I’m a big user of https://www.thetileapp.com/ for my things (phone, keys, bookbag, etc). I used to have a slim placed under my old laptop’s chassis (Dell XPS 7373) but I’m curious if having a Tile-compatible expansion card would be something people would want. I’m not the person to build it - I could def be the first buyer (evidently).
4 Likes
Would it fit in the SNACK drawer?
I don’t think any of the tile sizes would fit in an expansion card without modification.
The slim might be able to be affixed inside the top cover if it’s not too thick (e.g. behind the display) or somewhere on the bottom cover (e.g. on top of one of the speakers or expansion card covers).
There’s not a lot of room in the chassis for anything 2.5mm-thick though.
The Sticker could somewhat fit. It’s about 1 mm too tall, but the rubber feet should lift the laptop up enough not to make the sticker rub the ground. You’d only need a 3D-printed expansion card frame with a fitting cutout and stick it inside. Should not be a lot of work, even I could probably design that in half an hour. But would that be satisfactory?
I think locking it in place would be ideal for security purposes.
The mate tile fits in the space that the audio jack takes up. I put in suguru to adhere the tile motherboard. This photo was before I removed the rest of the tile case. The 1632 battery was sugured to the topcase in a way that makes contact with the battery connector on the tile mobo. I managed to get it working! Expansion card may be harder as the coin battery portion makes the project too big.
5 Likes
Very cool mod! Plus the benfit of it not being easily removable. Makes a 3.5mm expansion card an even bigger draw if mods replacing the headphone jack board become common.
1 Like
Oh this is sick. I might end up doing something similar. I wish there was a way to communicate with the Tile though, like to trigger a ping. I guess that’s why we have APIs!
You can ping the tile through the app. You do lose the ability to make sound via the physical button on the tile. Not much use for it though when it is embedded.
The really hard part of this mod is getting the speaker to work. It looks like a tiny disk that you have to line up two contacts to. Suguru works but it took too much trial and error.
1 Like
Due to upcoming trip theft or loss was a concern. I successfully took apart the black slim tile tracker (credit card size) and embedded it in the unit battery and all. The circuit board and battery inside the clamshell is exceedingly thin. Laptop went back together nearly perfectly.
Preparation: took clamshell apart, carefully removed circuitboard and battery from the clamshell - glued in. Extreme care needed with battery especially.
Original idea was to make a 3v regulator and op amp and actually integrate it with the laptop battery and speakers. Instead I cut the entire section holding the tile speaker out. The reason for simply cutting out the speaker is I am quite certain attempting to lift the speaker from the clam shell will destroy it. I literally taped the speaker onto the tile speaker contacts (it’s pressure fit only). Image below.
Placement: place on battery underneath the touchpad and to the left. There’s just enough space that it fits.
Confirmed still tracks with my phone and audio is still very loud. I can hear it easily inside my laptop bag.
2 Likes
We wouldn’t recommend putting anything over the battery. We designed the space above the battery to be able to handle the battery swelling by ~10% over the course of 1000 cycles of usage.
For the Audio Board, it is technically removeable, but the hall sensor for detecting lid closure is also on that board, so lid close detection won’t work if it is removed.
5 Likes