None of the people he was talking to had the power to change anything. Policy is set by their corporate overlords. No airline employee is going to take on the job/legal liability of personally driving passenger luggage (especially a firearm) anywhere so... at best these folks can confirm, "Yes, it's where you think it is." Yes, I wish we could rage against the corporate policy makers but that's not how it works.
It's 2024, imagine you cannot order a firearm to your door... But one that's previously registered to you, an unknown delivery driver can drop it there at midnight and peace out
Your later discussion about the hotel robots and such reminds me of a conversation I had about the head unit in my car. I don't want a head unit with an android phone/tablet *built in*, I want one which works as a *peripheral* to my phone. I keep a car for 6-8 years. I get a new phone every 2 years. Whilst people might say a full-blown Android device built into my car is "better", even if it is at the moment of fitting, it will rapidly be outpaced by my phone. People don't think about life cycles and their own consumer habits in this sort of thing.
have only used a long distance moving company once, had a surprisingly great experience. very small company and they did specialise in transporting pets alongside home items. they were within a 2hr pickup window and dropped off within a 12hr dropoff window despite needing to pass through 5+ countries with multiple droppoffs, and taking a ferry. for reference was the by-road distance of roughly California to Florida!
It sounds like I'm going to be moving in spring or summer and will probably do one of those rent a storage container to load my stuff in and have them take it to the new place kind of deals and hearing these stories has convinced me I need to put a tracker of some sort in the container. Not an Apple guy though and from my brief research, people don't seem to be too impressed with Android's versions so far.
you can hear the "tired of the problems" in the airline people you talked to. they did a great job, and its sad that people yell at them because of problems out of their control happens. keep the awesome videos coming!
Don't forget that airtag will soon get an update along with ios 18.2 that will allow airtag tracking with airlines and law enforcement in the next few months, so it should give you a link you can share with people you need to track it for upto 2 weeks, then revoke their tracking access when you don't need them to track it anymore.
Is there any system Apple is using to prevent an entire airplane's passengers from getting an "An Airtag is Following You" notifications? I'd imagine they have something, so I'm curious how that works? 🤔
Good question! I guess it would be pretty easy for the software to figure out that the tag is not in your car so it's probably in an airplane. And you only need speed information from GPS locations combined with timestamps to figure that out so Apple doesn't even need to know about actual plane routes.
5:30 Good grief. When your airtag knows better about where your important stuff is than the airline does, it makes you want to switch airlines. Especially when customer service is basically “I can see what the app says, same as you, and can be of no further assistance.”
>It's not every time I travel that my _ goes missing, it's just that I travel really often Do you have a spreadsheet with the statistics? I can imagine that someone would love to go over the numbers, like company, time without item(both planned and unplanned), to/from airports, extra details (like correct handover etc.) EDIT: both success stories and not, just for data that can show how well airlines generally do when it comes to special handling
My firearms sagas have been as frequent or numerous as yours, but non the less, piss me off when TSA doesn't understand the difference between policy and law. Other than a bomb blast, TSA won't be accessing my firearms case. I've had extremely bad luck with USPS delivering expensive fishing rods. Two of them, they managed to break in half, another got routed to a FPO address in Cuba. A vintage rod I was gifting a friend is 2 weeks late for delivery and USPS can't locate it. I was tempted to insert a Air Tag into the package, but changed my mind last minute. From here forth, Air Tags and Registered mail with super high declared value. You need real tracking and for it to be painful if/when they manage to lose or pilfer.
@@joker14n I remember the days prior to TSA. The private security companies had the $10-12 an hour burger flippers that overnight became federal employees. It still gives me warm fuzzy feelings.
@@otherbob23 The Pelican case has been modified with two enclosed van rear door hasp assemblies. I'm using Medeco Hockey puck locks, so you can't access the locking bolt to cut it. Do not use Master or American puck locks, they're junk and easily drilled to open. I have my contact information on both sides of the case if they're looking to inspect a second time. And no, I won't give up my key, as that violates federal law. Before getting Air Tags, I placed a GPS game camera inside the case, since I already owned a few of them.
@gungadinn ooooo, I would love to see a video showcasing that mod. It's an idea that's roled around in my head for a while. Pelican cases aren't really made for adding extra latches. Real security vs security theater...
The specific and technical way in which you communicate the facts and your needs probably shocks a lot of these service folks, competence frightens people.
"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them," is one I'mma have to remember. And is there anywhere to find good information on this wireless tracking junk? Not so much the products themselves but just sorta the tech in general. I would like to do a thing.
Never seen your videos before but my first impressions were, "Wow, shinigami eyes green gun guy. Love to see it." and "Hey, that airport map at 3:56 looks like *my* airport- oh my god that IS my airport!?" I've *also* had an issue with that airport and a bag before, lol.
Imagine if everyone's postbox was a tracker for tags. It could alert you when you have a delivery and also form the mesh network to track everyone else's mail
I'm good on polluting the spectrum that much. We already have issues with unexplained interference and cheap consumer goods on the 440 for me to be interested in more cheap chinese radios having crap harmonics. Pass. Pass. Pass.
I would love Tile, Airtag and whoever else's tag to use the same protocol. That airports could confidently install readers and manufacturers would ensure that hardware was good for N years (either with replacements as part of the initial sale or maintaining a software version that works on this legacy hardware). Sure a new feature may come out but the core feature of serial number and location data would stay the same (as an effort to be a robust and growing network). If you don’t want your tag to be read by any device, then shield it (say you were travelling and needed to carry luggage about but didn’t want to be pinged, put the airtag in a bag.
The problem with that is that they don't work together because the vendor has to keep a server full of ping locations, time, and from who. That's valuable marketing data as well as useful for the consumer, so why would they give that data away to another company when they could sell it? That's the main reason why they don't "cooperate": they're trivial to read, they're just not useful without the read data going into a pile accessible by everyone, and no one wants to do that.
To be fair, they do not have a GPS tracker in every package/case/delivery, so they can only assume where it is based on where it was last scanned/seen. But I work for a courier in Denmark, and I could see some kind of tracker be used in every car. We already have an android device in every car, so why not allow them to send a GPS signal every 10 min. or so.
We watched our bags follow us around Scotland for 9 days with airtags. The only way we got them back on day 9 was to literally drive to the address reported, which happened to be a shipper and tell them we wanted our bags and knew they were in the back.
Its not a true "full solution" to the mesh PoE for airtags idea (which is phenomenal BTW), but I was thinking about upcycling old iPhones. Put them in a 3D printed case, with a PoE-to-USB power adaptor and a ethernet dongle for the iPhone. The phone will charge and have internet through the ethernet connection, so no cell plan required. If its mounted indoors where there is bad GPS, "spoof" the GPS location on the device to the install location. I'm sure there is a number of issues with this idea, but I think they could mostly be overcome, is a great DIY option, and helps with our eWaste problem!
They probably had to spend all that extra time reading all the stickers on the case. I’d be curious of the rate of loss on a sticker case vs plain black or solid color.
Not to shit on the guy you were talking to, but it's just evident how much people don't really care sometimes about their jobs. He kept saying things that were quietly intended to get you to just go away.
It can look that way, but I also have sympathy for that first fellow because it was revealed to me that he was still in training. And he was there by himself which is less his fault and we're the fault of the company that's not properly supporting their employees with enough staff on those late shifts?
Pro tip. The eufy anker SmartTrack uses find my network. It's plastic and you can easily disable the speaker with a piece of tape (pogo pins inside). If you hide that thing it's a lot harder to disable or find. They are also much cheaper.
@@davewood406 I had a bag delivered at 2 or 3am (in NYC so I assume they just run 24/7). I was staying at a hotel so it got delivered to reception there, I happened to have insomnia/jetlag and took a wander down to the lobby about 4 and they told me they had the bags in their luggage room
my parents trip home one time had all sorts of connecting issue with another flight. Their luggage was nowhere to be seen, hours after landing. so they got a ticket and drove home. then several hours later, like 11pm old mate shows up with a van full of luggage and cheerily knocks on the door like "Heres ya bags~ Sign here pls :D"
I put mine in the slot for the pullout handle and it is annoying once a year to pull it and swap the batteries but it’s impossible to find and remove quickly.
@@robertotrento7961 they're not known for industrial and Enterprise products, as Kimmy pointed out to me. So I don't know if this would be in their wheelhouse. But it would be cool to see if it could happen
Rather than a new piece of hardware to be deployed, what if Apple could make a way for AirTags to send their data over WiFi, and airports could deploy a second SSID/network on existing hardware?
I put an AirTag in my pistol case on a recent trip and was comforted to be able to see that it followed me to every airport. Easy peace of mind for sure.
Airlines should stick their own air tags on all special handling luggage. They could tie it to the handle at check in and remove it only when returning the item to the passenger. They could reuse them.
When I started traveling international, the first thing I purchased was a nice set of luggage, a matched set of Samsonite bags, one for a carry on, the other the largest bag they offered. On my second trip, I was required to check my carry on bag due to lack of overhead space. United Airlines managed to break off the handle on the narrow side of the case. The baggage tag was attached to that handle. It was a good thing that I had two large stickers on the bag with my name and both US and European phone numbers. The only three airports that the bag was touched was Dulles and Charles De Gaulle, and Toulouse Fr.
while an airtag is better than nothing, it’s interesting how accurate they seem to be around airports. my experience is they only show up intermittently to save battery life and can be completely inaccurate at times because it shows the last time it was pinged, which can be miles and miles away from its current location. their approximate location can also be way off, showing it at a random spot several blocks from its actual location. and, sometimes it gives a false alert that something was left behind while it is in a bag next to me. sometimes carrying two or three gives better accuracy since at least one would be closer to where it actually is, but not necessarily where it is right now. but, it is great you don’t have to pay a subscription for it although in the apple ecosystem you are paying for it in other ways. it’s good to note inaccuracies since you probably don’t want to bang on a neighbour’s door insisting your stolen device is there when it’s an approximate location and probably not really there.
I am not experienced with airtags. Seeing as how you were able to track the delivery vehicle, that meant that the driver had an iphone and it would not have worked if he had an android?
The one problem with AirTags in Europe is market share. In the US, iphone market share is ~55-58%. In Europe its only 31-32%. Two thirds of people have Android in Europe, so android usable AirTags would be great.
10:25 It's still a lie. The _employee_ may not be lying to you, but the _airline_ still is. A person representing the airline confidently provided you with information that was blatantly false, that's lying plain and simple, and how it came to be is a company-internal detail, since the company is responsible for it regardless. They really should know stuff like this, but if they don't know, they should say they don't know. So yes, be considerate to individual employees, but you could still have called it out in a friendly "hey it seems you don't have accurate information, you may want to look into that" sort of way.
i threw VX bags for AS in SFO for about a year. some people just suck at their job/can't be bothered. tends to take a while for them to get in trouble as well. and then sometimes something happens that's not a single person's fault, like the belt taking it to the wrong spot or it getting stuck in a spot and then someone on a later shift not being told or it comes in late and has to do an inter airline transfer and doesn't make it for whatever reason. i'm still slightly amazed that the systems generally work as well as they do and also that they haven't fixed some of the stupid shit.
What makes it worth it to you to actually lug your gun around the country? It seems like it causes you quite a bit of trouble. I understand the appeal of having it at home or at the range but does the benefit of carting it around outweigh the risks of someone doing something dumb and deciding to lie in a way that gets you in trouble? Especially if you know gun owners at the destination. I'm genuinely curious what your use case is that justifies the trouble? Or do you prefer the extra control over luggage it lets you exert?
I believe he has addressed this in a previous video but I seem to recall it's about the control over the luggage. As a Brit I have a very different view on guns than Deviant but, if I have to accept that some people will carry, he's definitely one of the good ones.
In the video you mentioned a sort of "Airtag base station" thing that should be implemented for travelers with Airtags in their luggage -- THANKFULLY this is something both Apple and apparently several major international airports are looking into! Delta and United have already signed on to be partners in this test along with a few other airlines (I can't post a link here due to TH-cam comment spam filtering) but this idea is ABSOLUTELY something passengers, airlines, and airports want to cut down on lost luggage. Hopefully within the next few years we'll see actual Airtag integration with existing luggage tracking systems!
Doesn't apple have a thing where if there is an airtag that does not belong to you and has been with you for some time, it'll give you a notification, wouldn't the driver know he's being watched? assuming the driver has an iPhone
As a fellow android user, Get yourself a couple of the Samsung tags if your on a galaxy device, they are as good or better than air tags. As to the other competitors I can't say.
That website you don't mention, how do they ship out of curiosity? Reason I ask, is because if it's usps, once it crosses the border, it'll transfer to Canada post, which at the moment, and for quite a while after they come back from their strike, the canada post network is going to be.... messy to put it nicely. Just wondering if i can order now, or better to wait until things settle down a bit here. Thanks Dev, glad you're doing well, and take care everyone.
Thanks for the reminder to get (Non-)AirTags! As i'm not a fan of the rotten fruit phone ecosystem, i've ordered 2 moto tags for my SCUBA and underwater photography gear bags, in the hopes that i'm not going to find out how well they perform compared to (actual) AirTags. Considering the vastly higher market share of Android phones, i'm pretty confident to at least have very good tracking at the airports i'll be passing through in a couple of days. Keep it up & much love! ♥
I would consider using a spare MacOS machine to log the location of the AirTag along its route, including timestamps. It would at least make for some more informational content.
I was wondering If you've seen or considered CHEP ULTRA pallet trackers (Long or short) instead of or alongside airtags. Naturally, they're designed to connect and be used with a CHEP account, but you can get around that easily enough with a new sim card and a couple minutes of changing parameters. I attach them, either to the firearm itself or in the case whenever I transport my competition rifles. They have RFID, Bluetooth, Wifi, Cellular, & GPS connectivity. If a location can't be acquired via one it moves to the next. They're also capable of storing logs locally for up to 6 months if they somehow don't have any network connection. It logs data using an accelerometer, magnetometer and temperature sensor and can provide a timeline of when the cargo was damaged. They are insanely over-engineered and I knew I had to tinker with them the first time I got my hands on one.
I also put AirTags in my luggage. Last time I traveled, when arriving at the destination airport, it showed the location of the AirTag at the starting airport with a timestamp of "now". That was a bit worrying, but in the end it turned out that the location was wrong. The bag arrived on the belt and at that point the location also updated to the destination airport. I don't know exactly what happened, I can just speculate. When you don't sit at a window, your phone's location usually doesn't update during a flight. I even happened to check this on this particular flight. Already on the ground at the destination airport but still in the plane, one phone still showed its location at the starting airport. One theory I have is that the AirTag happened to connect to a phone with an inaccurate location. But you'd think that the phone would know that its location was outdated and not send AirTag location updates. Another possibility is that the displayed timestamp was just wrong for some other reason, maybe it received some form of update without location information. In any case, whatever the Find My app was showing was wrong. In general, tracking at airports is spotty. Oftentimes the location doesn't update at all until the bag arrives at the belt. The Bluetooth signal just doesn't reach any iPhones behind the scenes at the airport. It probably depends a lot on the country, the prevalence of iPhones there, and the specific layout of the airport.
I’ve used gps trackers since 2007. I had a gps tracker under the seat of my Ducati the size of a credit card. Little thicker. Plugged into a usb power converter. Its battery would last a few weeks. Was $200. Service was $10 a month.
25:23 this is one of my favorite things I've watched you develop! I love you and experiencing your creativity and passion for so many things. You are incredible 😘😘💜💚
I had to buy the Air Tags for my parents for their travel. We always keep one in every bag, even the carry-on since forcing a gate-check is becoming so much more common. We also have them in our cars, which is great peace of mind when you leave your car at the airport lot for several days. I'm curious; when something does go wrong, is it disproportionately with your firearms? Or is it about equal among all checked luggage?
I don’t know why but anytime I see your post I mean, I always watch, but I definitely watch when it involves the terrorist stopping, security proofing, take your shoes off random screening TSA and or latest Gun story: Flying w/ Pew Pews!
![All About Implantable RFID: Is Cyborgification Right for YOU? [BSidesRDU 2024]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3EFKJ9KaWGY/mqdefault.jpg)
![All About Implantable RFID: Is Cyborgification Right for YOU? [BSidesRDU 2024]](/img/tr.png)
Anyone who doesn't want to wait to see if they win the contest can check here to acquire one of their very own on the website "he doesn't mention" 😉:
www.redteamtools.com/under-door-tool-concealment-belt/
What's up with the dodgy link? can't open it in a new tab, can't copy & paste it (tried 2 different ways) and I can't click it without closing the vid
@ in general I'm pretty sure you have to leave TH-cam to open a link... they try to avoid a lot of links in comments so it works weirdly sometimes
Thank you for posting that! I was just going to go look for it because that sounds cool as fuck!
🤣A new reason police will take away your belt! 🤨
@@stocktonjoans It's TH-cam JavaScripting it, not anything specific to this link.
Having been on both sides many, many times, I'm smiling at the desk agent's use of the "If I tell you what almost certainly happened and then without directly saying so, make it seem like there's nothing else I can do to follow this up, will you accept that as good enough and go away or will you keep standing there until I eventually have to find out what _actually_ happened to your luggage?" technique.
"Thank you, I appreciate you're trying to be helpful and giving me the benefit of your experience, but what I need right now are facts - someone to confirm exactly what happened in this particular incident, and to reassure me that the case is under proper supervison now. With the item in question being a firearm, I'm sure you can agree it's really important we get this sorted as a matter of priority."
I had a similar with an airline years ago. Guy showed up to drop the bag and didn't even confirm my ID. I asked him if I should sign something and the response was basically "why?" 'oh, I don't know, maybe because there's a gun in there?' "Our paperwork doesn't show that... well, have a good day!"
Hi Dev, any chance you could throw an Android tracker in the case too for your inevitable next lost case? I'd love to see the relative performance of the android vs. air tag.
You know, I could try that!
This would be interesting to see.. I have just ordered a 4 pack of Samsung SmartTags, and would love to have A/B comparison data..
This would be a great test!
I want to see that too.
I second this--as grateful as I am for my Tiles, they're really only useful if I myself am close enough to ping them. Would love to see if there are any alternatives that offer anything close to AirTag
Tip for people trying to track postal shipments: do not put an AirTag in a regular letter envelope. The machines that process letters will rip the envelope and you'll lose the AirTag permanently. Put whatever you're sending that you want to track (even if it's just a check) in a bubble mailer or a small box. It'll cost more, but you won't lose the AirTag under some sorting machine at a postal plant.
Great info . Happy Thanksgiving 👍
write "Non-Machinable, Please Hand Sort." on regular envelopes
@@slonon6410like anyone will pay attention to that...
@@slonon6410 Great idea, except there's no guarantee of a human intercepting that before the machine.
You can also get the butterfly stamps for non-machineables
Airtags have saved my ass; I ship prototypes I design to my customers and always include an airtag with the package. Even if I don't get the tag back, $20 CAD is super cheap for the functionality and peace of mind.
@@idpromnut 100%
with a big disclaimer that you need an iphone to use airtags, which costs an arm and a leg
@@BanditLeaderA lot of people do already have iPhones though. And iPhones definitely cost a lot more than a cheap android but when you get to high end phones it’s not really that much of a difference. You can get a brand new iPhone SE from apple for $430+tax. Cheap? No. Wouldn’t say an arm and a leg and if you’re concerned about losing stuff in the magnitude that Deviant is or OP is with shipping prototypes, it’s probably not that much of a dealbreaker.
There’s also the Samsung smart tag which I haven’t personally used. Samsung has a great chunk of the android market but they tend to be on the higher end so probably not getting one much cheaper than the SE but their trackers are pretty good apparently.
@@IgnisInfinitus yeah but google has "find my device" or whatever its called, which is compatible with ALL android 9+ devices. and there are way more android 9+ devices in the world than iphones, which makes pinging your tracker much more likely, which in turn means you get more frequent and up to date info on where the tracker is. there already are several android trackers equal to if not better than the apple airtag
@@BanditLeader That makes some pretty big assumptions about the cost of what I ship :) But of course, it does require an iPhone but I'm sure the Android variants work just as well and are probably cheaper which still makes the use of them for this purpose still awesome!
We had a custom rifle built for our son by a gunsmith in Montana go missing by USPS. He shipped it priority to our state, and it went missing at a large USPS processing facility in another state. After two weeks, he called the facility to get answers and they told him to file an insurance claim. What was concerning was that they didn't see the problem we saw, a weapon went missing from THEIR facility! They had no intentions of doing any investigation into it!! The best part was he (gunsmith) was actively involved with many organizations from law enforcement to federal agencies, on a daily basis. He got on the phone with the post master of that facility and told him he would file the claim on the purchased insurance but would also be calling Mr. ??? With the ATF to report a missing firearm from their facility which he considered to be a very severe situation that they were not investigating. The gun was found and shipped 2 days later!😂
next time that happens call the postal police force www.uspis.gov/careers/postal-police-officers
Should have called the Postal Inspection service first - they are the federal law enforcement agency with the highest conviction rate!
Once upon a time in my 20s, for around 6 months, for some reason a large courier company in my area had my phone number instead of one of their drivers. I couldn't answer my phone during the work day, so I would come home to these voicemails from the delivery depot for someone else's job. The dispatcher would call through and because he reached voicemail would give the driver an earful for never answering his phone, then conference call the voicemail back with the customer call. So I got these snapshots of this dispatcher lying out his ass about the status of people's deliveries. I guess he kept the driver in on these so they could get the story straight.
So personally, I would accuse them of lying. They don't have the data and they say whatever they have to in order to placate the customer and close out the call.
Incidentally the calls didn't stop when I managed to answer one and say I wasn't the driver. They apparently thought I sounded like the driver and didn't believe me. The calls only stopped when I answered one and told them that I quit and I wasn't going to return the truck.
On the 900Mhz tags Delta uses, they're commonly available and an open standard. The data format is where it gets proprietary, and no one will agree on that. I hate saying this, but we need the FAA to set a standard for live baggage tracking and data interoperability so that the airport and vendors can all contribute and leverage the data.
Holy hell. The fact they simply left a firearm at the porch like no biggie, is insane.
Then the porch pirate who steals it can be an ARMED pirate.
@@doubledrats235 and have the tools in the luggage to pick the gun lock 🤣
So many thieves working for TSA and airport luggage handlers. Thanks for reminding us how to track valuables when travelling.
Fortunately, I don't think this particular instance involved anyone being malicious. But nonetheless, you're right, us being vigilant and taking steps to guard and track our things is never a bad Idea.
TSA should get involved with tracking potentially dangerous items and conduct urgent investigations of airlines and airports that mishandle items and refer them to law enforcement for violations. Maybe do something useful.
@stupidburp while I understand the impulse to propose this, I would say that in my view the mission of a TSA is to prevent threats to the aircraft.
A missing firearm is not a great thing, but it does not pose a risk to the aircraft. Weapons in the cabin, explosives in the baggage hold, and things of that nature are the TSA's purview. They can get a perfect track record on that first, then I might be more interested in plans for them to expand their scope. 😉
Delta "lost" a six foot long, 6" diameter rod case (full of rather pricey fishing equipment). People were running around like crazy, as it was logged as unloaded.
Someone thought it wouldn't be OK on the carousel, so they put it in the lost/untagged luggage room. Took them two hours to figure it out.
As a "never Apple" guy, I wish there was something competitive with airtags. Yes I know there are similar products, but the userbase is so tiny they're not nearly as effective.
There are tags now that use Android's Find My Device network. I just started to use Pebblebee. The only issue is that Google is still rolling out the network for third party access, so it's a little slow compared to Apple's network.
Never Apple because it is more invasive.... which is why airtags work better :)
Am tracking luggage soon and will use airtags - tracked by an Apple device not connected to me
I'm in the same boat tbh. I ended up buying an airtag, as much as I don't like it atm they are the best imo so it worked for my purpose.
The android find my device service uses non-opt-out Android 9+ devices running google services to report the tags and devices location. The two main product lines are the Chipolo Point and Pebblebee Universal, the latter being compatible with both apple and android services with one device, and rechargeable.
Android has tags too.
Happy Thanksgiving. Your lost gun stories are better than true crime TV shows.
Thanks! 😂👍
An airtag base station is a great idea!
But an all tag base station would be much better
A mesh network of Airtag base stations is desperately needed, especially in rural areas or for people who use them to track pets. I've done extensive research on the matter and can't find a cheap low-energy way to make it work, best I came up with is old Apple Watches (the models with WiFi+GSM) connected using the cheapest cellular plans, remove the straps etc and then placed around trails or forests charging off solar powered battery banks that have the Apple Watch compatible wireless charging dimples. You can glue it all together into a tidy waterproof package, cover with a bit of army camo medical tape and hide in a tree, will give you a decent base station for any tags detected for a 6 months or so going past before it needs servicing.
I really appreciate you sharing your flight stories, good, bad and ridiculous. I haven't flown since 2007. One thing that hasn't changed is TSA is still the most likely suspect if something poofed from a person's luggage. Some people zip tie their valuables together, which is pretty funny, and it works. I love hearing about ways to frustrate thieves in authority positions.
4 or 5 years ago I was a gig driver. One app called Roadie offered gigs delivering luggage from the airport. I'd bet that is how airlines are still delivering luggage and why it is so difficult to coordinate the delivery.
TSA doesn't care. As long as it's not on you when you try to get through security or board a plane. I've had a different but similar situation with several PCP rifles one was a .50 caliber! If you don't know what a PCP Rifle is ? It's an extremely powerful Air Rifle that needs about 3000 psi from a special tank to charge it. I had a house broken into and around $10k in PCP rifles were stolen along with a compressor and a Portable tank for them. The police wouldn't even show up to personally investigate. Even when I made sure they understood they were not Toys like their little siblings. The .45 and .50 are just as powerful as a regular rifle.
You know what would really get the airlines to get off their butts and handle firearm baggage properly? If the ATF got involved the same day that a bag with a firearm goes missing or doesn't arrive at its destination.. and I'm literally talking about a hotline that passengers can call directly to the ATF as soon as they arrive at their destination and find that they're firearm did not arrive with them. With an actual local ATF agent responding and coming to the airport to handle everything with you as you argue with the airline to figure out what happened. I bet you would get a lot of shit done a lot faster with an ATF agent standing with you to get this done.
That's funny that you believe the AFT would actually want to help you, the common citizen. They'd probably confiscate it themselves and have it destroyed.
The atf would probably end up being cozy with the airline and investigate you for improperly securing your firearm.
I picked up a couple of bottles of Oak and Eden whiskey on my last trip. Only one made it home in my bag, someone in TSA or baggage decided I didn't need two. I guess it could have been worse I could have lost both.
@@rossfudd256 damn, that's awful!
Flying out of Seattle I arrived 2:30 early. After checking in I was taken to the usual security point. They announced they were heading to lunch. Missed my flight as a result..
But… They offered to let me surrender the firearm and not miss my flight..
What? Surrender the firearm to law enforcement, as in never get it back? That is exactly the wording that qualifies one as a prohibited person. Nope.
@ yeah, I took it as anti gun as I am not prohibited.. I think they just wanted go to lunch. I checked the firearm and received it back at my destination.
Could you imagine if apple made an airtag app for andriod users...
That would be legendary but also unlikely
@DeviantOllam so what I'm hearing is we need to hold the EU government hostage until they make apple do it
I can't. It's literally keeping people locked in the Apple ecosystem and making them money.
These days I can't even imagine Apple making a decent non-macOS app for syncing data to iPhones.
The "find my" system used by airtag works because apple uses iPhones and other apple devices out there as a big crowdsourced scanning platform. In other words the usefulness of airtags _depends_ on having lots of iphones out there, so it make sense they're not willing to allow android users to use the platform. Google has a similar "find my device" network using android devices and there are third party airtag-like products available, so just use those instead of airtags if you want to use an android app. Obviously would be much better for consumers if apple and google were to agree on a shared tracking platform between apple and android devices, but I'm not sure why they would do such a thing
Man, all this outsourcing to contractors just adds so many extra barriers and hurdles and overheads
A couple of years ago I had to do quite a bit of flying all over Canada for work. I had seen one of you videos about using air tags and decided to invest on a couple of smart tags for my luggage. I was very glad I did. My second flight after purchasing it the airline sent my main bag back and forth across the country twice before they were able to locate it in their system. Even though I was able to inform the customer service representative of its location each time it landed. Very irritating and a pain being without your belongings for over a week. The airline kept telling me to go buy what I need and submit the receipts for reimbursement. That was easier said than done when the very small community that I was in didn't have a clothing store and the closest store was a 45 minute boat ride and then a 2 hour drive away.
You were so polite, I was amazed!
Thank you 😁👍
Yeah, my default would be “um, I think that’s a violation of the law and your contract of carriage- I suggest you deliver my bag, meanwhile, I’ll have my lawyer call you in a minute.”
He set the whole thing up to get in range so he could clone a bunch of security badges and get high res photos of their keys. Don't want to be too memorable when all their computers mysteriously lose every font except wingdings.
Being polite opens a tremendous amount of doors (figuratively and literally, as I'm sure Dev can attest to!) :)
Screaming at customer service representatives might make you feel better before the guilt sets in but it won't help.
Even with tracking...I would not have so much patience with something like that.
Eh. None of the people he was talking to had the power to change anything. Policy is set by their corporate overlords. No airline employee is going to take on the job/legal liability of personally driving passenger luggage (especially a firearm) anywhere so... at best these folks can confirm, "Yes, it's where you think it is."
Yes, I wish we could rage against the corporate policy makers but that's not how it works.
@@x--. sure but the people there can go and raise hell to someone who has power.
It's 2024, imagine you cannot order a firearm to your door... But one that's previously registered to you, an unknown delivery driver can drop it there at midnight and peace out
Not entirely sure why you'd expect US firearms laws to make sense
Your later discussion about the hotel robots and such reminds me of a conversation I had about the head unit in my car.
I don't want a head unit with an android phone/tablet *built in*, I want one which works as a *peripheral* to my phone.
I keep a car for 6-8 years. I get a new phone every 2 years. Whilst people might say a full-blown Android device built into my car is "better", even if it is at the moment of fitting, it will rapidly be outpaced by my phone.
People don't think about life cycles and their own consumer habits in this sort of thing.
have only used a long distance moving company once, had a surprisingly great experience. very small company and they did specialise in transporting pets alongside home items. they were within a 2hr pickup window and dropped off within a 12hr dropoff window despite needing to pass through 5+ countries with multiple droppoffs, and taking a ferry. for reference was the by-road distance of roughly California to Florida!
I dont air travel but picked up some smart tags for anything that can get lost because of your videos.
It sounds like I'm going to be moving in spring or summer and will probably do one of those rent a storage container to load my stuff in and have them take it to the new place kind of deals and hearing these stories has convinced me I need to put a tracker of some sort in the container. Not an Apple guy though and from my brief research, people don't seem to be too impressed with Android's versions so far.
It's like listening to my wife complain to somebody on the phone. Except very calmly. My blood pressure has spiked.
you can hear the "tired of the problems" in the airline people you talked to. they did a great job, and its sad that people yell at them because of problems out of their control happens.
keep the awesome videos coming!
Don't forget that airtag will soon get an update along with ios 18.2 that will allow airtag tracking with airlines and law enforcement in the next few months, so it should give you a link you can share with people you need to track it for upto 2 weeks, then revoke their tracking access when you don't need them to track it anymore.
Is there any system Apple is using to prevent an entire airplane's passengers from getting an "An Airtag is Following You" notifications? I'd imagine they have something, so I'm curious how that works? 🤔
Good question! I guess it would be pretty easy for the software to figure out that the tag is not in your car so it's probably in an airplane. And you only need speed information from GPS locations combined with timestamps to figure that out so Apple doesn't even need to know about actual plane routes.
Great airtags for every bag. The poor baggage truck driver, you have 456 airtags following you! 🤣👍
5:30 Good grief. When your airtag knows better about where your important stuff is than the airline does, it makes you want to switch airlines. Especially when customer service is basically “I can see what the app says, same as you, and can be of no further assistance.”
Why did I just watch a 27-minute ad for AirTags?
>It's not every time I travel that my _ goes missing, it's just that I travel really often
Do you have a spreadsheet with the statistics? I can imagine that someone would love to go over the numbers, like company, time without item(both planned and unplanned), to/from airports, extra details (like correct handover etc.)
EDIT: both success stories and not, just for data that can show how well airlines generally do when it comes to special handling
My firearms sagas have been as frequent or numerous as yours, but non the less, piss me off when TSA doesn't understand the difference between policy and law.
Other than a bomb blast, TSA won't be accessing my firearms case.
I've had extremely bad luck with USPS delivering expensive fishing rods. Two of them, they managed to break in half, another got routed to a FPO address in Cuba.
A vintage rod I was gifting a friend is 2 weeks late for delivery and USPS can't locate it. I was tempted to insert a Air Tag into the package, but changed my mind last minute.
From here forth, Air Tags and Registered mail with super high declared value. You need real tracking and for it to be painful if/when they manage to lose or pilfer.
You can always count on TSA to make everything worse. To me they stand out as uniquely terrible; and these days thats saying something
@@joker14n
I remember the days prior to TSA. The private security companies had the $10-12 an hour burger flippers that overnight became federal employees.
It still gives me warm fuzzy feelings.
Can you be more specific about what you use? That sounds like something I need to acquire.
@@otherbob23
The Pelican case has been modified with two enclosed van rear door hasp assemblies. I'm using Medeco Hockey puck locks, so you can't access the locking bolt to cut it. Do not use Master or American puck locks, they're junk and easily drilled to open.
I have my contact information on both sides of the case if they're looking to inspect a second time. And no, I won't give up my key, as that violates federal law.
Before getting Air Tags, I placed a GPS game camera inside the case, since I already owned a few of them.
@gungadinn ooooo, I would love to see a video showcasing that mod. It's an idea that's roled around in my head for a while. Pelican cases aren't really made for adding extra latches. Real security vs security theater...
The specific and technical way in which you communicate the facts and your needs probably shocks a lot of these service folks, competence frightens people.
It's a shame how gate keepy Apple is with their tags even when it'd benefit a lot of non apple users.
happy holidays
"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them," is one I'mma have to remember.
And is there anywhere to find good information on this wireless tracking junk? Not so much the products themselves but just sorta the tech in general.
I would like to do a thing.
Lol! "They shouldn't make their own proprietary systems - let's rely on Apple instead." Heck, why not Microsoft, the champion of open source?
Call the police dept at that airport..
I switched to airtags from tile once I realized how much better it is.
Never seen your videos before but my first impressions were, "Wow, shinigami eyes green gun guy. Love to see it." and "Hey, that airport map at 3:56 looks like *my* airport- oh my god that IS my airport!?"
I've *also* had an issue with that airport and a bag before, lol.
Imagine if everyone's postbox was a tracker for tags. It could alert you when you have a delivery and also form the mesh network to track everyone else's mail
I'm good on polluting the spectrum that much. We already have issues with unexplained interference and cheap consumer goods on the 440 for me to be interested in more cheap chinese radios having crap harmonics. Pass. Pass. Pass.
This is why I fear checking luggage. I usually bring nothing with me on planes.
Seeing you post with a bunch of Green Links I recognize is
Number one AirTag salesperson, lol
I bought a four pack for my upcoming travels next year because of your experiences.
I would love Tile, Airtag and whoever else's tag to use the same protocol. That airports could confidently install readers and manufacturers would ensure that hardware was good for N years (either with replacements as part of the initial sale or maintaining a software version that works on this legacy hardware). Sure a new feature may come out but the core feature of serial number and location data would stay the same (as an effort to be a robust and growing network).
If you don’t want your tag to be read by any device, then shield it (say you were travelling and needed to carry luggage about but didn’t want to be pinged, put the airtag in a bag.
The problem with that is that they don't work together because the vendor has to keep a server full of ping locations, time, and from who. That's valuable marketing data as well as useful for the consumer, so why would they give that data away to another company when they could sell it? That's the main reason why they don't "cooperate": they're trivial to read, they're just not useful without the read data going into a pile accessible by everyone, and no one wants to do that.
To be fair, they do not have a GPS tracker in every package/case/delivery, so they can only assume where it is based on where it was last scanned/seen.
But I work for a courier in Denmark, and I could see some kind of tracker be used in every car. We already have an android device in every car, so why not allow them to send a GPS signal every 10 min. or so.
I track my vintage motorcycles and E bike with air tags. Not foolproof because thieves have iPhones too, but helpful.
We watched our bags follow us around Scotland for 9 days with airtags. The only way we got them back on day 9 was to literally drive to the address reported, which happened to be a shipper and tell them we wanted our bags and knew they were in the back.
Its not a true "full solution" to the mesh PoE for airtags idea (which is phenomenal BTW), but I was thinking about upcycling old iPhones. Put them in a 3D printed case, with a PoE-to-USB power adaptor and a ethernet dongle for the iPhone. The phone will charge and have internet through the ethernet connection, so no cell plan required. If its mounted indoors where there is bad GPS, "spoof" the GPS location on the device to the install location. I'm sure there is a number of issues with this idea, but I think they could mostly be overcome, is a great DIY option, and helps with our eWaste problem!
They probably had to spend all that extra time reading all the stickers on the case. I’d be curious of the rate of loss on a sticker case vs plain black or solid color.
Not to shit on the guy you were talking to, but it's just evident how much people don't really care sometimes about their jobs. He kept saying things that were quietly intended to get you to just go away.
It can look that way, but I also have sympathy for that first fellow because it was revealed to me that he was still in training. And he was there by himself which is less his fault and we're the fault of the company that's not properly supporting their employees with enough staff on those late shifts?
I dunno about this specific job, but very often people are not paid enough to care
Pro tip. The eufy anker SmartTrack uses find my network. It's plastic and you can easily disable the speaker with a piece of tape (pogo pins inside). If you hide that thing it's a lot harder to disable or find. They are also much cheaper.
Does that poor delivery driver work from 8am until after midnight? Lmfao😂
IDK about individual shifts but I've gotten a bag at nearly 10pm.
@@davewood406 I had a bag delivered at 2 or 3am (in NYC so I assume they just run 24/7). I was staying at a hotel so it got delivered to reception there, I happened to have insomnia/jetlag and took a wander down to the lobby about 4 and they told me they had the bags in their luggage room
Some private delivery services are commission based per piece and don't have fixed work hours.
my parents trip home one time had all sorts of connecting issue with another flight. Their luggage was nowhere to be seen, hours after landing. so they got a ticket and drove home. then several hours later, like 11pm old mate shows up with a van full of luggage and cheerily knocks on the door like "Heres ya bags~ Sign here pls :D"
Always nice to see the persistent polite problem philosophy with the absolute politeness going your way 🤝
Also hah, airtag saves the day - once again!
I put mine in the slot for the pullout handle and it is annoying once a year to pull it and swap the batteries but it’s impossible to find and remove quickly.
Happy Thanksgiving
You just gave Apple a great idea.
@@robertotrento7961 they're not known for industrial and Enterprise products, as Kimmy pointed out to me. So I don't know if this would be in their wheelhouse. But it would be cool to see if it could happen
Rather than a new piece of hardware to be deployed, what if Apple could make a way for AirTags to send their data over WiFi, and airports could deploy a second SSID/network on existing hardware?
11:24 Any chance I can get my hands on an awesome Cascadia sticker like that?
I put an AirTag in my pistol case on a recent trip and was comforted to be able to see that it followed me to every airport. Easy peace of mind for sure.
Airlines should stick their own air tags on all special handling luggage. They could tie it to the handle at check in and remove it only when returning the item to the passenger. They could reuse them.
When I started traveling international, the first thing I purchased was a nice set of luggage, a matched set of Samsonite bags, one for a carry on, the other the largest bag they offered.
On my second trip, I was required to check my carry on bag due to lack of overhead space.
United Airlines managed to break off the handle on the narrow side of the case. The baggage tag was attached to that handle. It was a good thing that I had two large stickers on the bag with my name and both US and European phone numbers.
The only three airports that the bag was touched was Dulles and Charles De Gaulle, and Toulouse Fr.
"They picked it up later than expected"
while an airtag is better than nothing, it’s interesting how accurate they seem to be around airports.
my experience is they only show up intermittently to save battery life and can be completely inaccurate at times because it shows the last time it was pinged, which can be miles and miles away from its current location. their approximate location can also be way off, showing it at a random spot several blocks from its actual location. and, sometimes it gives a false alert that something was left behind while it is in a bag next to me. sometimes carrying two or three gives better accuracy since at least one would be closer to where it actually is, but not necessarily where it is right now. but, it is great you don’t have to pay a subscription for it although in the apple ecosystem you are paying for it in other ways.
it’s good to note inaccuracies since you probably don’t want to bang on a neighbour’s door insisting your stolen device is there when it’s an approximate location and probably not really there.
I am not experienced with airtags.
Seeing as how you were able to track the delivery vehicle, that meant that the driver had an iphone and it would not have worked if he had an android?
It could have pinged off of other drivers, pedestrians, or people at the places he delivered to
The one problem with AirTags in Europe is market share. In the US, iphone market share is ~55-58%. In Europe its only 31-32%. Two thirds of people have Android in Europe, so android usable AirTags would be great.
Why would you fly with a gun in the first place? Why would you need one? Asking from a country where we don't have guns at all.
10:25 It's still a lie. The _employee_ may not be lying to you, but the _airline_ still is. A person representing the airline confidently provided you with information that was blatantly false, that's lying plain and simple, and how it came to be is a company-internal detail, since the company is responsible for it regardless. They really should know stuff like this, but if they don't know, they should say they don't know. So yes, be considerate to individual employees, but you could still have called it out in a friendly "hey it seems you don't have accurate information, you may want to look into that" sort of way.
The “steak” is brilliant. The Fed ‘s underperforming as usual shocks noone..
Here’s to a fantastic holiday.
i threw VX bags for AS in SFO for about a year. some people just suck at their job/can't be bothered. tends to take a while for them to get in trouble as well. and then sometimes something happens that's not a single person's fault, like the belt taking it to the wrong spot or it getting stuck in a spot and then someone on a later shift not being told or it comes in late and has to do an inter airline transfer and doesn't make it for whatever reason. i'm still slightly amazed that the systems generally work as well as they do and also that they haven't fixed some of the stupid shit.
What makes it worth it to you to actually lug your gun around the country? It seems like it causes you quite a bit of trouble. I understand the appeal of having it at home or at the range but does the benefit of carting it around outweigh the risks of someone doing something dumb and deciding to lie in a way that gets you in trouble? Especially if you know gun owners at the destination.
I'm genuinely curious what your use case is that justifies the trouble? Or do you prefer the extra control over luggage it lets you exert?
I believe he has addressed this in a previous video but I seem to recall it's about the control over the luggage.
As a Brit I have a very different view on guns than Deviant but, if I have to accept that some people will carry, he's definitely one of the good ones.
In the video you mentioned a sort of "Airtag base station" thing that should be implemented for travelers with Airtags in their luggage -- THANKFULLY this is something both Apple and apparently several major international airports are looking into! Delta and United have already signed on to be partners in this test along with a few other airlines (I can't post a link here due to TH-cam comment spam filtering) but this idea is ABSOLUTELY something passengers, airlines, and airports want to cut down on lost luggage. Hopefully within the next few years we'll see actual Airtag integration with existing luggage tracking systems!
Doesn't apple have a thing where if there is an airtag that does not belong to you and has been with you for some time, it'll give you a notification, wouldn't the driver know he's being watched? assuming the driver has an iPhone
As a fellow android user, Get yourself a couple of the Samsung tags if your on a galaxy device, they are as good or better than air tags. As to the other competitors I can't say.
Great idea with the dedicated airtag access point! Maybe it could use diverse protocols to work with apple, tile, pebblebee, etc.
Happy Thanksgiving DeviantOllam from Australia.
Just curious why you would check your laptop? I have a hunch but.. 😅
That website you don't mention, how do they ship out of curiosity? Reason I ask, is because if it's usps, once it crosses the border, it'll transfer to Canada post, which at the moment, and for quite a while after they come back from their strike, the canada post network is going to be.... messy to put it nicely. Just wondering if i can order now, or better to wait until things settle down a bit here.
Thanks Dev, glad you're doing well, and take care everyone.
Thanks for the reminder to get (Non-)AirTags! As i'm not a fan of the rotten fruit phone ecosystem, i've ordered 2 moto tags for my SCUBA and underwater photography gear bags, in the hopes that i'm not going to find out how well they perform compared to (actual) AirTags. Considering the vastly higher market share of Android phones, i'm pretty confident to at least have very good tracking at the airports i'll be passing through in a couple of days. Keep it up & much love! ♥
"Honey, Get in here, Dev is telling a Lost Gun Story!"
I would consider using a spare MacOS machine to log the location of the AirTag along its route, including timestamps.
It would at least make for some more informational content.
I was wondering If you've seen or considered CHEP ULTRA pallet trackers (Long or short) instead of or alongside airtags. Naturally, they're designed to connect and be used with a CHEP account, but you can get around that easily enough with a new sim card and a couple minutes of changing parameters. I attach them, either to the firearm itself or in the case whenever I transport my competition rifles. They have RFID, Bluetooth, Wifi, Cellular, & GPS connectivity. If a location can't be acquired via one it moves to the next. They're also capable of storing logs locally for up to 6 months if they somehow don't have any network connection. It logs data using an accelerometer, magnetometer and temperature sensor and can provide a timeline of when the cargo was damaged. They are insanely over-engineered and I knew I had to tinker with them the first time I got my hands on one.
I also put AirTags in my luggage. Last time I traveled, when arriving at the destination airport, it showed the location of the AirTag at the starting airport with a timestamp of "now". That was a bit worrying, but in the end it turned out that the location was wrong. The bag arrived on the belt and at that point the location also updated to the destination airport.
I don't know exactly what happened, I can just speculate. When you don't sit at a window, your phone's location usually doesn't update during a flight. I even happened to check this on this particular flight. Already on the ground at the destination airport but still in the plane, one phone still showed its location at the starting airport. One theory I have is that the AirTag happened to connect to a phone with an inaccurate location. But you'd think that the phone would know that its location was outdated and not send AirTag location updates. Another possibility is that the displayed timestamp was just wrong for some other reason, maybe it received some form of update without location information. In any case, whatever the Find My app was showing was wrong.
In general, tracking at airports is spotty. Oftentimes the location doesn't update at all until the bag arrives at the belt. The Bluetooth signal just doesn't reach any iPhones behind the scenes at the airport. It probably depends a lot on the country, the prevalence of iPhones there, and the specific layout of the airport.
I’ve used gps trackers since 2007. I had a gps tracker under the seat of my Ducati the size of a credit card. Little thicker. Plugged into a usb power converter. Its battery would last a few weeks. Was $200. Service was $10 a month.
Random question, but what boots are those? I've been meaning to get a new pair.
I'd love to see a review of the LoRA GPS trackers like from Seeed for this use case.
What's the deal with the motion smoothing thing on TVs at the end? What kind of fun is to be had there?
25:23 this is one of my favorite things I've watched you develop! I love you and experiencing your creativity and passion for so many things. You are incredible 😘😘💜💚
I really wonder why they don't use stickers with RFID tags to track things internally. Like an in-airport airtag.
I had to buy the Air Tags for my parents for their travel. We always keep one in every bag, even the carry-on since forcing a gate-check is becoming so much more common. We also have them in our cars, which is great peace of mind when you leave your car at the airport lot for several days.
I'm curious; when something does go wrong, is it disproportionately with your firearms? Or is it about equal among all checked luggage?
@@ryanjean so I don't really have a lot of data breakdown there, simply because firearms are just *always* in my luggage.
I don’t know why but anytime I see your post I mean, I always watch, but I definitely watch when it involves the terrorist stopping, security proofing, take your shoes off random screening TSA and or latest Gun story: Flying w/ Pew Pews!
Wounder how long will it be before airports ban or block tracking tags.
Didn't they leave one of your firearms unattended in the terminal once and lost it?.
Funny, when I search for this video by exact title TH-cam doesn't find it.
Maybe it's the word "gun" ?
@DeviantOllam Google/TH-cam definitely see that as a bad word. So silly as this is great advice/story.
Im so happy to have cara news
Indeed. I've been meaning to do an update video but I just haven't found the spoons yet. She and I still talk 3 days a week, though.
@@DeviantOllammost have no idea what it means to be locked up. You’re a good friend
The airtag knows where it is because it knows where it isn't.