Interesting research. Could have done with some motivation - why would you want to do this exactly? And it's a shame they couldn't get it to work with Google's network (in a non-awful way anyway).
Both let you transmit arbitrary data, but the custom setup here is a lot of overhead. Hubble gives you an SDK and lets you get back to building your device.
The clients can receive synchronisation data every minute and listen for a year on a coin cell. It’s broadcast, so a single beacon node can service hundreds of clients simultaneously.
BLE also can manage data connections over a kilometer and a half with reasonable (not great) antennas.
It’s not terribly fast, but modern radio protocols are opening up the possibilities. Lora and BLE are bringing the environment alive with communication.
andyjohnson0•2w ago
So if I turn my phone off and get onto a bus or train with a tracking tag, other passengers will get an alert?
Also, the wording indicates that the tag needs to be marked as lost. But could that be used as plausible deniability -- that someone had stolen it -- by a person engaged in illicit tracking?
xp84•2w ago
herczegzsolt•2w ago
> The alert is not triggered immediately: it takes 8 hours during the day, 30 mins at night, and ...
But the warning system is by no means perfect. My family is split 50-50 between iOS and Androd ecosystems, and that's already enough to throw things off and get false positives semi-regularly.
Also, don't even ask the curriers how many alerts they get. Including airtags in valuable shipments is the de-facto standard nowdays.
extraduder_ire•2w ago
> In the BLE advertisement, any beacon marked as either an Apple Device or Find My Device using the status byte will not generate stalking alerts.