Bluetooth tags for finding lost items - Anyone successfully use one in the parks?

[sunflowerblooms]

We are considering get some tracking devices for bags and purses - something like Tile - to use while we are at Disney. I know some like Tile use crowd tracking if the tag is further away from the iPhone than the Bluetooth reach.
Two questions - do you have a tracking device? Have you successfully used such a device in the parks to locate lost/forgotten items.
Of course our plan is to have everything secured in crossover bags that never leave our sides but a little extra peace of mind might be nice.

 

[MomForFrozenAddicts]

I will write about my personal experience with Tile for my car keys. I waited a year for these and had great expectation. What a disappointment! The range is quite short. If my keys is in my dining room and I walk to my living room, the tile will appear as out of range. I would say about 15-20 feet. You need to leave Bluetooth on the whole time if you want to know the last detected position before it's out of range. Even for inside the house, I need to walk around until it is in range and the whole house has be very quiet for me to hear the beeping.

Def not for WDW. It is not "Fine Your IPhone"

 

[IrishNYC]

As the PP said, they're only good for something within a very short range. Not worth the cost.

 

[mountdew1]

Bluetooth by its very nature is short range, Tile says it should work within 100 feet, but works best at 30 feet or less. So ideally I would say use it in conjunction with something like "Find my iPhone". GPS is limited to only be accurate to a point, so it can show you that your phone is say in your house. But it won't be able to tell you it is in the couch cushions. Bluetooth could tell you that it is in couch cushions, but only if you knew it is already in your house. At WDW I suppose if person A's bag was synced to persons B's tile, and vice versa, then person B could see that person A last had their bag in the Space Mountain queue, and give you a starting point, but if someone picked it up already, you would pretty much need to be in the same ride as them for it to ping it.

While the crowd sourced location is good in theory, it only works as well as the amount of people that use it. Just like the crowd sourced wait time apps, if no one was updating it, the times were inaccurate. So until it hits critical mass with enough people wandering around with the app running, you may be the only people in the parks using it.

 

[bsbrady]

How would you use it in conjunction with "find my iphone" Tile is a 3rd party product that uses bluetooth to track something that has this tile attached to it, where find your iphone is based on ios & icloud and uses your gps and cell signal to find your device?

 

[sunflowerblooms]

Than you for the responses. You all just saved us some money. Much appreciated.

 

[Robo]

How would you use it in conjunction with "find my iphone" Tile is a 3rd party product that uses bluetooth to track something that has this tile attached to it, where find your iphone is based on ios & icloud and uses your gps and cell signal to find your device?

Maybe this:
If your iPhone was IN the missing bag, you could first "Find My iPhone" to the approximate area, then use the bluetooth to more precisely locate the bag within the area.
Not really practical unless under the right set of circumstances.

 

[bsbrady]

And then you would need a PC or iPad to find the phone. Like you said not practical.

 

[sunflowerblooms]

I was mostly interested in if people were using any of these tags and crowd sourcing the locations. We all have iIPhones so the option of using find my phone is certainly there IF the iPhone is in the missing bag.
It would be great if the technology and use of said technology was to a point when using it to find lost items somewhere as well traveled as Disney World was a practical solution for finding your stuff.
Maybe Disney can add that to the next MDE update. LOL. Joking.

 

[Robo]

And then you would need a PC or iPad to find the phone.

Or the smartphone of another member of your party.