Texas Trail Build

[AZ7000']

Thoughts on the covers retaining heat??

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Thoughts on the covers retaining heat??

Good question. They're relatively thin plastic so I kind of doubt they'd cause any issues with heat. I've never noticed any of those spots being particularly hot, but maybe I just wasn't touching them.

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Took her out for a nice little suburban ride yesterday.

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Thought the retro camp bike needed a retro camp plate. Presenting The GORPmobile

 

[Eagletalon]

What’s the battery life on the airtag? That’s a pretty cool idea

 

[SneakyDingo]

What’s the battery life on the airtag? That’s a pretty cool idea

They're usually CR2032 batteries that last about a year. There's some nuances around that which can reduce it down to 6 months. One of the tricky things around airtags and whatnot in this setting is they're exposed to the cold weather, etc. that will reduce their battery life. Depending on how it's implemented, they sometimes come with a low battery warning, which measures the internal voltage drop across two components (which is what I do), but typically rather than do this they'll simply use a timer to warn you to replace the battery yearly (that's what Tile does) which I disapprove of, because eventually you'll get to a situation where the battery runs out before the warning comes up and there's no way to reset the warning.

 

[MisterB]

The rabbit hole runs pretty deep on Airtag mods. There are quite a few wallet/card mods on youtube that have some great ideas. Building on what I've seen you could:
Remove the speaker so a thief couldn't find it from the sound.
Use multiple CR2032s in parallel for crazy long life. These could be arranged in a flat array that would allow you to tuck the assembly behind some body plastic.
I haven't seen this yet but it's probably being done for vehicles - use a power supply/charging system for a super capacitor with a 3V regulator on it. The dash cam folks have gone crazy with super caps.

There are legit alarms for about the cost of 2 AirTags but that won't help you if a van pulls up and carts it away.
If theft is a real concern maybe have 2 AirTags, one for the dummies to find and a speakerless one to lead you to the bike?
Will post back here if I find any other options.

 

[Allhatnocattle]

They're usually CR2032 batteries that last about a year. There's some nuances around that which can reduce it down to 6 months. One of the tricky things around airtags and whatnot in this setting is they're exposed to the cold weather, etc. that will reduce their battery life. Depending on how it's implemented, they sometimes come with a low battery warning, which measures the internal voltage drop across two components (which is what I do), but typically rather than do this they'll simply use a timer to warn you to replace the battery yearly (that's what Tile does) which I disapprove of, because eventually you'll get to a situation where the battery runs out before the warning comes up and there's no way to reset the warning.

I’ve had my tags since may 2021 and all of the batteries appear to be at about 80%. They’re mostly a stored indoors and I live in moderate/warm climate.

 

[AZ7000']

Doesn't an air tag need an apple device passing nearby, with the location thing enabled, for them to work?

Since most criminals are on android....

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Doesn't an air tag need an apple device passing nearby, with the location thing enabled, for them to work?

Since most criminals are on android....

Lmaooo true but if they drove by someone with an iPhone it automatically would ping. I think there are enough iPhones out there to give you a rough location. Not the most foolproof security system but def the cheapest.

 

[SneakyDingo]

Lmaooo true but if they drove by someone with an iPhone it automatically would ping. I think there are enough iPhones out there to give you a rough location. Not the most foolproof security system but def the cheapest.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/guy-successfully-hunts-down-his-stolen-scooter-using-apple-airtags/

RE: battery life - yup, you're gonna see a decent range of battery life depending on where you live and how you store the bike. CR2032 batteries are pretty resilient but I've got like... 9 Tile devices, and they all use CR2032 batteries. Almost all are attached to keys, and I store half of them inside, half of them outside. I considered going down the hack to give it permanent power supply, but it's yearly maintenance with a very low barrier for cost. It makes more sense to do mods like that for things that broadcast your location actively and frequently, like supplemental power for a Spot device set to frequently update. Or my phone, which seems to be more power hungry than Thanos.

 

[AZ7000']

The scooter story is nice, same same but different to a CT I believe.

 

[SneakyDingo]

Yeah, this has been done to death at work because we were really interested in it as a potential solution for simple trackers on bicycles. The problems largely stem from if you live in rural AZ, you're not gonna have many pings along the way. It relies on density, and decent density at that. So places where you can get with a scooter, those are going to work well, because those typically have high density. Places in Seattle, same deal. Pings off shopping centers would be pretty common. Places where it's going to struggle are parking lots, particularly underground ones, so on and so forth. But nothing is foolproof in that sense; you could faraday cage a moving van and pop the CT125 inside it, same as you could with a scooter or a bicycle.

I thought it was reasonable enough to have a crack at CAD modeling something up for the old pro Tile device (which I have) and the newer AirTag. And frankly, I never really thought about it but we already have a super easy mount point inside or next to the toolbox - have something bolt to the reverse side of the toolkit. A second place would be somewhere near where the "tank bag" mount would normally go. That area is just plastic, so if there's space adding the tag to the underside of that would be a pretty good point.

A big part of it is not blocking the signal. There's a few where they try it on bicycles, and you can't do things like put it inside the bike frame. Basically if you are looking at where the tag would be and it's blocked by metal, then it won't be able to ping a signal. We used to use this principle back in the day to do isolated testing on cell phones, with a femtocell repeater located inside the box (to remove variations due to EM interference or cell tower issues). I haven't tried in a while, but at least in the 90s you could "airplane mode" your phone by putting it inside a crisps packet, the lining of the packet was a faraday cage.

One sort of unintended side effect we never tested was what if we were on a group ride? There's the anti-stalker tech that would ping off everyone else's phones. So if you had like... 5 of us, all with airtags on our bikes, all riding together in relatively close proximity... would it ping and say that we were being tracked? Could it be smart enough to figure out the "bus" scenario where several people with airtags are on a bus riding next to each other, but not actually stalking each other? Tile doesn't have that feature, but the network density isn't as deep either so locations are less accurate.

I've wanted to play with one for a while. Here's one I CAD'd up for a Tile device a while back, to mount underneath a standard water bottle cage for a Tern Bicycle (hence the branding). The request was to use less material which is why it's on a diagonal, rather than using the standard rectangular design which takes up less space but more material.

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Rainy day project just showed up via Fedex. Billet cam cover and tappet covers from theruckshop.com. Should help black this thing out a little more

 

[MisterB]

If anyone had been holding out on the Yeti Sidekick it's dropped from 75 to 50 on Amazon, don't know when or if it's going back up.

 

[dmonkey]

If anyone had been holding out on the Yeti Sidekick it's dropped from 75 to 50 on Amazon, don't know when or if it's going back up.

REI too

 

[AZ7000']

I wish I needed one, dry as a bone out here in the west, I hope they close the forests sooner then later. Before Memorial Day to keep the mobs from Phoenix away!!!

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Billet cam and tappet covers from The Ruck Shop installed. Still need to do the lower one, but will wait until I change the oil.

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Already posted a thread on this, but I installed the Motolordd seat from ebay a few weeks ago. Its pretty comfy for taller riders. My wife said its more comfy than the old rack seatpad too. I also swaped the front rack for a scrambler style headlight guard. Not decided on which looks better yet, but here it is.

 

[Allhatnocattle]

Took el burro rojo in for the 600 mile service. Got the magnetic oil plug installed. She's all dialed in! I rode it from my house in SW Austin to Kyle Texas to the dealer. I thought it was only a 55mph zone at most, but had 6 mile stretch of 60mph road... This little bike hit 61 at one point even with the chunky 244s on there! A little hairy but I had a shiteating grin on my face the whole time The tech at the dealer asked if I had a deathwish