Long Range Matter Devices, Arlo Updates, & the Best Find My Devices
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host as always, Andrew O'Hara, writing this one solo for you. And though it was a little bit of a late week of news, I promise I have a very full episode to walk you through. This episode, by the way, is brought to you by Indeed. More on them in a few.

So it was a big holiday weekend for many people. We have things like Passover and Easter going on. So, you know, happy holidays to everybody that celebrates things. I hope it was amazing. I hope it was your birthday. It was also amazing. I just hope everyone in general had a great weekend last weekend because we all deserve it, right? It was a great weekend.

We all just deserve a good weekend. We did dip out of town a little bit to go see some family for Easter and whatnot, and perfect excuses to run and rely on. Kind of a litany of smart home devices as we leave as often. Like, my mother-in-law is coming over and checking on the house, checking on the bunnies and the chickens and things like that. So she's able to get into the keypad with her level lock code and...

Get into the house, go out, check out the chickens. But I also thought it was funny this time because she could not find the bunny food. Normally, Faith sits it right on top of the bunny hutch for her so she can just like scoop it and feed the bunnies. But this time we forgot and it was still in the drawer and she couldn't find the bunny food. So she was outside looking for the bunny food like on our deck and she just rings our doorbell and I'm like...

Hi. And she's like... Hi. I can't find the bunny food. And I'm like... Oh. It is in this position. And she's like... Oh. Thank you very much. It's like...

I love that that was an option for her to get a hold of us quickly, and it was able to instantly pop up. I'm using the Battery Power 2.1 on that back deck from Aqara. So there's not many that are battery-powered that can kind of do those things. So I really like it. It works with HomeKit Secure Video and all that stuff, so it was really helpful to have that as an option. We also ran the vacuum system.

copiously. Like Harrison is at the point where the vacuum is like a member of the family. So he wakes up in the morning and it's like, I say, hi buddy, how do you sleep? And he goes, where's mom? And I'm like, oh, she's, she's already working. And then he goes to knees. My knees shows off his knees. And then the third thing he says is vacuum vacuum.

We're Bert. Our robot vacuum is named Bert, by the way. And yeah, so he like has to say hi to Bert and go to bed and tell Bert good night. And now we are, you know, at the family event and everything. And he comes to me, he's like, run the vacuum, run the vacuum. I'm like, sure, buddy.

So when we were gone, we ran our Roborock through the Siri, through the home app now, because it's part of 18.4. We can actually do that through HomeKit now. And I'm able to select the rooms and run it out. So I actually did a few vacuumings first just to get a lot of dust up and then did a mopping of everything afterward. So, yeah, we came home.

to really nicely cleaned floors because Harrison needed to run the robotic vacuum cleaner like six times. Fortunately, I picked up things like the stools and everything like that. So this was a really good deep clean that we probably needed. But anyway, again, hope everyone had a great weekend. Let's get into the news.

Starting off, Chipolo has some new Find My trackers. Find My is going to be the theme on this episode. These are pretty basic run-of-the-mill trackers, though. They're just kind of like these small little ones that you would put on a keychain or something. They have a hole at the top. They are round. They come in different colors. These are improvements over the original Chipolo trackers. Chipolo, I believe, was the first one to come out with third-party Find My trackers, and they're very nice. So these new ones have louder sounds on them.

You can also, they have a longer range, IP55 dust and water resistance. They run on a CR2032 battery, so you can swap them out after about a year. Similar thing to AirTag, nothing crazy there. Yeah, they do have a hole in them, unlike regular AirTag, you know, that you have to put on a case or something. If you want to put it in a keychain, this can just

Go right on your key chain. It also supports Google's find my device, which I still hate that name. It's so dumb. You couldn't just even say Google find my, I mean, I'm sure Apple like,

copyrighted or something. I don't know. But it just sounds like you added the word device for no reason. Okay. Anyway, these come in blue, yellow, red, white, black, and green. So a bunch of different colors, pops of colors. They're pretty affordable. $29 for one, $89 for four. Not that far off from AirTag, but they have very similar specs and you can just attach

attach them right to a keychain without having to get any additional accessories or case or holder or anything like that. Plus, again, fun colors. And that is important. Then we have Arlo. Arlo has some very nice updates here for us. What I like about Arlo, I mean, it's a good and a bad thing, right? Arlo has been consistent. They'll come out with a product and it won't always have find or find my support. It won't always have Apple Home support. But

If they say that it will get it, it's probably, it's going to get it.

They have delivered a ton of updates to launch products, bringing Apple home support. I have tested it and reviewed many, many things from their floodlight three camera, which I still use in the backyard and is fantastic. Wireless home kit camera, built-in floodlight. You can also control V series. You can like just tell it to turn on your backyard light. Really lovely there. You can even control like the brightness and stuff. So that's super cool.

to their regular cameras, ultra cameras, doorbell camera, all these different things. Now, a lot of them don't support HomeKit secure video or anything like that, just regular HomeKit, but you still get things like rich notifications, inclusion in the home app, two-way audio, a bunch of other benefits. And now they are rolling out an additional update or did roll out an additional update for all the Arlo Essential second generation devices.

So the Arlo Essentials, they're more cost, you know, they're more cost-friendly. They're a more affordable product line. So these are their second-generation devices. There's like a doorbell, there's an indoor camera and a few outdoor cameras, all second-gen Essential lines, and now they all work with Apple Home. So great update there. You do need to have an Arlo Hub connected, so that is something that you have to have. But as long as you have that compatible hub, the base station, smart hub, you're good to go.

The things that you can do, again, just to run over them, use Apple's Assistant to control your Arlo devices. You can view the Arlo devices in the Home app. You can use your Apple TV to view the Arlo devices on your television, including getting motion alerts from your doorbell on your Apple TV, which I love. View live feeds and screenshots in the Apple Home app. Listen and talk using two-way audio in the Home app. And receive Arlo motion and audio notifications in

in the whole map. So really nice there. I like Arla quite a bit. It is one of those ones...

There's a lot of cameras that are just one-on-one, but when you need to outfit your house, like you want to put four or five, six cameras around to cover different angles and backyards and things like that, that's where something like a Kara is really nice. Other ones include like Eufy is another popular one in this category, but Arlo, I think, affordable, reliable, and they've been bringing out these HomeKit updates. So yeah, more devices now supported.

Okay, I want to go and talk about Nano-Lease's new Smart Light. It is very interesting, and I'm not going to say it's a glowing review. But before we do, let's take a break. Thank my first sponsor for the episode, Indeed. So before I went and did the whole podcasting thing and smart home thing and the video thing,

thing and the journalist thing. I worked in like an office and I led a digital marketing department. So I was into tech and did things and I had to hire people. And one of those things that I had to do in hiring people was it was that whole process. And I had to work with other people. There were other stakeholders to worry about. We had a list of requirements that we were going for. And it's not nearly as easy as I thought it'd be like, I'm excited for this. I thought it was going to be fun to hire a new person for the team. And it's,

It was stressful. It was very stressful. Like we were putting, I was putting stuff up on our website and on all these different job boards and you end up with different resumes from 13 different places and there it's really hard to filter them out. So it was a whole manual process. At one point we actually printed out like 50 resumes and put them on a table and me and a couple of people were like going through and trying to pick out the ones that we liked. And it

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hiring? Indeed is all you need. So last week, Nanoleaf came out with a brand new smart light. It's got some pros and it's got some cons, and I've got one sitting here on my desk. So the light itself is called the Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mouthful of a name there, but I'll give you a little bit of an idea on what this is. So it's a tall, skinny board. I

I would say it's about four to five inches wide and about a foot tall. It is black metal and it has a pegboard with a bunch of square cutouts on one side and the other side is just a light. So just a light on one side and then a pegboard on the other side. It comes with four pegs so you can put them in and then hang something on there. They can hang down, you can set something on them like a mini little shelf. So think like a gaming controller, a headset,

anything like that you can't attach with these little hooks there. It's small enough that you're not really going to need more than four because you're not going to fit more than that on here. The light shows through on either side, so it's kind of nice because you can choose your own aesthetic. Do you want to have just the light shining through or do you want the pegboard look? Now, what makes it a little bit more unique is not only do we have like a smart light here, but it connects over USB and it connects mainly to your computer.

So you just plug this into your computer's USB-C port and it powers up, ready to go. You use it with a Nanoleaf application to do all sorts of different things, colors, gradients, syncing effects, everything.

Nuts stuff crazy things all of that. It also has extra ports on it So on the right hand side, there's a USB a port on the back There is two USB ports. One of them is just a regular type-c The other one is a USB C power delivery port for charging things and then I believe yeah one more USB C on the other side so three USB C one USB a to connect your peripherals up to your computer and even charge something and I believe

up to 15 watts, but don't quote me on that because the max power supply to the whole unit is 15. So maybe 15 tops, but I'm not thinking it's super duper fast. What I like about this is it feels nice. It feels sturdy. I like the fact that, hey, if you're plugging into your computer, why not give you extra USB? Like that seems like it makes sense. Like I think that's a smart inclusion on something like this.

The problem is while you can just connect it to USB power, like I have this plugged in right now as you're looking at on the video, this is plugged into a USB-C power adapter onto a power strip under the desk. And I can only like press the button on the front to cycle through the different preset lighting options. That's it. You can't control this through Apple Home. You can't control this through

with your phone, nothing like that. It only works on your computer connected to the Nanoleaf app for full customization. So for me, like I saw something like, Hey, I actually kind of, maybe that pegboard look would be kind of cool. You know, we're working on redoing the set a little bit. I could have some shelves back there, maybe put these on there, hang a couple of cool techie things, adjust the lighting to how I want them and do all that. But then it's like, Oh,

I can't actually set it as part of a scene. I can't include all of my actual colors that I want, all of that stuff. And I felt very limited about...

on what I can do. So I'm hoping that maybe something like this, that maybe they come out with a pro version, because these are pretty affordable, in my opinion. So I would take one that's maybe a little more expensive, that I had a little bit more control over, that could be standalone. These feel very much gamer-oriented. Like, that's what these seem made for, and I'm probably not that target audience. I love to game, but I'm not having a gaming setup with a whole bunch of RGB lights, all that kind of stuff.

These have a target audience that's in that gamer, streamer, you know, esports kind of thing. That's not me. This is not straight smart home. It's like smart home adjacent connected with esports and gaming. If that is you, these could be perfect. I actually just really like the idea of these. I just don't want to have to plug them into my computer anymore.

to do everything. That's my biggest rub. They include that USB-C cable, and then they include a USB-C extension cable, so you can make it go even further if you have to, depending on your setup. So they did a thing of a lot of things. Price point, $60 for one of them. They also have a two-pack that you can save a little bit.

Uh, that way you can do like one on the left and right side of your monitor or something like that. But you get different options. I like them. I think they're really cool idea. Just not for me. Not my favorite narrow leaf product they come out with, but the functionality thing I actually find quite interesting. Like the pegboard situation, like,

Yeah, I like that. So let me know what you guys think of these things. I will put a link for these in the show notes if you want to pick some up or at least get a better visual idea of what you think of them. So I'm very curious at what this audience thinks of these things. Are they too gamer? Not enough smart homie? Do you want to see something that is more specific to the smart home or not? For sure, let me know. CyberMod Studio, if anyone's paid attention...

We have, they are on Twitter and they have a ton of different leaks that they are constantly sharing about matter. Like specifically matter is what they are involved with in releasing a ton of regulatory information and site updates, all that kind of stuff. And I've shared a bunch of different updates on the show of upcoming products and things like that from them.

Well, we have like three this week. So they have been spilling the guts on upcoming Matter accessories that we can be excited about. And there's some seriously cool stuff. So first up, Phillips is working on a smart lock. Now, I don't necessarily think this is...

for sure, under the Philips Hue brand because Philips Hue is a separate company from Philips. And Philips makes already a smart lock. It just doesn't work with Apple Home. So I believe that would be this one and not Philips Hue, which is owned and operated by Signify. So Signify runs Philips Hue. Then there's actual Philips, the kind of legacy company that does make some smart locks and

I've been pitched them for the show before, but since they don't work with Apple Home, I haven't given them too much of a thought. But now it sounds like they are working on one. It will be a Matter over Thread smart lock. The model number is like DDL240X-1HBM, and it will be manufactured by Cadice.

Yeah, so yeah, it seems like this is coming and more smart locks is always a good thing. I like threat of a matter. Everything seems good here. I wouldn't hold my breath for home key because they've never done actual Apple home. So I wouldn't expect home key on this version, but maybe we have something like a Lero. It's not mentioned here at all, but that would be the only thing that I would expect to get. I think it's a little bit probably more budget friendly. So maybe this just does us all a service of making matter and the smart home more accessible to more people.

Then we're getting a new matter presence sensor coming up. This was actually leaked and I talked about on the show back in 2024, I believe. So finally, this was the first like matter presence sensor. It's the FAER, L-A-F-A-E-R. It actually looks like a human, the human AI pin, but it's all like just solid white plastic. And that top little part is where like the radars are to detect people in a room. So really nice here. I love...

present sensors over motion sensors and we haven't had too much of those in the matter space let alone even in the home space like that the Apple home space the best one that we've had is the present sensor from a car a car is working on that second generation sensor that should be launching soon and I'm very excited about that one as well but this is going to be a specifically all matter one getting close to release and

It's already now listed on the Matter website, so you can actually follow the link in the show notes to see this wireless human presence sensor, what it looks like. I mean, that's in the show notes too, but there's the chapter art. But you can go and look at all the other specs that are listed on the CSA website. This is the description they also put there. The Lafayette Wireless Human Presence Sensor, LWR01, surpasses standard occupancy sensors with

3.5 millimeter presence detection range and seven meter motion detection range offering exceptional sensitivity to stationary individuals. Features a long lasting battery powered design and IPX3 water resistance for versatile installation. Suitable for various indoor use, operating matter over thread, provides seamless and secure cross platform connectivity enhancing its value for modern smart home and business applications.

That's about it. It is a present sensor. The biggest difference here is for people who are not moving, those would not trigger motion sensor and then like lights could turn off. You've ever been like an old school office where they have like a light switch or something where the people come into the room, the lights come on, but then you're working at your desk and all of a sudden the lights go off and someone has to wave their hand in the air. This would solve that because it actually detects presence and not straight motion. So yeah, this should be launching very soon.

Now, this last part of CyberMod Studios leaks has me most excited, which is that Matter long-range working group has officially been established. What does that mean?

So, Matter is made up of all these different member organizations that are members of the CSA, the Connectivity Standards Alliance. So, all these member organizations join and they all have a say in what gets worked on. So, that's how they decide, hey, we're going to start working on these products. We're going to work on these, not products, but the specs and these different supported device types and improvements, things like that.

And they have to do these kind of things in stages and they're voting on a lot of things. So this working group is basically formed to get the requirements for wireless long range.

So this is like the first step to creating the spec. They're going to go get the requirements. They're going to be like, this is what makes sense. This is how to do it. This is what we need, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then once they have those, then they will use those to create the spec. And then eventually we'll have wireless long range devices as part of Matter. So this is the first step in that direction. But this is huge, long range wireless devices for Matter.

This is going to open up a bunch of new options for Apple Home users. Right now, I've only seen really one actual product come to market, and it isn't even on the market yet. It's from Abode, who has this long-range wireless camera. Looks really amazing, but they showed it at CES last year, like 2024, and it's still not out yet. I asked them beginning of this year. They said, hey, we're still working on it. We're trying to improve things. I think battery was taking the biggest hit there.

So they are trying to do solve that problem, but it is like incredibly long range, like over a mile or something wireless range for a camera. So really cool. And I'm excited to see how this evolves within matter specifically. So stay tuned for that. We could have long range of wireless devices added to that respect alongside things that we have now like wifi and thread. Okay.

The biggest part of this episode that I want to talk about is going to be rounding up my favorite find my devices. I have a bunch of them. I have them in my hands. I'm going to show you them on the video version of this. But before we get to that, let's take our second break. Thank our other sponsors for this episode. I've talked about them before. Fast growing trees is too, too cool, too cool. I was literally just out in my yard before I got on the podcast, taking care of the chickens, checking the raspberry bushes, the blueberry bushes, everything.

And all of our trees, and they're all starting to bloom, not bloom like flowers, but all the leaves are coming out and they're so cool. I'm so excited by it. I have five fruit trees out in my yard. I have three apple trees, two cherry trees that I got from fastgrowingtrees.com. I don't know if you knew this, but they are actually the biggest online nursery in the U.S. with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. Honestly, 2 million seems low because I alone have probably told 2 million people about how cool this is.

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and having really bad luck with it. You can literally filter based on your zone, based on your area, which is super helpful in my opinion, because I don't know that much about planting things. So I need to know that I'm going to be buying something that makes sense to where I am. So that is really helpful to making sure that I am successful and my plants are living, my investments are living. So yeah, I have planted multiple trees and shrubs and stuff from them over the years, and they are doing really, really well. They are growing like crazy.

crazy. And I'm so excited for all the apples and cherries we're going to get this year, especially the one apple tree. It's actually a five in one apple tree. So they took a single apple tree, grafted on branches of other varieties, and then it, and then let it, let it grow. So now I have one tree with five varieties of apple on it.

How is that not the coolest thing? If you want to grow apples, how is that not what you buy right away? I think that's amazing. I think that is such a smart, awesome thing to do. And I got like Pink Lady, Gala, Granny Smith, Fuji, I think on there. And one more that I'm not remembering off the top of my head. But you can even see the different colors and shapes of their leaves on

Like, because they're completely different trees, all in one. But there's also other things, too. Like, we have shrubs we put in. The chickens, we're going to landscape around them this year. So we're going to put stuff there from them. And the blueberries, my child eats fruit like it is, like,

I don't know. Going out of style. Is that still a phrase that people say? But yeah, I'm tired of buying so many raspberries and blueberries and tomatoes, everything like that. So we have raspberries and blueberry bushes that he, we go out, we check the chickens and he just snacks on all the berries in our yard. It's amazing. I wouldn't, I wouldn't,

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Now, lastly, we have Shopify. Shopify is the platform for you if you are trying to sell things in stores and online. They make it so easy to make your website in your online store, handling basically all the stuff that you don't want to have to worry about.

If you are starting a business, you don't want to have to know about making a website because that's not your priority. Running your business should be your priority. And if you're an established company, you should be worried about growing your business, not learning or hiring skills to build out things.

a whole website. Anyone can use Shopify. But what I love about it so much is that it scales so easily from a single individual proprietor selling hand knitted mouse pads to much larger organizations, many in the tech space. Like, I don't know. I know so many tech sites that use Shopify and I find more and more like every single week, Nomad, Moment, Albers, Brooklyn, and 12 South. I have them sitting here on my desk, desk,

All these companies are relying on Shopify to get them sales, get them customers, and keep those customers coming back and to be successful. That is what Shopify is all about. They have so many benefits for your business from being able to

Offer things like Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout to help you convert those people to shared inventory management systems where you can have an in-store pickup option, like ship to store, or you can just manage your inventories. When people are buying in-store, it shows out of stock online. You can share that inventory so you don't get caught flat-footed when someone buys something online, but before you packed it and shipped it, someone already bought it out of your store. That won't happen anymore.

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That's where I put a cha-ching sound effect right there. If I could make one with my mouth. I cannot talk. It's been a long weekend. But cha-ching. Thanks, Shopify.

So there's been a lot of different find my devices hitting the market. I have a slew of them on my desk and I'm going to try not to make a ton of noise like by hitting the microphone 30 times. But we're not talking about your basic run of the mill things, right? I'm holding up on video all these different tracking cards. These are so common anymore. Like literally, I feel like everyone has them.

Like smaller companies like Eufy, Spigen, I'm trying to even think of some of the other ones, but they've all come out. A lot of wallet companies have come out with tracking cards. Most of them are pretty good, right? They're hitting basic specs and they're all almost interchangeable. Pebbleby was a pretty early one. I got one here from Chipolo. They were also like the first. I think they're even thinner than they are now on this guy.

Nomads has been incredibly popular, really, really skinny on this one, and I like the feel of it a lot, and the design's a little techy-looking. So that's very cool, with, like, a schematic on the front. The AirCard Pro from Rolling Square, it's, like, translucent or clear on the front, where you can actually see the internals. It's got some fun things. And then the Momax, this is the pin card prototype.

Pro Mini. This feels very camera oriented. I don't, I can't, I can't exactly put my finger on why, but it just feels camera oriented to me. Um, but there's like YLC charges and everything. There's a lot of these tracking cards.

I don't want to talk about those today. I want to talk about the lesser known find my devices that you may have not seen. Some of these I have talked about on the show in the past. Some of them may be for the very first time. So let's go ahead and get into it. Starting out with one that has recently launched and I have one in my hand. It is the Revis water bottle.

From Journey. So this is a good sized water bottle. I am holding it up. I have the stainless steel one. So the body of it is like a matte stainless steel with a black top. A couple of cool things to point out. So the top of it opens up and gives you a little handle. It's a little circle right there that you can hold the water bottle by. Cool. I can hold my water bottle. Very nice. But that also is a magnetic rod.

ring so you can put your phone onto it and use it as a little stand or a tripod so you can watch a video. This can sit on my desk and can be a stand for my phone. I could be somewhere and filming myself by using this as a stand while I'm out somewhere filming a TikTok or short. I could use this for a workout.

to put an apple fitness class on here or do yoga or something put this in the front of my yoga mat and do a yoga class so lots of really cool applications for that little mount there now if you're watching video version of this on the top of the lid there's basically a little gray circle i can just press down on one side of that circle and that little puck

comes out. That's it. This is the find my module itself. This goes, puts on any wireless charger to charge it up and you're good to go last. I think they said three to four months on a single charge. So not too bad for that guy. It goes back into your water bottle. You're all set. It's double walled insulation. Insulated will last you basically all day. The idea here is pretty darn smart. Who, who hasn't lost a water bottle? Like so many people have,

This makes sure that you don't do that. You're taking your high-end stainless steel water bottle with you. You go somewhere, you're going to get an alert if you leave it behind. You're not going to leave work or the gym without your water bottle. It's going to be coming with you. I think that is awesome. Of course, you can track it down, put it into lost mode, things like that. But for me, it's that left behind alert that I think is going to be really helpful with that one.

In a similar vein, we have the Ember Travel Mug Plus. Now, with the regular Ember Travel Mug, I'm only 50-50 on it because I love the mug itself. I love that it keeps your stuff hot. But I could also put my hot coffee into a Yeti and get like longer heat time than the Ember would. This would die before my Yeti would stop keeping my coffee warm.

The way that the Travel Mug Plus works for me better is that it has built-in Find My. So I can add this to Find My app, and now I'm not going to forget my tumbler, my coffee mug, anywhere that I go. I won't leave this on the desk at work. I won't leave this at the coffee shop that I filled it up at and was sitting at. I won't leave this even in the car. I'm going to get that alert that I've left this thing behind, and I love that.

You're already getting something. Even if you had a Yeti, like a Yeti, a good size, like Yeti coffee ones can be like 40 bucks. I don't want to lose that. I don't. So fine. My just makes that, that never happened. So I can get this instead. It feel a little bit safer. So I think this just adds that extra functionality that it needed to make this more of a thoughtful purchase than just keeping your coffee or tea warm.

Now, the use case for it that I would say otherwise is you can dial in that temperature to exactly what you want, and if you leave it on the coaster on your desk, you're set. So I could sit here working all day, having some tea going, and it'd be the perfect temperature, but I could also pick it up, walk it around, do whatever, bring it back, set it down, it's going to keep charging, keep everything warm. So that is one nice benefit of it if you're keeping it near the charger, but in terms of like a long car ride, a Yeti will literally hold...

hold it better than this one. But the find mime, I think makes it just a bit more useful. Then we have the scout tag from Nog. I have talked about this on the show, I think even like maybe last week or the week before that, but very handy luggage tracker. So it comes in a bunch of different colors. It has these different interchangeable metal hooks or like lugs

leashes, whatever, cables, and you just put that around the handle on your luggage or on the zipper on your luggage, this is locked into place. They include a little tool that just looks like a pair of like bunny ears that goes into the back and they have two different lengths of that cable. So you can have a short one or a long one, but you can use that little bunny ear tool to remove that special key to replace the cable if you ever need to.

But this is going to lock it onto your bag so it cannot be removed by someone easily. So if they even knew it was there, they're not going to take this off without a pair of wire cutters or something to get through this. The thing itself works with Find My, has a QR code on the back that you can scan to find more information about the owner to help connect with you. Also has NFC for that exact same reason. They can just tap it with their phone and get connected with you that way.

There is a USB-C charger on it, so you can just power this thing up. Battery life is not super long. I can't say what it is off the top of my head, but it's easily, I would say, a few months. And the benefit of it is I can just charge this before I go. So anytime I travel, I charge this thing up. It's ready, and I don't have to worry about it. I don't care about this when I'm home, right? It doesn't matter. So that just becomes part of my packing routine. I'm setting my smart home devices. I'm charging things. I'm replacing batteries, grabbing battery packs, etc.

charging this thing up on my suitcase. I literally bring my suitcase up, sit on my bed, plug it in while I'm packing and I'm good to go. So battery on this is perfect because it just has USB-C, which is really very handy.

Um, last thing that makes it a little bit unique is it has the security mode on it so I can arm it through the companion app. And when that is armed, if my bag would move, it sends off a siren. So that way no one can touch your bag without this triggering. Of course, if you forget to disarm it, you could set off that alarm and everyone stare at you, but just remember to disarm it and you're good to go. So like, I like if we're sitting at a restaurant or something, I could arm it there.

And I have to worry about someone trying to sneak my bag away from us while we're at a table at an airport or something, or maybe even a backpack at a coffee shop. I don't have to worry about that. But again, just remember to disarm before you go. But I like having that feature than not having it. It just makes it a little bit more unique and a little bit more secure.

Okay, next up on the list, this is kind of an honorable mention, and I don't have it on camera for me, but it is the Nomad Siri Remote Cover. Apple really needs to have proper Find My tracking built into the Siri remote, and they don't. Using the app on your phone, like the little remote thing, it doesn't work. It doesn't actually go into Find My, and at most it tells me it's in my living room.

But I don't know where Harrison or Faith put the remote. Is it in the back of the couch? Because they said on the back of the couch and it fell down is on the side of the couch because they said it there and it fell down. Now, did it go underneath a cushion or did it go underneath like the baseboard that can also lift up under the couch or was on the floor and then it got pushed underneath the couch? Or is it in any of Harrison's toy boxes? Because those are also all over the place. So it could be in any of Harrison's toy boxes.

There are a lot of different options here, and I don't know where it is because that thing just gets me to the general room, but not much further. By using something like this Nomad cover, it covers the serial remote, gives it a little bit more girth so it's a little bit thicker, more comfortable in the hand. It makes it warm instead of cold, and you have a built-in pocket for an AirTag. Yeah.

So just put an AirTag in there. You have precision finding. You have the speaker, all that stuff. The downside is the speaker is really not that loud. If this is buried in your couch, which is already the AirTag is inside of the cover itself, it's not super loud, but you can still use precision finding to get yourself 99% of the way there. So I love this. It's become one of my most recommended accessories to add onto like Apple TV or smart home stuff. So check it out if I sound like you.

Then we have the rolling square air notch pro very smart design here. They kind of took a lot of the specs of the air tech and tried to improve them the best that they could. So I am holding it up, but it is basically, I don't even know how to describe this. It is an oval that is made out of metal. It is very utilitarian looking, very gun medley and grills and stuff. Uh, the hook on the top, all metal too, cause part of that frame. So an aluminum frame with black plastic on the front and the back.

Couple things that make this unique. First, it has a bunch of pieces that glow in the dark. So if you have this in your bag, like if it's on your keys and it's in your bag, your backpack, your purse, you can see it easier. If you drop it in the movie theater and it's like on the floor, you can see it easier. It just glows. This is a Swiss company. They say it was inspired by like Swiss timepieces that use like those light up accessories, like on the watch face, like elements, not accessories.

So I think it's really smart. So those illuminated accessories here on the body itself, has speakers on both sides, so one side and on the other, so there are two speakers on this thing and they are very loud. Again, say this is sitting on the couch and the speaker is down, it could get muffled. If it's outside, sitting in the grass, speaker is down, it could get muffled. Because there are speakers on both sides, you're pretty much guaranteed that you're going to hear this thing going off. So really nice to have there.

Finally, it has two replaceable batteries. So the back comes off, put into, I think it's the standard CR2023, 2032 batteries in there, and you're going to get almost two years of use out of this thing versus one on an AirTag and all the other AirTag light trackers that are out there.

So really easy just to upgrade this thing down the line. I like it as far as like for putting something on your key chain, you may not love the aesthetic of it. Like this isn't going to be for everyone. I would say like the design of it, cause it's very just rugged utility. I'm a cool key chain companion, like that kind of vibe. So that could not be you compared to like an Apple red leather bespoke holder, but

But if you're cool with the vibe, I think this is probably the most capable keychain one that you can add.

Two things left on the Find My list, these are my favorite Find My devices. We have the plug bug from a 12South. I've got two versions of them here, the 120W version and then the smaller 50W version. The 50W version has two USB-C ports on there, they are equal, you can use either one for the fast output. The 120W operates the same way, you can get 120W out of any of these or it'll be intelligently dispersed based on the power needs of your devices.

This bigger one can obviously power up a MacBook Pro at like fast charging speeds. So really cool there. But the unique factor of these is that they have Find My built in. So you'll never be at an Airbnb or a hotel and leave your charger behind. Plus, if you keep these in your backpack, it can also help you find your backpack. They do have a swappable battery in the back, just a little door that opens up, put a new cell battery in, lasts you about a year again, similar to every other Find My device.

And there is a travel version of these. So with either of them, you can get the travel version, which comes in a little carrying case and gives you several different international plugs that you can put on the top and use wherever you're going.

I it just so brilliant. I have left chargers in hotel rooms. I never will using the plug bug. I use these this past weekend to charge up my laptop and watch everything like that. Like they're, they're indispensable. They are a little expensive, but considering there's nothing else like these on the market, they can basically charge what they want. I will pay it because I just think it is such a good idea. Lastly, I would say this is a controversial is a, the hyper backpack. I think it's the hyper pack pro.

So you could, you could really just pick any backpack you want and put an air tag into it. You're fine. But I like that hyper is building. Find my in it's putting that module in the top. So you don't have to go out and buy it. You don't have to already have one. You just grab the backpack, like you buy it and you are good to go instantly with find my working. I think it just makes it easier that way. It's also replaceable battery on there. So you can continuously, um,

swap it out. So it's always good to go built in right at the top. And with a regular find my tracker or an air tag, someone could just take it out and remove it. Right. But with it built in like that, they're not going to be able to do anything. It just, it's all good to go.

you are set. The backpack is also just really handy. Like it's very Apple oriented. It is very sleek. It is very modern looking. It has a bunch of smart features like cable routing through it. So you can put a battery pack on the side and charge a bunch of different devices at the same time. Like I've never seen a battery or a backpack

have little cable routes throughout to charge your laptop, a camera inside, and one popping on the side for your phone. They're just really smart like that. Of course, it can hold up to a 16-inch MacBook Pro in the back, padded pocket, everything that you would need. It's just a really nice backpack designed for Apple users, and having Find My built-in makes it even more specific that way.

Now, of course, there are even more Find My Devices that are out there that are more unique that I haven't talked about them yet. I've got like the Journey one here. This is the Locate Motion Key Tracker. There are wallets. There are all sorts of things like that. But let me know what you guys think. What other Find My Devices do you like? You can let me know and I will try to include them in a version two of this. I did a video of all of these things so you can watch the whole thing, not just this podcast version, which you can.

But there's a whole dedicated YouTube video that I just dropped Monday morning with all of these items. And again, the links for all these items are in the show notes. So please check it out and let me know what you think. You can send all feedback directly to me. And of course, I read every email that you guys send in. Email is andrew at appleinsider.com. You can also let me know on Twitter at andrew underscore OSU. You can also find me on Blue Sky. You can watch the video version of this podcast or youtube.com slash blue sky.

HomeKit Insider. And yeah, give us a 5, 10, 100 star rating on your podcast player of choice. Let me know if you have any feedback for the show, questions that you want answered, or more stuff that you would like to see. I welcome all of it and absolutely respond if I am able to. Otherwise, thank you for listening and I'll see you guys on the next episode.