[NA]What happened to Tiles?

What is it?

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I’ve had Tiles and renewed it 3 times. They don’t have a good implementation and I eventually gave up.

1) Battery life sucks - far less than the year they promise
2) The tiles tend to randomly unpair themselves from the account
3) Account sharing between e.g. husband and wife is horrible. E.g. My keys or wallet will randomly pair with my Wife’s phone instead of mine and then no matter what you do, you can’t use your own phone to find the tile, so then you have to go look for your Wife’s phone in order to use her app. If you use 2 accounts in order to avoid that problem, you can’t search for shared Tiles.

Fi ( tryfi.com ) does this exactly right. It’s a dog tracker collar but the same principles apply. What they do is:

a) When you’re at home they have a Ethernet/WiFi base station, which uses a more efficient signal than Bluetooth to keep tabs on the dogs so if saves battery power. More importantly - it’s web accessible so none of this paired-to-a-single-device nonsense.

b) When you and the dogs leave home and the Fi cannot see the base station anymore, only then will it pair to your phone via Bluetooth. And if it sees two phones it always pairs to the preferred one. Even if it didn’t - you can use one phone to track/control via the other phone (e.g you can remotely turn on a tracking light on the Fi from the non-paired phone and the other phone will relay the command). You can’t do that via Tile.

c) When both base station and Bluetooth fails it switches to cellular+gps tracking. Now this one may be too hard to do in the smaller Tile form factor but just (a) and (b) above would be a HUGE improvement.
 
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I got them for my dad a few years ago and he hasn’t had any issues.
 
My mom had one of these. One day it showed her keys in Arkansas.

She was in New Mexico at the time.
 
deonb said:
I’ve had Tiles and renewed it 3 times. They don’t have a good implementation and I eventually gave up.

1) Battery life sucks - far less than the year they promise
2) The tiles tend to randomly unpair themselves from the account
3) Account sharing between e.g. husband and wife is horrible. E.g. My keys or wallet will randomly pair with my Wife’s phone instead of mine and then no matter what you do, you can’t use your own phone to find the tile, so then you have to go look for your Wife’s phone in order to use her app. If you use 2 accounts in order to avoid that problem, you can’t search for shared Tiles.

Fi ( tryfi.com ) does this exactly right. It’s a dog tracker collar but the same principles apply. What they do is:

a) When you’re at home they have a Ethernet/WiFi base station, which uses a more efficient signal than Bluetooth to keep tabs on the dogs so if saves battery power. More importantly - it’s web accessible so none of this paired-to-a-single-device nonsense.

b) When you and the dogs leave home and the Fi cannot see the base station anymore, only then will it pair to your phone via Bluetooth. And if it sees two phones it always pairs to the preferred one. Even if it didn’t - you can use one phone to track/control via the other phone (e.g you can remotely turn on a tracking light on the Fi from the non-paired phone and the other phone will relay the command). You can’t do that via Tile.

c) When both base station and Bluetooth fails it switches to cellular+gps tracking. Now this one may be too hard to do in the smaller Tile form factor but just (a) and (b) above would be a HUGE improvement.
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Does this work better than Whistle?
 
Lindberg said:
Does this work better than Whistle?
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100 times better.

I used to have Whistles for a couple of years and switched over to Fi last year.

Fi actually works. It was common that Whistle wouldn’t register that a dog left the safe zone for up to 6 hours later. Fi is immediate. Also much more accurate with tracking.

Battery also lasts months instead of weeks. Especially when you’re in a car driving for many hours/days on a roadtrip, it would drain half a Whistle where on Fi it barely makes a dent (due to the secondary Bluetooth support).
 
The whole idea outside being a few feet away where your phone can detect the tile via bluetooth was a network of users that had the app that could also detect the tile location and report back to the mother ship.

That pipe dream failed and rendered the whole idea essentially useless because of the lack of users.
 
deonb said:
100 times better.

I used to have Whistles for a couple of years and switched over to Fi last year.

Fi actually works. It was common that Whistle wouldn’t register that a dog left the safe zone for up to 6 hours later. Fi is immediate. Also much more accurate with tracking.

Battery also lasts months instead of weeks. Especially when you’re in a car driving for many hours/days on a roadtrip, it would drain half a Whistle where on Fi it barely makes a dent (due to the secondary Bluetooth support).
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Similar to our experience with Whistle. We had crazy numbers of false alarms, but then it would only detect half of "escapes". My wife would take the dog on a walk, and it wouldn't register our might register an escape after they got back. Support ran me around in circles. It was my wifi, it was a bad collar, it was bad cell service, it was my settings, etc. I'll give Fi a try.
 
Another flash in the pan tech company that spent more on marketing than their tech.
 
Shawn said:
The whole idea outside being a few feet away where your phone can detect the tile via bluetooth was a network of users that had the app that could also detect the tile location and report back to the mother ship.

That pipe dream failed and rendered the whole idea essentially useless because of the lack of users.
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So that's what it was. I never understood the point of a device for locating my keys that works only when I am within BT range.
 
Never heard of it either, what is it?
 
Ryanb said:
What in H E double hockeystick is it?
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Little gadget you would attach to things you didn’t want to lose/wanted to track their location.

If you or anyone else was nearby with their app, it would see the little things via Bluetooth and get GPS from your phone or someone else’s and tell you kinda where the item it was attached to, was located.

You can probably see all the accuracy and other problems with this approach. Basically incredibly dumb.

If you can’t keep track of your car keys or your luggage, life as an adult might be hard. I mean I do misplace my glasses from time to time but I’m not a moron, and have this thing called a “spare pair”. Car keys go in a specific tray. Luggage, well if you’re losing luggage you really are a moron. :)
 
denverpilot said:
Little gadget you would attach to things you didn’t want to lose/wanted to track their location.

If you or anyone else was nearby with their app, it would see the little things via Bluetooth and get GPS from your phone or someone else’s and tell you kinda where the item it was attached to, was located.

You can probably see all the accuracy and other problems with this approach. Basically incredibly dumb.

If you can’t keep track of your car keys or your luggage, life as an adult might be hard. I mean I do misplace my glasses from time to time but I’m not a moron, and have this thing called a “spare pair”. Car keys go in a specific tray. Luggage, well if you’re losing luggage you really are a moron. :)
Click to expand...

The grand vision for the company was much larger than keys and luggage location...think theft protection for things like bikes and skateboards or even lost dogs with a tile on a collar...but the user base never materialized to make any of that that viable.
 
Ok so what other cool, sub $300 gifts are good for someone who likes gadgets?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Ok so what other cool, sub $300 gifts are good for someone who likes gadgets?
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Dewalt DCF682. Cordless screwdriver that has motion sensors inside so you just rotate it for forward / reverse. Someone got it for me and I thought it was just a silly gimmick — now I use it all the time.

Some of the low end vaccuum robots are down there in price. Once you start using one you’ll want to have one all the time.

Chargers. If they have other gadgets especially newer ones — USB-C chargers are always welcome. If their stuff is a mix of older charging things and USB-C, adapters to get everything on one standard are great.

Along those lines a fat portable lithium ion battery pack with the correct “whatevers” as far as plugs and standards go, for topping things off on the go, are great. Some have a wireless charging pad on top also. Or they have fast charging for themselves — often dual USB-C.

Good quality headphones. This one is a little personal but if you know they like listening to stuff. Wired or wireless but make sure they even have a 3.5mm jack on their player these days.

A good quality cooking / grill thermometer that’s wireless if they grill or smoke things.
 
I think the Trackr killed them... I've seen a lot more of those than Tiles, and the Trackr is much smaller than the Tile (about the size of a quarter). Even bought my wife a few several years ago, though she never really got into them.

One friend of mine did, though, and to him the killer feature was that he was able to set one up on his keys such that if his keys and his phone were ever separated by more than bluetooth range, they'd both ring. Kept him from leaving his phone behind several times. Nice, but not worth the price to me.
 
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