I did a local test around town today to see if our nely arrived PebbleBee trackers would work well. Unfortunately, they failed miserably and were never found, even after a few hours. (Yes, they are functioning correctly.

Anyway, as a test, I put the new PB tracker and an Air Tag in a box and we'll see what happens.

Update 1 July 3rd

After the postal worker picked it up, it took almost 11 hours before pinging to a new location. The Apple Air Tag worked great the whole time and kept giving me accurate updates throughout the day, but it was crickets for the PB. Even when the box was at the local post office where more phones should have been gathered, there was nothing from it. The Air Tag updated on the roads both in the postal carrier truck and also the semi that hauled it from my local city to a major city sorting hub. That PB didn't find a single Android sole to connect to the entire time.

Finally 11 hours later, it updated its location when it reached a large USPS sorting warehouse outside of a big city. This was the parcel's 2nd large hub stop. Since then it hasn't shown any update, but I'll continue tracking it and the Apple Air Tag tomorrow to follow it on the journey and return here to provide more edit updates to the post.

Update 2 July 4

As of this morning, the Apple Air Tag continues to update and show the parcel has stayed at the large sorting center overnight. The PB on the other hand has managed to get worse. It no longer shows its one and only updated position from last night at that sorting center. It now resorts back to its original position of being at my house before the postal worker picked up the package. When I ask it to update, it just spins for a moment and continues to say it was last seen at my home. Somehow, it completely lost that one movement update that happened 11 hours after leaving.

The PB finally pinged back at the sorting warehouse today late in the afternoon. It was the one and only updated it has given so far today. One thing I'm noticing that is super unhelpful is the fact that the Find My Device map display is not in satellite mode. It's just a grey scale map. The Apple map is super detailed satellite mode and that makes pinpointing a location much easier. I don't expect any movement from the parcel today since it's a federal holiday, so I likely won't have anything to add until tomorrow.

Update 3 Coming soon