Hey guys I know their have been some posts about putting a tracker in a FW laptop. I have a FW 13 and would love to put a tracker in my laptop as an extra sense of security. My first thought was to put this tracker Orbit Glasses/World's smallest Bluetooth locator to find your glasses in an expansion card but then i’d loose an expansion card slot. Any one have any idea where I could put this tracker? it only has a 1 month battery life then it needs to be charged so somewhere easily accessible would be ideal. Any ideas?
AirTags are really slim… if you strip them down to the circuit board. You could slim it down further by running wires from the battery to the board and placing them next to each other (instead of stacked).
I just don’t know where I would put the tracker the one I linked is extremely small.
I see it says length: 28mm, thickness: 5mm. I think that could potentially fit inside a USB-A expansion card.
~edit~
Looks like the thickness they list is a lie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scYHqfSHy-8&t=4m07s
7.55mm at the thickest part. Height 8.28mm, length 29.14mm
You’re saying with the guts of a usb a port in the expansion card or a blank one? If you’re talking about putting the tracker in a functional port i thought of that but figured heat would be an issue as don’t the expansion cards get quite hot?
Yep. I was thinking about inside a functional USB-A card. I don’t know if it will fit, haven’t measured. I’d cut open the tracker to see how much room the PCB and battery takes. The battery might run along the length, if it does, you may be able to lay it out, then it would be even thinner.
The USB-C and USB-A cards are just passthroughs, they don’t get hot. Plus, you could pull power from the USB-A card.
~edit~
The length of 29mm seems too long. Even removing the shell, I don’t know if that can shave off enough.
ExpansionCards/Mechanical at main · FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards · GitHub
Width looks like too much for a USB-A card too.
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Yeah the airtag with the shell is 32mm, but the expansion chip width is only 24mm according to the diagram. we’re gonna have to find another location to place an airtag tracker or find a different tracker type all together. Like the Empty expansion bay if you didn’t get the dGPU in the FW16, or finding a spot with minimal heat to sandwich the Chipolo CARD spot wallet finder or rollingsquare AirCard.
that sucks looks like i’ll need to find somewhere else to fit it