Milwaukee Tick

Milwaukee is apparently launching a One-Key tracker called “The Tick” that can be attached to tools and trailers. It’s range and requirements are still the same as standard One-Key tools, meaning if there is no one using One-Key in your area you’re SOL and even if there are some users your chances of finding it still require them having the app running when their near your tools.

It comes in single units, 4 packs, 10 packs, and 50 packs.

I’m buying the 50 pack. Price doesn’t matter.


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Good idea, it’s spy gear for tools! Application is a tad limited but better then nothing

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Yeah fuck that. Well maybe it generates a ton more users and forces them to make some software revisions so it is actually viable. More likely tool thieves get to have the fun of smashing them with the hammer they just stole from you. It would be a pretty cool marketing stunt if Milwaukee put up several “pingers” where there is a large amount of their Target demographic that just constantly ran the software and Bluetooth.

I work for a landscape company that puts 20-25 trucks on the road Monday-Friday, so I wonder if all our crews were running the app, if that would provide a decent enough “net” around town that if a tool was taken off a truck, it might ping one of the apps around town and help us find it. We lose blowers and weedeaters about every 2-3 weeks. It’s pretty sad. Finding 2 of them would pay for a 50 pack.

Daniel Julian wrote:

Just now, Daniel Julian said:

I work for a landscape company that puts 20-25 trucks on the road Monday-Friday, so I wonder if all our crews were running the app, if that would provide a decent enough “net” around town that if a tool was taken off a truck, it might ping one of the apps around town and help us find it. We lose blowers and weedeaters about every 2-3 weeks. It’s pretty sad. Finding 2 of them would pay for a 50 pack.

Now if we could get all the postal employees, LEOs, and ups drivers on board in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho that would be great.

Stercorarius wrote:

4 minutes ago, Stercorarius said:

Yeah fuck that. Well maybe it generates a ton more users and forces them to make some software revisions so it is actually viable. More likely tool thieves get to have the fun of smashing them with the hammer they just stole from you. It would be a pretty cool marketing stunt if Milwaukee put up several “pingers” where there is a large amount of their Target demographic that just constantly ran the software and Bluetooth.

Cities should invest in this tech and then sell space on the “pinger” to companies like Milwaukee to be able to add their app to it. If all cities had this along major highways, it could be a great tool! Or Pawn shops employees should be asked to have these on a ipad that stays in their store, etc… 

Daniel Julian wrote:

3 minutes ago, Daniel Julian said:

Cities should invest in this tech and then sell space on the “pinger” to companies like Milwaukee to be able to add their app to it. If all cities had this along major highways, it could be a great tool! Or Pawn shops employees should be asked to have these on a ipad that stays in their store, etc… 

It would be sweet if cities got workers on board who cover just about every residence like; postal workers, meter readers, Street sweepers, etc.

I commented on Kruger’s Instagram post about it that if they just increase the price slightly I’m sure they could include a wifi chip that can automatically connect to public wifi and update locations. That would require more investment into updating the One-Key software but it would basically make the range unlimited.

My laptop and iPhone both update iCloud on a regular basis through wifi and cellular networks, the laptop also has Prey installed and a guest account specifically to ensure anyone who steals it has a means to use the internet and give away where it is.

same as this pretty much

https://www.thetrackr.com/

I feel like Tile and Milwaukee should partner for cross compatibility and partner up with another business like UPS and the postal service. It would suck for the delivery guys though. Imagine walking up to the door or driving through a neighborhood and your phone buzzes and says, “238 devices that we reported missing in your immediate location”

comp56 wrote:

1 minute ago, comp56 said:

same as this pretty much

https://www.thetrackr.com/

Video (YouTube)

 

and Tile.

ya the tech is there its just who puts their own look to it 

Stercorarius wrote:

1 minute ago, Stercorarius said:

I feel like Tile and Milwaukee should partner for cross compatibility and partner up with another business like UPS and the postal service. It would suck for the delivery guys though. Imagine walking up to the door or driving through a neighborhood and your phone buzzes and says, “238 devices that we reported missing in your immediate location”

Hahahaha…. Heck, just have police install it.

Stercorarius wrote:

It would be sweet if cities got workers on board who cover just about every residence like; postal workers, meter readers, Street sweepers, etc.

justinkendall wrote:

4 minutes ago, justinkendall said:

 

The problem is the cost. The companies would have to pay for a phone or tablet for each employee and then the employee would have to turn on the app and leave it on. I don’t see the post office ever implementing it but landscape companies or similar companies with a lot of crews on the road would work. Government services, especially local, don’t have the funds.


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Okay, just inform them about it and they can voluntarily opt in and install it on their personal phones if it sounds good to them. Even one postal worker in my home town would probably find most of the tools especially if it was the postman for a certain neighborhood. The police would also be a good idea. Hell those guys already have thirty computers in their rigs. They couldn’t be bothered to do that much work though. The sheriff’s Dept’s policy for theft here is to show up, roll down the window, yell sucks to be you and leave.

postmen are on the outs, not going to be long everything is digital My aunt rose is 93 I think she is the only one I know that still writes hand written letters, won’t be long for her to get a computer and email or croak….

I don’t think the OK app is common enough for this to be useful. 

Bremon wrote:

9 minutes ago, Bremon said:

I don’t think the OK app is common enough for this to be useful. 

I don’t either, but if companies see value in it they’ll get their crews using the app.

justinkendall wrote:

8 hours ago, justinkendall said:

 

 

 

The problem is the cost. The companies would have to pay for a phone or tablet for each employee and then the employee would have to turn on the app and leave it on. I don’t see the post office ever implementing it but landscape companies or similar companies with a lot of crews on the road would work. Government services, especially local, don’t have the funds.


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But it said the app doesn’t need to be running, just installed on the device is all.

Still it comes back to the real world function that failed @Stercorarius and that definitely left a bitter spot. I hope the story isn’t over yet, hopefully one day the impact will be located when someone downloads the app to use it with the impact….  

It comes back to the same thing we’ve known about the tracking capabilities on the onekey tools, it’s only as good as the coverage of the Onekey app, which is a drop in the bucket…

KnarlyCarl wrote:

7 minutes ago, KnarlyCarl said:

 

But it said the app doesn’t need to be running, just installed on the device is all.

Still it comes back to the real world function that failed @Stercorarius and that definitely left a bitter spot. I hope the story isn’t over yet, hopefully one day the impact will be located when someone downloads the app to use it with the impact….  

It comes back to the same thing we’ve known about the tracking capabilities on the onekey tools, it’s only as good as the coverage of the Onekey app, which is a drop in the bucket…

 

Bluetooth and GPS/location services have to be on though. When I reported my impact missing last week to test whether you needed GPS on or the app open Josh had to turn on GPS and open the app before I got a notification saying it had been found. It couldn’t find my impact without the app on even though Josh was within 30′ of it.

Some inconsistencies here though:

Quote

Products with a TICK™ attached are paired via the ONE-KEY™ app. Tool records and locations are updated when any device with the ONE-KEY™ app comes within 100 feet of the TICK™. These location updates are transmitted through any ONE-KEY™ app that’s in-range, regardless of whether the app is open or not, allowing users to pinpoint missing tools more quickly.

Maybe the tick and the tools are a little different in that regards…

From :

..

KnarlyCarl wrote:

3 minutes ago, KnarlyCarl said:

Some inconsistencies here though:

 

 

 

Maybe the tick and the tools are a little different in that regards…

 

From :

 

..

Hmm, if it works without the app needing to be running great. Maybe Milwaukee has an update for the app coming out soon that makes it work without the app being on, which would be so much more useful.

Actually it looks like maybe it does work without the app open. It mentions that the app may use location services even when the app isn’t open. Maybe it detected my impact when Josh gave the app permission to use location services but it took a minute or two to actually send me the message in which time he opened the app.

Milwaukee really just needs to reach out to hardware suppliers and large GCs though to kickstart their app coverage. Site super in large sites has the app: more coverage. Local lumber yards etc have the app; more coverage. They should be able to leverage their relationship with HD to turn those into no fly zones for thieves too. They need to worry about getting trackers at the ant hills before they worry about all of us ants. 

justinkendall wrote:

1 minute ago, justinkendall said:

Actually it looks like maybe it does work without the app open. It mentions that the app may use location services even when the app isn’t open. Maybe it detected my impact when Josh gave the app permission to use location services but it took a minute or two to actually send me the message in which time he opened the app.

We can try it again tomorrow now that everything is enabled on my phone. Leave me with your impact, run some errands and mark it missing, see if it discovers it without me doing anything.

We just tried it with me leaving, going to the store, and reporting my impact missing. Josh turned on his bluetooth and made sure location services were on. Nothing happened. After 5 minutes of it doing nothing I had him open the app. Still nothing happened. I waited a little longer then decided to come back past the house to see what happened when I was on Wi-Fi. Only then did it find my tool. I am pissed. The other day it must have worked because Josh was at our cousin’s on her Wi-Fi network and I was at our mom’s with Wi-Fi.

I’m going to email Milwaukee about this.

justinkendall wrote:

1 hour ago, justinkendall said:

We just tried it with me leaving, going to the store, and reporting my impact missing. Josh turned on his bluetooth and made sure location services were on. Nothing happened. After 5 minutes of it doing nothing I had him open the app. Still nothing happened. I waited a little longer then decided to come back past the house to see what happened when I was on Wi-Fi. Only then did it find my tool. I am pissed. The other day it must have worked because Josh was at our cousin’s on her Wi-Fi network and I was at our mom’s with Wi-Fi.

 

I’m going to email Milwaukee about this.

I’m telling you it is nonsense tech.

Stercorarius wrote:

26 minutes ago, Stercorarius said:

I’m telling you it is nonsense tech.

I’m starting to feel that way. There are a few One-Key features I think are great like the ability to select your material for the Sawzall (and the cut brake) and the setting different modes on the impact driver.

So assuming this works, this would be great to stick under the foam in my battery box. No one is going to lift up the foam and look at the underside. For $29 it’s worth the money to test it since if that box disappears it renders all of my M12 tools unusable and takes all my 9.0’s.


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I think all of this kind of tech is a great idea but too soon, the technology isn’t there yet. It’s still a hell of a lot better than a Bluetooth battery.

jtkendall wrote:

1 minute ago, jtkendall said:

So assuming this works, this would be great to stick under the foam in my battery box. No one is going to lift up the foam and look at the underside. For $29 it’s worth the money to test it since if that box disappears it renders all of my M12 tools unusable and takes all my 9.0’s.


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Yeah if they magically made it viable it would have been very nice to have underneath that removable top piece in the lid of the Ridgid pro organizer I used as a battery case. $29 to have 1k in Metabo, Milwaukee, Bosch, DeWalt, and Kobalt batteries back would be sweet.

BMack37 wrote:

1 minute ago, BMack37 said:

I think all of this kind of tech is a great idea but too soon, the technology isn’t there yet. It’s still a hell of a lot better than a Bluetooth battery.

The only thing about a Bluetooth battery that would be nice is that if I had set my DeWalt ones to lock when they aren’t in range at least douceman that took my batteries wouldn’t be able to use them. I wouldn’t get them back, but it’s more than One Key is doing.  

Let’s be honest, very few people are going to keep the app running (burning battery life) on the off chance they go within range of someone’s stolen tool.  Now if Milwaukee offered a reward (swag, coupon, etc.) for anyone who detects and reports a stolen tool that would change things.

Too bad it didn’t have a better gps technology like the
“Find my iPhone”‘feature


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JimboS1ice wrote:

Too bad it didn’t have a better gps technology like the
“Find my iPhone”‘feature


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jeffmcmillan wrote:

7 hours ago, jeffmcmillan said:

Let’s be honest, very few people are going to keep the app running (burning battery life) on the off chance they go within range of someone’s stolen tool.  Now if Milwaukee offered a reward (swag, coupon, etc.) for anyone who detects and reports a stolen tool that would change things.

All the posts I’ve seen from Milwaukee (see their facebook post and the replies they’ve made) have said the app does NOT have to be open or running, it will ping a closed or “sleeping” app; basically just an installed app is sufficient.

jtkendall wrote:

Find my iPhone is only better because it relies on wifi and/or the phones cellular network to update location. Milwaukee could include a cellular module and make it always updating, but it’s going to cost more and require a monthly fee. If you deploy 50 of them at a grand (for this example let’s pretend the actual unit cost wouldn’t rise) and each one requires a $9.99/month service plan you’re looking at $500 per month. It makes it more useful, but it also significantly increases the cost.

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I get the cost factor and see your point but what good is a tracker if no one has the app on around the tool? We all pay a premium for a level of insurance and to some people a little extra cost may be worth the peace of mind

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Daniel Julian wrote:

All the posts I’ve seen from Milwaukee (see their facebook post and the replies they’ve made) have said the app does NOT have to be open or running, it will ping a closed or “sleeping” app; basically just an installed app is sufficient.

jtkendall wrote:

46 minutes ago, jtkendall said:

 

Find my iPhone is only better because it relies on wifi and/or the phones cellular network to update location. Milwaukee could include a cellular module and make it always updating, but it’s going to cost more and require a monthly fee. If you deploy 50 of them at a grand (for this example let’s pretend the actual unit cost wouldn’t rise) and each one requires a $9.99/month service plan you’re looking at $500 per month. It makes it more useful, but it also significantly increases the cost.


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Yeah DeWalt already offers this product for job trailers. It is expandable with a full range of motion and door sensors available and an adapter to use other brands sensors. It runs off Verizon. 

https://www.dewaltmobilelock.com

The other thing is the size of the tick would be much bigger if they used cellular to track the item. Even just a simple ping would require more juice than say bluetooth.

So we’re back to what I said, it’s a good idea but the technology isn’t there yet.

DR99 wrote:

The other thing is the size of the tick would be much bigger if they used cellular to track the item. Even just a simple ping would require more juice than say bluetooth.

jtkendall wrote:

2 hours ago, jtkendall said:

Yeah the battery requirements could be larger, but the tick could stay roughly the same size. This cell chip is only 1.8″ x 1.3″ x 0.3″.

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It requires 1mA while in sleep mode and can wake itself up to communicate with the network. The Tick uses 3000 times as much power as it currently is. Since this is a cellular board you could report the device missing and that send the wake up message, which then tells it to ping its location every x minutes. The battery will die quicker, but will provide you with exact location information without relying on bluetooth and nearby devices.


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The claimed 1 year runtime puts the draw at 25uA for the Tick.  I looked at the datasheets for the device above and the draw in sleep state is 700uA which is quite high for a production design.  700uA is what I’d expect for average draw on a good chip, but sleep state should be under 10uA for anything that’s expected to run on a small battery.  The 25uA average for the Tick is not groundbreaking but not a bad design.