Just how good is one key tracking?

Let’s find out. Now we wait. 

DeWalt, if you didn’t already do it, it’s too late.

Anxious to see what happens. Hope the catch the son of a bitch that did it! ?

Conductor562 wrote:

8 minutes ago, Conductor562 said:

Anxious to see what happens. Hope the catch the son of a bitch that did it! ?

Ditto

Sorry to hear that bro. People that steal tools get a special place in hell.

What a worthless technology.

That sucks dude, I have yet to understand how that part of the one key thing is useful…..

Doesn’t the battery need to be on the tool? Easy enough to pull it off the tool. 

..

Nope, I stand corrected: it would require a lot of people having the onekey app on their phone to be able to track it down if it got pawned and left the county for example 

” The Integrated Tool Tracking technology does a couple things: 1) it shows you where (and when) a particular One-Key tool was last seen, and 2) these tool records and locations are updated when a One-Key app comes within 100 feet of a On-Key tool that’s been reported missing. It’s not GPS (the system still uses Bluetooth connectivity to the app), but rather a sort of mesh network, and tools can be tracked even without a battery inserted.”

https://www.protoolreviews.com/news/milwaukee-one-key-technology/17330/

KnarlyCarl wrote:

That sucks dude, I have yet to understand how that part of the one key thing is useful…..

Doesn’t the battery need to be on the tool? Easy enough to pull it off the tool. 

..

Nope, I stand corrected: it would require a lot of people having the onekey app on their phone to be able to track it down if it got pawned and left the county for example 

 

” The Integrated Tool Tracking technology does a couple things: 1) it shows you where (and when) a particular One-Key tool was last seen, and 2) these tool records and locations are updated when a One-Key app comes within 100 feet of a On-Key tool that’s been reported missing. It’s not GPS (the system still uses Bluetooth connectivity to the app), but rather a sort of mesh network, and tools can be tracked even without a battery inserted.”

 

https://www.protoolreviews.com/news/milwaukee-one-key-technology/17330/

Yeah I had the app on my phone long before I got a one key tool. It made inventory really easy and kept track of my cordless and hand tools real nicely. 

justinkendall wrote:

I wish more people would use the One-Key app. They don’t need One-Key tools to use it for inventory control and organization. Even just installing the app and never using it for your own tools still lets it help other people find their missing or stolen tools. I think a lot of people don’t use it because they think One-Key is a fad and won’t last. I believe at NPS16 they mentioned that one guy was able to recover over $20,000 worth of stolen tools because of it. I’m sitting on about $10,000 worth of Milwaukee tools and I know I would be devastated if they were stolen. I’m sure most trades people / companies would feel the same way. If every contractor and trades person took 2 minutes to install it on their phones there would be a nice size network to help get the tools back if they’re stolen.

I think a lot of the problem is people not being able to justify the price difference between the One-Key and non One-Key models. I wish Milwaukee made a One-Key enabled M18 or M12 power source. I can see people spending $50 for a One-Key power source if it meant they had a chance to get their tools back if they were stolen. Actually I’m going to go suggest that to Milwaukee.


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justinkendall wrote:

8 hours ago, justinkendall said:

 

I wish more people would use the One-Key app. They don’t need One-Key tools to use it for inventory control and organization. Even just installing the app and never using it for your own tools still lets it help other people find their missing or stolen tools. I think a lot of people don’t use it because they think One-Key is a fad and won’t last. I believe at NPS16 they mentioned that one guy was able to recover over $20,000 worth of stolen tools because of it. I’m sitting on about $10,000 worth of Milwaukee tools and I know I would be devastated if they were stolen. I’m sure most trades people / companies would feel the same way. If every contractor and trades person took 2 minutes to install it on their phones there would be a nice size network to help get the tools back if they’re stolen.

I think a lot of the problem is people not being able to justify the price difference between the One-Key and non One-Key models. I wish Milwaukee made a One-Key enabled M18 or M12 power source. I can see people spending $50 for a One-Key power source if it meant they had a chance to get their tools back if they were stolen. Actually I’m going to go suggest that to Milwaukee.


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Yeah I’m probably the only one in the county with the app ????.

Stercorarius wrote:

Yeah I’m probably the only one in the county with the app [emoji23][emoji23][emoji37][emoji37].

I’m also curious as to if it only pings locations off phones with the app running, GPS on, and Bluetooth on.

Stercorarius wrote:

I’m also curious as to if it only pings locations off phones with the app running, GPS on, and Bluetooth on.

Bluetooth being on is probably required. As far as the app running and GPS I can actually test that out tomorrow. My brother and I are helping our cousin move so I can toss my tool box in the car he’s going to be driving and see if I can find my impact even though he doesn’t have the app running.

Edit: just checked and GPS is required for tracking tools according to the app but I’m not sure if it’s required for other users when a tool is marked as missing.

[External image (uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com), not copied]

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Unfortunately upon testing the feature you need Bluetooth, gps, and the app on to find someone’s missing tool.

[External image (uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com), not copied]


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justinkendall wrote:

Unfortunately upon testing the feature you need Bluetooth, gps, and the app on to find someone’s missing tool.

[External image (uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com), not copied]


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justinkendall wrote:

I’m pretty sure my brother and I are the only two in our half of the state with it.


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Update: still a joke.

I wondered how useful the theft recovery aspect of it would be, but I realized that the most likely scenario is finding your own tool again at some point in the future in the Home Depot/lumberyard parking lot, or driving past a pawn shop. 

While most tools are going to be stolen by thugs who don’t work, they are typically going to be sold to thugs who do work, but don’t mind buying a stolen miter saw for $100.

I’m at Home Depot just about every day, sooner or later I’m likely to cross paths with them. 

Obviously, if the stolen tool is sold at a garage sale and ends up in some old guy’s wood shop out in the country, you’re unlikely to see it ever again. 

The thing people seem to be missing is that as low of a chance at recovery, it’s better than the chance was before it was introduced. It’s just one aspect of the system and it isn’t going to work well unless selling the Tick takes off. More users the more off a chance something is recovered…but even then, the US is a damn big place.

I honestly don’t think the hardware and software don’t work as advertised even without factoring in the odds of a coincidental crossing of paths. I don’t even see how it could possibly be remotely useful even for keeping track of where your tools are. The app open, running, Bluetooth location on, and it still wouldn’t pick up my ticks when I was feet away from them. Zero chance of it pinging something in the back of my own pickup, much less the back of someone else’s pickup. The app is glitchy and crashes constantly. Seems to be zero effort on Milwaukee’s product to make this a working system for any application. If it works on your phone, good for you, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work fine on every OS. I’m sure the tag isn’t much better. It’s all just a joke. The only thing they care to do is market it and swindle whatever cash you have. Milwaukee rep the other day told me if I’m having a problem with theft I need to just buy one of their one key tools and intentionally leave it out to get stolen so I could track them down. Yeah maybe if they pay for it when the system does all of nothing. This tick is sitting on my toolbox that I set my phone on to work on stuff all the time, yet still won’t pick it up. So yeah Milwaukee if you’re reading this, you did a shit job and it’s soured my opinion of your company indefinitely. Doesn’t matter what kind of torque their impact wrenches get. Very little chance I buy from them again. Is that sensible to do from a bad experience with just one flop of a product? Probably not, but I’ve always liked my non Milwaukee tools better anyway.

Stercorarius wrote:

4 hours ago, Stercorarius said:

I honestly don’t think the hardware and software don’t work as advertised even without factoring in the odds of a coincidental crossing of paths. I don’t even see how it could possibly be remotely useful even for keeping track of where your tools are. The app open, running, Bluetooth location on, and it still wouldn’t pick up my ticks when I was feet away from them. Zero chance of it pinging something in the back of my own pickup, much less the back of someone else’s pickup. The app is glitchy and crashes constantly. Seems to be zero effort on Milwaukee’s product to make this a working system for any application. If it works on your phone, good for you, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work fine on every OS. I’m sure the tag isn’t much better. It’s all just a joke. The only thing they care to do is market it and swindle whatever cash you have. Milwaukee rep the other day told me if I’m having a problem with theft I need to just buy one of their one key tools and intentionally leave it out to get stolen so I could track them down. Yeah maybe if they pay for it when the system does all of nothing. This tick is sitting on my toolbox that I set my phone on to work on stuff all the time, yet still won’t pick it up. So yeah Milwaukee if you’re reading this, you did a shit job and it’s soured my opinion of your company indefinitely. Doesn’t matter what kind of torque their impact wrenches get. Very little chance I buy from them again. Is that sensible to do from a bad experience with just one flop of a product? Probably not, but I’ve always liked my non Milwaukee tools better anyway.

I had issues with the Ticks when I first started using them but the issues seem to have been resolved in later app updates.

My business is web and mobile app development and unfortunately most companies opt to prioritize iPhone over Android. We have never had a company come to us decide they want to do an Android app first and see how it does before doing an iPhone app.

There’s also the incompatibility problem of using code between the two platforms for app development. You might have an iPhone app that works perfectly and when you do the same thing for the Android app you get multiple errors that cause you to rework half of the app to get the same results.

Should Milwaukee have made sure that everything worked perfectly before releasing the app? Yes. Is it possible that it was working fine on their local machine and once uploaded to the app stores issues occurred? Yes. No matter how hard you try to make sure an app is working perfectly locally sometimes when it gets deployed bugs occur.

it also doesn’t help that you need a decent amount of people to be using the app for the missing tool feature to work well. That’s not on Milwaukee or DeWalt that’s the limitations of Bluetooth. A lot of shops/contractors have not bought into One-Key. Why buy a new tool when the one you have works fine? My cousin sells tools for a living. My One-Key purchases from her in June 2015 where the first from her company. None of her clients bought into One-Key until Sept/Oct 2017 and that was only after I explained how One-Key/Tool Connect/Hilti’s equivalent work so she could inform her clients.

Milwaukee (and the other companies) need to spend some time/money actually informing users of the benefits and features instead of just saying you can track your tools and prevent theft. One-Key has been out for almost 3 years now and people still think it’s going to be some magical GPS tracking for their tools.

It’s really early in this technology, you have to start somewhere. I certainly don’t think tracking is something you can count on, not with any system out there now. It needs cellular/GPS in the tracking and several satellites even then it can be foiled by a steel roof or an aging battery. The best thing we can count on is the idea of it not working if it isn’t being seen in your app…but that could cause issues and could be defeated with a board change or possibly even shorting the super cap or battery on the PCB.

Yeah call me old fashioned, but I just like products to work as advertised.

Advertising is always in the best case scenario, that’s just how it works. It’s the customer’s job to be informed on how likely that best case scenario is…literally every tool company makes claims that are questionable. 

Yeah but I mean something advertised for drilling will drill a hole and if it doesn’t drill a hole just as advertised, I wouldn’t buy from them. All my other tools work just as advertised. The only ones with advertising that are severely misleading is harbor freight. I don’t know of any of the major tool brands that have anything fall as short of as advertised as this. If something was advertised as being a drill and could only drill a hole 1 out of ten times under ideal conditions I would be mad and never buy from them again. Same thing if something is advertised as being able to track a tool and doesn’t even if I go out of my way to get the perfect conditions. The only information I was ever given was that it tracks tools and any news or “review” of it mentioned a theft tracking and inventory aspect. It does that beyond poorly, if at all. Anything that falls that short on performance isn’t worth my time. I understand the whole concept of caveat emptor, and so I’m letting other people know, that at least in my case it failed miserably so they have information on their next purchase. Tracking is the only appeal to me personally for One-Key and it doesn’t perform as advertised and so it’s not worth my time or purchasing any Milwaukee products. I’m under no delusion that my business will have any affect on their profits even to a 0.000001% or that my feedback affects a significant number, if any, people’s decisions. It wouldn’t just be bad for progress if negative feedback didn’t exist. I mean I started this thread optimistic and as hopeful as anyone could be that this worked. I would only gain if it did. It didn’t, so then I bought two ticks to see if I could get better luck with them. The impact was pretty early on. Could have been a fluke. Neither tick worked to where I could use it for personal inventory, much less anything to do with theft. This was trying with both my cat phone, and my Samsung. It may only work apple devices, but that’s still poor design and execution on their part. I’m not about to go out and buy a DeWalt version either because even if it was executed perfectly, which I’m sure it isn’t, it still lacks the user base to be effective beyond personal tracking. Shoot unpowered RFID tags ping at shorter distances than the tick.