Hello folks,
I just had a ‘wake in the night’ sort of idea (which is something I’m sure the Fins have a word for) so now I’m wondering if enough Lemmings could put their heads together to find some other, hopefully much better, solutions for loss prevention.
My idea, which I think is only good enough to get the conversation going, is to disassemble an Airtag, rig the Deck to support its power needs (I don’t know how this would be achieved), and then embed the finished product somewhere (I don’t know that, either) inside the case.
A hardware-side solution, like this, would allow the Deck to be tracked regardless of software changes.
If the solution is internal it couldn’t be detected, and it could function regardless of power state —— but at the expense of the Deck’s battery capacity. If the solution is external it could have independent power —— but would be detectable, snagable, and removable.
A software-side solution might be achievable, especially with Linux, and it would likely use much-less power —— but it would require the device to be not-off and not-factory-reset (which can be achieved with a few keystrokes in the settings menu).
What ideas do y’all have?
Despite my best efforts I can't seem to find the article or post now, but I have definitely come across someone in the old subreddit that did basically what you're describing. They stripped an air tag down to bare minimum and hot glued it internally. They tried to use the decks internal battery for power, but it was throwing off battery draw enough to noticably impact the performance. I think they ultimately added a auxiliary button cell battery to power it, there was enough room in the case for this so it was still all internal.
Good to know about the power draw. I think Airtags use a button cell already, so in the end it's just stripping down the Airtag, finding space, and then 6 screws for routine service.