Navigating the World of Tracking Devices: Apple AirTags, Studio Upgrades, and more.

Yes, we got the date wrong.  December 4, 2023.

Ever lost your keys and wished for a device that would lead you straight to them? Enter the world of tracking devices! Adam and Ronnie are talking all-things tech, and today’s focus is on the Apple air tag. Learn about its varied uses, its performance on a cruise ship with internet service, and how it stands up against other tracking tools in terms of locating stolen items.

Prepare yourself for a comparative analysis that's as gripping as any thriller! The Tile and Tag devices go head-to-head in this narrative, with a surprise guest - the Tracks for TRAK4 device. This solar-powered guardian of your assets is suited for various items, and we discuss potential uses, such as on vehicles or lawnmowers. Brace yourself for the twist though - the Amazon SuperDuper Prime service. It’s not real, but our playful exploration of this fictional service is sure to draw some chuckles.

Join us on our journey at Five Acre Tech. There's a whirlwind of happenings from studio upgrades, potential inventions, and even possible celebrity guests like physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson. As part of our commitment to keep things fun and interactive, we're inviting listeners to share their jokes. Send them in and get a chance to be featured on the show! Hang onto your seats because at Five Acre Tech, we blend tech discussions, humor, and surprises for one rollercoaster of a ride.

Transcript

Adam: 0:00

Do you know what this is? Have you ever heard of tracking? We're gonna tell you all about it on 5acre tech. Hi, I'm Adam Oghan and I'm Ronnie tofty and this is 5acre tech. This episode of 5acre tech has been released on Monday, december 6th 2023, episode number 16 Wow, we've got 16 episodes under a belt. What does that mean? I don't know, but it sounded good. 16, 16, it's less than 17. It's less than 17 and more than sure, and more than 15, ronnie, I know, I know that. So that's what it means.

Ronnie: 1:00

Oh.

Adam: 1:01

Just kidding, this has been a crazy week. So should I talk about this stuff first or should I go ahead and tell you something that happened? Tell us what happened, all right, so you know about all the problems we've been having at the property, not the property. The property is gonna be great place with my place, which is really nothing wrong. It's we fixed. It's mostly fixed, but we're trying to get a shower replaced for where the old shower was and I Need to get the shower walls, the shower pan. It's a great system at One of the box doors that is easy to put up.

Adam: 1:47

Ronnie's actually doing the work for me, since he does work for me, does work for himself also, and he's a contractor kind of and handyman guy. So we both like this. It was easy for him to install. We don't have to install anything on the walls right to the studs, it's. It's cheaper, faster, easier.

Adam: 2:06

But the box store does not have one of the pieces in stock and we thought we were getting it On Saturday in Edinburgh. So a friend of mine, josh, and I went down there to go pick up the pieces that we bought and it turned out to only be one in the box. So now we need to get them get another one. So why does this really kind of matter to talk about it? Well, there's some technology involved in it, trying to figure out how to get it when that particular box store thinks it no longer exists. The manufacturer no longer makes it, it's all online. So that's what they're figuring out from what they see. So what I did today which is the day we're recording it, which is the day of the release, because we're recording it late is I called up the manufacturer. We went back to the box store. We told them what they told us. They made a few changes. In less than 15 minutes the part was ordered. We'll be here in 21 days. Nice, thank you, box store.

Adam: 3:12

You know, you can't say yeah, we can't say Lowe's, you just did no. But thank you, manager there.

Ronnie: 3:23

Yeah, she did a good job. She's a nice, great job, very awesome. She didn't say no, she could have said no now she could have said you know like, you don't make it Sorry. Yeah, it was over done.

Adam: 3:33

Can't get it, just Turn around and hold on to the studs, you know. Hopefully they won't leak. I guess we can waterproof them if we lackered enough or something, some kind of clear coating, I'm not sure. But let's talk about something different Tracking devices. Well, in Technology, I should have done this and look over to this camera, but we have some new cameras that we can't get going yet. We're trying to, but that's new technology and sometimes it takes a while.

Adam: 4:08

But this is an Apple air tag and hold it right up here to the black area. What can you do with this? And another friend of mine called and said hey, how can we track something that is being stolen and Find it? Can we just buy an air tag and do this? But there's a lot of things.

Adam: 4:26

This is really not that kind of device. This is really a personal device to find your keys, to find Luggage, luggage. You know that you're tracking with you. Because if this device is not with you, what about if you lost your wife? If you lost your wife, you could probably find it because it'll be on hers, because now she can have one on hers, or you can share one, and then, if her phone's off, but the tag is still going, it will still be able to, you know, find it. And how does that work? Real interesting, ronnie. Do you know how that works? This is really cool.

Adam: 5:02

So this device and I've probably talked about it before, we're going to go in a little detail works off of everybody's phones. So whoever passes this that has an iPhone. Well, basically that device will pick up the iPhone through Bluetooth automatically and send out securely, without doing anything to your phone, and get to the Internet through Apple and tell me hey, you know it's been found. If I put in loss mode or how many, you know who somebody must have just went by it 20 minutes ago or five hours ago. So it is a nice device to have. You can kind of use it for that purpose, to find things or find people. But it's not intended for what he wanted to do. So we basically looked for something else.

Ronnie: 5:51

So if you took this yeah and you put it in your suitcase and it got put on a boat and sailed out to the ocean. It wouldn't work. Actually, it would. It would. This is if there was no cell service.

Adam: 6:09

If there's no cell service, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work. But what if there's Internet service, like through, yeah, starlink, right, yeah, I don't know if it's going to give us the exact location. I think it could. But let's say you're on a cruise ship and you lost something and everybody's phone, or several people's phones, were connected to the Internet. It should give some kind of signal that you know, hey, it's here, but it may not give the location. I really don't know.

Adam: 6:36

That'll be something to test. Actually, I'll be going on a cruise soon, so I will test that and we'll get back with you on that one. That's going to be an interesting thing to test, actually. So also another brand, and this is one of the one of the first ones out there I'm going to say one of the first ones because I'm not sure exactly, but this is one of the first ones I bought and this is a tile, so it's called tile and you can search for it online, and we're going to put all all the products that we're showing today in the description where you can buy them off of Amazon if you like. They're great products. Won't be showing all of them, but this one and definitely, and of course, the air tags and the last one we're going to show you, which I can't show you, so we're going to put a picture right up here. You know, like I said last week when I said I was going to put a picture right up, what are?

Ronnie: 7:34

you pointing at it.

Adam: 7:35

Oh you're pointing at? Okay, I thought you're pointing at me. No, because I didn't put the picture up last week.

Ronnie: 7:40

I forgot.

Adam: 7:42

So just imagine, a picture is here, the product, and if I don't put it here, I'll show it next week.

Ronnie: 7:50

Maybe we'll put it here.

Adam: 7:51

Maybe we'll put it there and maybe we'll put it right here, above this blank spot. That's a nice spot. Yeah, really.

Ronnie: 7:57

I should put some flux capacitor over my head. Yes, you do, or at least a sign about one.

Adam: 8:02

A sign about one, doc Brown, put it up, doc Brown, yeah.

Ronnie: 8:06

So one of the things you said was interesting about different with the tag versus the tile is that the tag what happens when it starts to move?

Adam: 8:19

Well, if it's not around me and it starts to move, the interesting thing happens it starts beeping.

Ronnie: 8:26

That's not very convenient if you're trying to track someone down.

Adam: 8:29

Yeah, that's why it's not a product for tracking people. So people have done things to them to make the beeping stop. We can't do it electronically, you have to hack it. Basically, don't recommend it because they're still going to find it on their phones If they have an iPhone that's the beauty of having an iPhone it will show hey, this, there's a tag with you and we can help you find that tag. And if you find it, you can report it that it was with you or call the local police and let them know that this tag showed up with me and it shouldn't be here. They can actually probably go in and find it.

Adam: 9:04

I don't have the answer to that one, but it seems like that would be the right thing to do for Apple to give that information because of the fact that somebody you know most likely put it in there. You know, unless it's on a set of keys that you had, that you know who they were. They're probably going to tell you. You're going to figure it out. Oh, this thing's tracking. You know, if it's a friend of yours, I wouldn't worry about it, but you know, give it back to them, you know they'll. They'll know who it's with anyways, if they've lost it.

Adam: 9:33

So the tile though it does not do that.

Ronnie: 9:37

Does not beep. No, it does not notify you.

Adam: 9:39

So this works the same way. It's going to, but it's going to have to have the app. The cool thing is it doesn't really need just the app the tile app on the phone. It also works with something else, amazon sidewalk, which is part of the ring system and the Amazon Echo system, and so Amazon sidewalk is a low frequency device that can pick up this kind of technology and send it. If it passes by or ends up somewhere where there is an Amazon Echo or ring video doorbell, it'll it'll trigger through that and go out.

Adam: 10:24

My understanding is that's the beauty of Amazon sidewalk for these manufacturers they can start utilizing that. Amazon sidewalk is a great thing to turn on. It's no different than this. It's not going to reveal anything about you whatsoever, but if you kept it on on the Amazon products you own, if somebody's internet gets cut and they have a ring video doorbell also, it's going to try to send that signal through Amazon Sidewalk, and that could be up to two miles from what I remember. I could be wrong on that, I didn't look it up today, but it's pretty far. So it could pick up that and send that off and it's that's pretty amazing.

Ronnie: 11:03

Yeah, I mean that's.

Adam: 11:04

I'm a firm believer in that service and I've read all the information on it when it came out and there was a lot of negativity. I think the negativity, which you won't find on this show, has to do with, you know, people maybe trying to make money off of YouTube. I really don't know. There's really not a negative there yet. Of course, anything can happen, but it's. They've done something like Apple's done and made it very secure. Where it goes through doesn't touch your products, can't somebody, can't go by and pass through. It's just going to, it's going to pass through their product to the internet and that's it. It's just, it's a whole for that and nothing else it can penetrate through. So that that's their claim and you know that that's how it works. I can't guarantee any of that, but it seems very reasonable. So that's just another way that these products can work. So the other one is really cool. It's the one actually, yeah, this one right here, the one we show. It's right there. It's called tracks for TRAK4. You can search for it on Amazon, but if you look at the show notes below here in the description, on YouTube only, so you need to go over to YouTube to find it. We're going to put a link to this product and this product's pretty neat.

Adam: 12:25

Ronnie found it when a friend called. That started the whole thing and we told him hey, we're not sure if that's the right thing to use. We need to look for an asset tracking device. While I was talking, ronnie was looking it up. We found one that was like $23. I bought one from the same company that was $32, because I can place it on top of something and it's got solar and I'll always keep it charged. So if it's nothing's moving far or in the zone that we create around it, it will not send any signal out until the GPS picks up that it went out of the zone. So the battery essentially could last up to a year unless it leaves the property.

Adam: 13:10

For example, we went Saturday, I left it, the product, in my friend's truck. Today we looking at it I'm still at 100%. Temperatures 84. Last report was at 329 PM today, so it's working. You know it's kind of inexpensive. This is the 999 per month version if you pay for a year. So it's a great device. It's right here, you know. So we're going to show you there. But if not, look at the description below because it will be one of the links you know going to Amazon and we'll put down the tracks for asset tracker. So you can come up with lots of different ways and there's lots of different versions of it that you can hook up to your vehicle, to a tractor, to a front end loader, to a dump truck, to anything you can think of that. How about lawnmower?

Ronnie: 14:10

You could put on the lawnmower, have you?

Adam: 14:12

No, I have not put anything on my lawnmowers at all, so but yeah, you can, you can put on a lawnmower. You can put on mostly everything. It's it's, it's really cool. So that, and these, these are great.

Adam: 14:28

You know, for fleets products, things that are getting stolen, you can build them inside of something where, once it moves away, as long as the GPS and cellular signal can get out, you can find where that has gone. The people may not know. So because the battery life lasts so long, you can find stuff that becomes a missing often. Just have to be creative on how you deal with that and and how you build it into the product. Yeah, of course you can use these other products to not saying that they're bad, it's just this one.

Adam: 14:59

The tile may take a little longer. The air tag will take less time because there's more iPhones that are connecting to it, so as somebody walks by it it will notify. You know. But if this goes away and they don't hear the beep and they don't pick it up on the phone, you could possibly get away with with using it for that, but that's not the intention. You want an asset tracker. It's really worth the money. If you're losing material, you can afford to pay for that, that product, and then you'll get it back and try it again until people stop stealing whatever they are stealing from your property, or if you're just missing something or you don't know where something is, because you got a lot of employees and you're like man, where did that go? Where do we leave it? On a job. You know job trailers. You know equipment that you know drivable equipment of any sort.

Adam: 15:48

You're going to be able to, they're going to be able to find it and it's Zellier and it's, you know, one monthly fee Cheaper by, you know, buying it by the by the year. Yeah.

Ronnie: 15:59

Is that what a lot of these companies are using for, like tracking speed?

Adam: 16:02

You'll see, it says on the back of some of these fleet yes, yeah, so if somebody's actually driving too fast and there's several others you can get from monitoring that. From other companies you can get one that hooks up into the ODB I think it's got some other name for it now that connects under the dash and they have tracking devices built in it. You can buy them from your cell phone companies, such as T-Mobile, for an example. Pay a nominal fee to have that in there. It tells you know the speed, the condition of the vehicle, all sorts of stuff that you can find. So if you don't have that built in already such as a vehicle with an app where you can you know that's already built in, such as a truck nowadays trucks, cars, they all have that built in you can have an app on your phone.

Adam: 16:47

I don't know if you can do that with fleet. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a fleet system like that but definitely the ones that go in the vehicle, the plugin, which is an easy way to do it. They work very well. I've used them before. They also tell you for low on gas and stuff like that. There's lots of them out there. You just got to. You know, look, look at to see what's there and if it's something you guys want to know more about. Go to YouTube, add some comments to the you know comment area, subscribe and like that. We always appreciate that. That's how we make money off the show.

Ronnie: 17:21

Yeah, man.

Adam: 17:22

Well, I'm not sure, but I do know something we actually have a producer now. You do, yep, we do. He's sitting right there.

Ronnie: 17:32

Oh, right there.

Adam: 17:34

So his name is Caleb Warren and Caleb, how much money do you make? Nothing, because you're not earning any money yet. Yeah, we're not earning any money yet, so he's not making anything, just like we are.

Ronnie: 17:48

I think it's 100% of nothing.

Adam: 17:52

Yes, so he gets 100% of nothing, but he gets 20% of whatever we're making, and that is nothing.

Ronnie: 18:00

So he gets a lot of nothing.

Adam: 18:03

That's. You know, I don't. I wish he wouldn't complain about it, but we'll see if we'll keep him on. But anyways we're going to. We're upgrading the studio, making it a little better, more entertaining, more easy to watch, more ways to get information up here right now instead of waiting later Just makes it simpler, especially during editing. One day maybe we'll even show how we did all this. Lots of people do that and sometimes it can be, you know, taunting to do this kind of work and get it running. It's very interesting, very fun for me, being a, you know, real big techie guy and a technician already in the computer business, so this is really fun to do. So anyways, you want to know more about this kind of stuff, more tracking stuff. We'll get more material together. Let us know. We'll put it on a show the next week or two and we'll get that out to you. Just let us know what else.

Ronnie: 19:11

You know what happened today in history.

Adam: 19:13

No, what happened?

Ronnie: 19:18

I don't know. You know what QuickTime is QuickTime?

Adam: 19:22

QuickTime QuickTime yes, I do know what QuickTime is. It's part of their Apple Apple system that they made for QuickTime videos.

Ronnie: 19:32

And when it was released, it was the first time that color was incorporated into videos.

Adam: 19:39

Really that I did not know. That's incredible.

Ronnie: 19:42

It's the before that everything on computers was black and white, and that was computer.

Adam: 19:48

And guess what year that was. Okay, you're going to have to wait on this 87., 91.

Ronnie: 20:05

So just to clarify special computers did allow color, but it was the first time anyone with this personal computer could use color. Wow, was with QuickTime.

Adam: 20:15

Yeah, I had a. I bought a iMac. No, I bought a Macintosh computer 512KE back in 1986 or 87. That was my first computer I ever bought. And the color dot matrix printer Super awesome clarity, but it was awesome. I mean, that was my first actual computer I owned. I've worked on little things here and there, but that was actually my first one that I bought after I got married. Cool, yeah, very nice.

Adam: 20:55

So the 512KE means it had 512, 512k of RAM and the E was the enhanced 800 kilobyte, I think, kilobyte, megabyte. I'm not sure of floppy disk drive space, no hard drive. So when we loaded a program we had to load it into memory. So it could have been three or four disks that had to load up to get the thing into memory. And then it may call it back and say, oh, we need this three to run that piece.

Adam: 21:29

And so I was using Photoshop at the time. I believe it was Photoshop, I think it was, but some kind of desktop publishing graphics program of some sort. But that's what I was trying to get into first, not knowing what I really wanted to get into. Cool. So that's some history there, all really cool stuff. But I probably don't remember a quick time until we got to. I got to Windows, yeah. So the trip getting the back to the going to get the sidewall that we only got one of that. We had to order the other one. I went with my friend Josh and he noticed something really interesting as we're driving along and basically he said hey, you know, look at those cows over there. He goes now. Those cows are outstanding in their field.

Ronnie: 22:36

Really.

Adam: 22:36

Yeah.

Ronnie: 22:42

Yeah.

Adam: 22:43

Now give us a like or dislike on that joke, if you want we'll blame Josh we'll blame Josh for that. We'll blame Josh for that. So, josh, thank you for that joke.

Ronnie: 22:52

Does that mean that they're not ground beef?

Adam: 22:59

Yeah, they're not ground beef because they're outstanding in their field. Oh, awesome, awesome, awesome. Thank you, ronnie, for that joke, and I got an exclusive, an absolute exclusive.

Ronnie: 23:19

Really, yep, I got it from a new magazine on.

Adam: 23:24

You can find this magazine on adamogancom, or at least a headline to this magazine on adamogencom, and I'm the first to release this.

Ronnie: 23:33

What is?

Adam: 23:34

it. It is the new Amazon SuperDuper Prime. Yesterday delivery at Amazon.

Ronnie: 23:40

Yesterday what is? What do you? I don't know. Yesterday delivery.

Adam: 23:43

So, for example, why you were talking just a minute ago, I ordered products that got here yesterday. Wait, yes, you ordered them today. Yes, I ordered them just like five minutes ago and they came yesterday, yesterday, and they're right here, there they are.

Ronnie: 23:59

Some sort of like Superman, spin around the earth and go backwards in time.

Adam: 24:03

I have no idea. Facetime continued. I'm not a physicist.

Ronnie: 24:06

Do we need to call Neil Degrasse Tyson and explain this to us? I don't know who that is. Oh, he's a physicist. Did I say his name right? I don't know if I did. I don't know I did. Yeah, probably Caleb thank you, caleb. Mm-hmm, yeah, and one day we'll actually give Caleb a microphone where he can just butt in and give it yes to earn it first.

Adam: 24:25

Yeah, he's gotta earn it, he'll earn a microphone. We found one at the bottom of a box in the garage.

Ronnie: 24:30

Like a little toy one from the kids.

Adam: 24:33

No, it's real. Oh, it's real. I think it's broken, but we'll see if we can make it work again. Okay, it does smell like mold, since we live in South Texas and everything smells If you leave it outside in the garage for long periods of time. But anyways, yeah. So yeah, it's an awesome service from.

Ronnie: 24:52

Amazon. It's not real.

Adam: 24:53

No, it is real, I think Explain.

Ronnie: 24:57

It's not real. Okay, it's a joke, but I don't understand. It doesn't matter. It's kind of like Something happened that caused this? Explain. You have to explain. There's no story. Okay, so we need a story behind it.

Adam: 25:09

So so I bought something and told somebody maybe it may have been you. I told I don't even remember, just a couple of days ago. Hey, I got, I ordered this today and I got it yesterday with the new Amazon SuperDuper yesterday delivery, and they just started laughing. So it's just a joke that came out of my mouth. I thought it was funny. It was, it was funny.

Ronnie: 25:32

But I still don't understand. Something came to your house, yes, without you ordering it.

Adam: 25:37

Yeah, well, it knew I was going to order it today, so I ordered it today. It got here yesterday.

Ronnie: 25:43

Somehow something got ordered when you didn't really order it. That's what you're saying.

Adam: 25:46

No.

Ronnie: 25:49

I'm still confused.

Adam: 25:51

It doesn't matter. Okay, it's all about the laughter.

Ronnie: 25:54

Well, I hope people are laughing and I hope they're laughing yeah.

Adam: 25:56

Yeah, If you're. If you're laughing great, we probably need to end the joke right about here because, it's going too long, okay, but if you want to know about it, just go to adamogancom and it gives links all back to five acre tech and maybe we'll link things around the around, all over the place. You can go from website to website and see you know, mermaidmamaorg. Or yeah, mermaidmamaorg.

Ronnie: 26:24

That would be awesome. Go there, check out it, yeah.

Adam: 26:28

So, you know, one of the one of the things we can do is we can show that mermaidorg at the bottom of the screen right now, if we can get our producer to put it right here. He's so awesome and let's see which one it is. Is it coming soon and now?

Ronnie: 26:45

wow.

Adam: 26:46

Wow, it worked. He gets a microphone. He gets a microphone. Look at that, it's moving. And here it comes again.

Ronnie: 26:53

It's like we were seeing on CNN yeah, breaking news, breaking news.

Adam: 26:58

We have great products at mermaidmamaorg. Yes.

Ronnie: 27:04

We have neck massagers. My wife's neck went out yesterday. Did it really yeah, and so she ordered a neck massager on that place. Yeah, hopefully it works yeah.

Adam: 27:11

That would be great. That would be great. Mm-hmm, yeah, so I think I think we probably have done everything we could possibly do. Again, if you want to know more about tracking devices, let us know. We'll expand that on the show and if not, just tell us you don't want to hear it anymore and we'll quit. And on that note, thank you for watching.

Ronnie: 27:40

Five Pickers. Oh, was there something else?

Adam: 27:43

Was there, I don't know. This is we covered Kailam, he's here. Amazon Prime yesterday. Maybe someday that will actually happen. There will probably be something that Elon Musk will invent.

Ronnie: 27:58

I'm thinking about what. Are we gonna give more stuff away?

Adam: 28:02

Oh yeah, we're gonna actually have more stuff to give away soon. What are we gonna give away? I'm just don't know. I have no idea what we're gonna give away. No idea at all.

Ronnie: 28:14

Just wait and see.

Adam: 28:16

Yeah, wait and see, and there'll be periodically. We're gonna just do it whenever. We'll just probably announce it right at that show, and it'll be several items. You know, we got lots of it. Somehow. We found it. Don't tell anybody where the money came from, please. I don't want my wife to know. We're just trying to make it so, but we'll do it. So I'm working for you guys. I'm not working for my household anymore, I'm working for you guys.

Ronnie: 28:51

Trying to make you have fun. Yep, get free stuff If you have a joke.

Adam: 28:55

Let us know that also. Info at fiveacretechcom. You can email us a joke. We'll drop your name and on that note I think we're done. Hooray.