Now that you have an AirTag or Tile, you will never lose your wallet or keys again, but surely you can track more things than just that? What about your bike, or maybe your drone? Or how about those AirPods that go missing all the time?
We have rounded up the ultimate uses for your AirTag or Tile, with exactly how to fix it to your treasures in the cleverest way too. You will need a 3D printer. However, if you don’t have one, you can still take these ideas and design your own method of attaching your tracker to your items.
1. Attach It to Your Drone
Attaching a Bluetooth tracker to your drone will save you a huge amount of pain and money in the case of losing your drone out in a field of corn, or amongst the concrete buildings of a bustling city.
The design for a 3D printed AirTag holder with two side handles is available for free and can be fastened, in this example, to a DJI Mavic Pro drone using two TPU plastic bands.
Besides costing almost nothing, the low-tech way of fastening the tracker to the drone with plastic bands, referred to as a soft mount, will protect your AirTag from damage by providing a bit of elasticity on impact if it crashes.
Finally, when put into practice using the AirTag’s precision tracking app, it took just 5 minutes to find a lost drone in a 30m area. Not bad at all.
2. Hide It on Your Bike
If you live in a city and ride a bike, you will know just how often bikes are stolen. In some cases, even heavy-duty bike locks just won’t be enough to save your precious ride.
Luckily, we have a way to get our bikes back.
With this Apple AirTag bike mount from Prusa Printers, you can 3D print a case for your AirTag in 37 minutes using PLA filament.
The beauty of this design is how you can attach it to your bike with a simple zip tie, making it flexible enough to attach to any bike model. While a zip tie can be removed by a thief, so too can other cases that are attached with screws.
More importantly, you need to consider disguising your tracker so that no one knows it’s there in the first place. One way that this can be done is by adding a small piece of bike reflector tape to the case.
3. Fit It in Your Wallet
Apple suggests that one of the ways to use an AirTag is to track your wallet, but the thing is, it doesn’t fit. This is where Tile Slim does a much better job by being not only the shape of a credit card but also only 2.4mm thick.
If you want to convert your AirTag into a much more useful tracker for your wallet, here’s how you can do it.
Remove the printed circuit board from the AirTag along with the battery and instead of stacking them vertically, you will reassemble the components in parallel.
Using this 3D printing design on Thingiverse, you can reinsert the AirTag components into the credit card-like holder and re-solder the parts back together.
The result? An AirTag that is only 3.2mm thick and finally fits snug in your wallet.
4. Track Your AirPods
If you need a satisfying way to collect your AirPods and tracker neatly into one place, this 3D design on Thingiverse is for you.
This case has room for your AirPod case, with a slim slot available to slide your Tile in place. It also features an entry point at the bottom to plug the charging cable in, making it practical to use.
While the AirTag won’t sit flush with the case like the Tile, there is a design available on Thingiverse for an AirPod sleeve to hold your AirTag too.
Turns out that pairing the AirTag and AirPod produces a very pleasing space-age aesthetic by matching the rounded white edges of the two Apple products.
5. Fix It to Your Remote
One day our remotes will have Bluetooth trackers already built into the object, because how many times a week do we all lose them?
Until then, here’s a fix.
To keep your Apple products together, you can 3D print this remote case to house your Apple remote and AirTag.
For owners of the Tile Slim or Tile Sticker, it’s even easier: simply fix your tracker to a TV remote with some double-sided tape/adhesive.
It sounds like an obvious use for a Bluetooth tracker, but until someone points it out to you, you might not have realized what a great solution this is.
6. Track Your Cat or Dog
What could be worse than losing your keys, wallet, and even your drone? If you lost your beloved pet.
The AirTag and Tile can be put to good use by tracking your dog or cat. But, for that, you will need a way to securely attach the Bluetooth tracker to a collar.
Use this design on Prusa Printers for an AirTag holder, and this design on Thingiverse for your Tile.
The benefit of these designs is that the tracker won’t get in the way of your pet because it sits comfortably against the skin, as opposed to hanging loose if it were attached using a keyring.
7. Build a Trackable Case
This 3D printed case on Thingiverse was originally intended to track your dentures or retainers.
It’s the perfect use for a Bluetooth tracker, but we can imagine even more possibilities.
With the AirTag fitting in the center of a slim, clamshell-sized case, you have a place to store small valuables and keep track of them when on the move.
Jewelry or medicine would be the perfect example and especially useful when traveling on holiday or back and forth from the office.
Put a Track On It
As the singer, Beyoncé once said: If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it. Well, now you can put a tracker on it.
Bluetooth tracking is an invention that neatly brings together the precious items we hope never to misplace. Or more simply, just solve the good ol’ question of where did the remote go?
The technology is here, and it works fabulously to track everything from our cat to our dentures, all it needed was a bit of DIY help.
So, if you have a 3D printer, or know someone who can help you out, print a little case for your Bluetooth tracker so you can really start to make the most of this technology.