News: Tile Mate

Paul Horta-Hopkins

A handy bike finding gizmo, nothing to do with DIY!

Despite sounding like something you might find in your local DIY store the Tile Mate is actually a handy little Bluetooth enabled tracker. You can attach it anything to keep track of your belongings. While not a cycle specific item, it can be easily fixed to your bike in case the worse should happen.

The Tile Mate could help find your bike

Measuring 34x34x4.65mm and weighing a scant 6.1g the Tile Mate contains a sealed battery that powers it. Using the phone app you can get Tile Mate to let you know where it is by ringing, or if you’re out of range it will show you where you last had it on a map. The Bluetooth signal is detectable up to 30m away, but is most effective at the 10m range. On the flip side if you can’t find your phone then a press of the Tile Mate will get it to ring.

The Tile Mate can be attached to your bike via their own Zip Strap, under the saddle is where they suggest. Alternatively you could stick it using their own sticky tabs. Once attached if your bike should go missing, you can start to hunt it down. If it’s within Bluetooth range you’ll be able to ring it or see it on your map.

However if it’s out of range then you start relying on the Tile community. Select ‘Notify When Found’ in the app and if another Tile user passes within range of your bike you’ll automatically be notified. An alert will be passed to your phone with a map location. Since Tile is constantly updating the location of every Tile it detects and with over eight million Tiles in circulation, that’s over a million items located a day! Will you need to lose your bike in a Tile dense area to improve your chances..?

Discreetly stuck under your saddle, no one will know

The app will let you know when it comes time to renew the battery on your Tile Mate. Since it’s a non-rechargeable, sealed unit you can’t just replace it. Instead you have the option to ‘reTile’. This involves ordering a new Tile Mate, which is sent out with a pre-paid envelope. You send the old unit back to Tile, who will recycle it while you carry on with the new one. Any new updates will be included in the new Tile and it should only cost 50% of the original price.

The Tile Zip Strap is another attachment option

We will be getting one of the Tile Mates to see how it performs. Most of all I’m interested to see how the ‘Notify When Found’ option works. Since we probably have less community density in the UK than the US, will we have less effective coverage? We’ll see. Check out the video to see how the Tile Mate works.

Tile

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