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Hiding AirTags on the bike

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#21 ·
www.elevationlab.com

AirTag Mountain Bike Mount

Hidden AirTag mount for modern mountain bikes. Mounts in seconds. Ultra-secure, tested by Pro MTB riders. Fits flush up inside the head tube, not below it like other designs. Fits tapered head tubes with inner fork diameters 32-34.4mm (1.25-1.35"). This is compatible with every tapered Fox, Rock...
www.elevationlab.com www.elevationlab.com

works awesome.
 
#22 ·
smashysmashy said:
I don't think you can put an air tag INSIDE a carbon ... frame because it will fully block the signal.
Click to expand...
I have AirTags inside my Transition Spur and Spire carbon frames, and they work okay. Range isn't as great as out in the open, but it works.

I have the speakers removed. They're a pain in the ass to get to, and the annual battery swaps make me sad. Obviously, this is antithetical to the "convenience" requirement from OP. But it's not like having an AirTag in my bike tangibly affects my life where the vehement nay-saying in this thread is justified. :rolleyes:

On the other hand, in my opinion, a more effective solution is a very good renters/homeowners insurance policy. Tbh, I probably don't want my bike back if a crackhead has stolen it, and a professional thief is probably gonna shove my bike in a faraday cage (i.e., a creeper van) and stick to using Android (or at least, that's what I would do if I were a pro thief ;)). But, for everybody else (non-crackhead but idiotic thief), I argue an AirTag could be quite useful.
 
#23 ·
bloodytesla said:
I have AirTags inside my Transition Spur and Spire carbon frames, and they work okay. Range isn't as great as out in the open, but it works.

I have the speakers removed. They're a pain in the ass to get to, and the annual battery swaps make me sad. Obviously, this is antithetical to the "convenience" requirement from OP. But it's not like having an AirTag in my bike tangibly affects my life where the vehement nay-saying in this thread is justified. :rolleyes:

On the other hand, in my opinion, a more effective solution is a very good renters/homeowners insurance policy. Tbh, I probably don't want my bike back if a crackhead has stolen it, and a professional thief is probably gonna shove my bike in a faraday cage (i.e., a van) and stick to using Android (or at least, that's what I would do if I were a pro thief ;)).
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Oh neat, thanks.
 
#24 ·
drowninbleach said:
They should sell veterinary tracking chips for bikes. Maybe you could convince your local vet that your bike identifies as a dog, and get it chipped.
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lol. those are passive, though.

I think you want wildlife trackers instead. get the fancy ones with GPS tracking and data transmit. then you can go out with a yagi antenna and track down the exact location.
 
#25 ·
Harold said:
lol. those are passive, though.

I think you want wildlife trackers instead. get the fancy ones with GPS tracking and data transmit. then you can go out with a yagi antenna and track down the exact location.
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But those things are pretty obvious.
 
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#29 ·
Wait, an airtag has a speaker? Can we hack it to play music instead? I'd like to request the theme to Donkey Kong so thieves will only think it's just another dumb kid who lost his gameboy in his bike frame and not hurry to disable it.
 
#30 ·
Zepplock said:
I have an Ibis Ripmo 2022 (carbon). If people stash Apple AirTags somewhere on it to protect against theft. Where did you hide it?

I tried so far: seat, plastic frame guard, fork tube. None of those are great, either too obvious or not convenient.

p.s. I understand that this might be a controversial topic and not everyone would like to share. Maybe you could message me directly and provide an advice?
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I hid the AirTag in my Ripley's head tube/down tube junction. Tons of room in there. I just used Gorilla duct tape and it has held for about a year now. Avoid the Faraday cage effect by not putting them inside metal. However, I understand many have disregarded this advice and they've worked fine.

Aside: I put AirTags in each of my tandem suitcases last year for a trip to France. Sure enough, one was "lost" by the airline. Bag was misdirected to baggage claim at our layover airport. It was nice to pull it up on my phone at our final destination to see exactly where it was. I just didn't know if it had been squashed by a baggage cart, or fell out of the airplane though! Just knew the AirTag was still functional! Got the "lost" bag in time for our trip.
 
#31 ·
smashysmashy said:
I don't think you can put an air tag INSIDE a carbon or aluminium frame because it will fully block the signal. So it needs to be on the frame but not inside. I've been pondering this but came to the conclusion that it's going to be fine for a few minutes of tracking while the theft is in progress but then eventually they will find it and rip it off and chuck it in a dumpster. As a result, there is no point hiding it, instead just make it as hard as you can to remove.
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Yes, it works fine in carbon. Apparently works in some metals/components too.

Harold said:
you have to know the bike was stolen in the first place to have that time. most of the bike thefts I know are done in cases where it takes a number of hours for the owner to learn of the theft in the first place.

honestly this kind of things gives a false sense of security. get yourself a legit security tracker that transmits over its own cellular connection or just don't rely on such a thing at all and use other methods to make it time consuming enough that potential thieves move along to a different bike.
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I use the Alfred camera Iphone app that turns an old Iphone into a real-time video surveillance and motion sensor alarm. If anyone breaks into my garage, I'll know it. My garage is securely locked as are all the bikes. That plus the video surveillance and the AirTags mean I've taken just about every precaution to prevent theft. And they're insured if all else fails. So far, this has worked for almost 40 years. The only bike I've had stolen in my life was in college, despite using what a locksmith said was a "good lock." It wasn't, and that began my quest to always stay a step or two ahead of thieves. Paranoid? You bet! (BTW, that stolen bike was returned three years later. Sometimes a police report actually pays off!)

Make your locks beefier. Thieves tend to go for low-hanging fruit. They'll cut the locks easiest to cut.
Image


Then there's this monster:
(For perspective, that's a Kryptonite NY Fugadaboudit, big in its own right.)

Image


The latest addition to the lock collection, the Hiplok D1000:
Image


Pretty much grinder proof.

Combine the security products that are available to you. Push the chances more in your favor.

Case in point. My daughter is doing a summer internship and staying in college dorms for the summer. She and a friend parked their bikes in the "secure" key-controlled bicycle storage cage. She's using the NY lock above. Her friend was using a "really cheap" lock. The friend's bike was just stolen last week. Thief went for the low-hanging fruit and didn't try to steal my daughter's bike with the better (but still vulnerable to grinders) lock. When you're stealing a bike for a $50 hit of meth or coke or whatever, you don't need the BEST bike, you need A bike! So the one with the lowest level security gets nabbed.

There's never a guarantee, so that's why insurance is a good idea. But for many of us, we own bikes that cannot be replaced due to their unique, custom or vintage nature.
 
#32 ·
I see this all the time on our local forums. Basically a higher end bike is pointless for an air tag. The bike is probably broken down into components and sold off individually because the cost of the full bike makes it a felony to hold and selling it becomes very obvious. But a SRAM NX derailleur is literally untraceable and you could sell it back to the original owner and they would never know the difference.

The second issue is that if you are able to track your bike back to a location, what now? Are you going to go confront a group of organized thieves who are committing felonies? Will they be armed? Here in TX, there is lots of bluster about going in armed to take their bike back. Good luck with that. It's not worth it. I'd rather spend the next 2 years on the trails on a new bike then meeting with lawyers and judges. Even if you are eventually cleared, it will cost you more than the cost of a new bike.

Third is that cops do not (generally) take "Find My" info seriously. That is because it is often wrong. I am sitting in a hotel room in Chicago and my watch says it is at a car dealership on the other side of I-90 right now. This is not uncommon. So because that data can't be 100% accurate, a cop generally will not act on it. They are not going to go up to a house in most cases because they need a warrant if the owner will not let them in. Judges are generally not going to issue a warrant for a bike because of air tag data. In some localities they may be accommodating. In mine they will not. I know people who have had phones stolen and the phones are pinging cell towers and the cops still won't chase it because they know a judge will not issue a warrant. Unless you saw the thief go in the house you are generally out of luck.

Strong locks and keeping an eye on your bike are better options. Don't think this technology is the silver bullet, it just is not.
 
#35 ·
dysfunction said:
No. Just the collars.
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yeah, the various trackers are sized for whatever animal they're meant to be attached to. there are implantable ones. there are backpack-type ones for birds of various sizes. I used smallish ones meant to be epoxied to the shells of turtles, which would be no more difficult to hide on a bike than an airtag, tbh, and probably easier to "hide in plain sight" because thieves wouldn't know what they were.
 
#36 ·
Harold said:
yeah, the various trackers are sized for whatever animal they're meant to be attached to. there are implantable ones. there are backpack-type ones for birds of various sizes. I used smallish ones meant to be epoxied to the shells of turtles, which would be no more difficult to hide on a bike than an airtag, tbh, and probably easier to "hide in plain sight" because thieves wouldn't know what they were.
Click to expand...
What's the battery life on the smaller ones? The circuitry itself is really easy to put in a small package, it's the power source...
 
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#37 ·
dysfunction said:
What's the battery life on the smaller ones? The circuitry itself is really easy to put in a small package, it's the power source...
Click to expand...
the ones I used on turtles tended to last for at least a year, sometimes longer.

the implantable ones used in snakes, I think they tended to last maybe 6mo.

battery life is addressed partly by using lower ping frequencies and by adjusting the transmit power of the vhf frequencies you'd use to locate them on the ground.

the gps type ones are usually used for larger, more mobile species, but they also get used for smaller birds that migrate long distances. and they've gotta be small and lightweight by their nature for that kind of use. I know that at least for some of the GPS based trackers, they'll transmit their GPS positions via a cellular connection or satellite data link and when the battery gets down to a certain level, they often have a mechanism to detach from the animal and then start broadcasting a vhf ping to aid in recovery. I'm pretty sure those are advanced enough to be able to adjust ping frequencies so that scientists can use them to study movements at different scales. so if you're interested in large scale migration patterns, you might just use a gps ping once per day or less. but if you're interested in smaller scale habitat use, you'd want much more frequent ping rates. the ones used for whales will even include a pressure sensor so they only do gps pings and data transmissions when the whales surface.

there are lots of different things done with them depending on the specific use. and there actually are some tracker devices for property that use essentially the same tech. airtags are not one of them.

and just saw this pop up.

Battery-free GPS tracker tracks wolves' movements for years (techexplorist.com)
 
#38 ·
austin_bike said:
I see this all the time on our local forums. Basically a higher end bike is pointless for an air tag. The bike is probably broken down into components and sold off individually because the cost of the full bike makes it a felony to hold and selling it becomes very obvious. But a SRAM NX derailleur is literally untraceable and you could sell it back to the original owner and they would never know the difference.

The second issue is that if you are able to track your bike back to a location, what now? Are you going to go confront a group of organized thieves who are committing felonies? Will they be armed? Here in TX, there is lots of bluster about going in armed to take their bike back. Good luck with that. It's not worth it. I'd rather spend the next 2 years on the trails on a new bike then meeting with lawyers and judges. Even if you are eventually cleared, it will cost you more than the cost of a new bike.

Third is that cops do not (generally) take "Find My" info seriously. That is because it is often wrong. I am sitting in a hotel room in Chicago and my watch says it is at a car dealership on the other side of I-90 right now. This is not uncommon. So because that data can't be 100% accurate, a cop generally will not act on it. They are not going to go up to a house in most cases because they need a warrant if the owner will not let them in. Judges are generally not going to issue a warrant for a bike because of air tag data. In some localities they may be accommodating. In mine they will not. I know people who have had phones stolen and the phones are pinging cell towers and the cops still won't chase it because they know a judge will not issue a warrant. Unless you saw the thief go in the house you are generally out of luck.

Strong locks and keeping an eye on your bike are better options. Don't think this technology is the silver bullet, it just is not.
Click to expand...
I agree strong locks like the ones mentioned or never leaving them is best.
 
#39 ·
I've been using a Knog Scout for a few months on my XC bike. It's the bike i take on trips as well as the random commuting trips i sometimes make. it's an alarm as well and i've found that the noise is enough where if someone touches the bike it'll jump scare them where they'll just walk away. It's also in the airtag network so i can see where the bike is too, which has served well for tracking the bike on the plane when i travel with it
 
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