DIY Apple AirTag

You must have heard about Apple’s AirTags. AirTag is a tracking device developed by Apple. AirTag is designed to act as a key finder, which helps people find personal objects. Though it is a useful gadget, apple being apple, it is very high priced for the use.

Being a DIY geek, today we’ll try to make our own replica of the Apple AirTags, which will have two of its most relevant features, precision tracking and sound alerts. We can’t make our DIY version to work on a global level like the AirTags, because obviously we don’t have the access to the large number of apple devices that apple uses to locate its AirTags. But, with the two above mentioned features, we can find our lost items easily on a local scale.

For making this project we’ll require few basic components, most of which we’ve already discussed in our YouTube channel. Below is the list of components we’ll be using :

• ESP32 UWB Boards,
• OLED Screen
• and a buzzer.

So in the project we replicated two of Airtag`s fundamental functionalities Precision Tracking and Playback Sound. Precision Tracking shows us the distance between the Apple smart gadget of Apple and Airtag. In our project we'll utilise two boards, one Transmitter, and one Receiver. We'll replicate Precision Tracking by utilising an Ultra Wide Band chip which can find transceiver modules at extremely precise distances, attaching an OLED screen to the same we would be able to see the distance.

We will add a button to the Transmitter side which would play the buzzer which would be added to the receiver side. Using the ESP Now Protocol of our ESP32 chip. This will replicate the Acoustic feedback function of Airtag.

ESP Now Module has been explained in our past posts so we will not go deep in it`s working rather it's basic idea. In a Nutshell, it is a wireless technology which makes it possible for two wifi gadgets to communicate with one another without having any router/hotspot connecting them.

Now you can start your journey to Dethrone Apple and become the very best, like no one 

ever was.

We need to write codes for both the “transmitter” and “receiver” side. The transmitter should calculate the distance with the help of received signal and print it on the OLED display. The receiver however, should send the signal to the transmitter.

Well, you need not to worry about the code, as we’ve already written it for you. You can get the code for this project via my GitHub from HERE!

If you want to make this project for yourselves and have any sort of confusions, I have made a complete video showing not only the working and connections in detail but also have explained the code in a well structured manner.

Do check out the video