Finding A Lost FitBit
One day last week I wasn’t feeling very well (turned out I had the flu) so when I got home I went to be to rest. A few hours later I got up to change out of my clothes and noticed that my FitBit One was missing. I immediately looked in the area of my bed and couldn’t find it. I continued to look in all points of the house I had passed between the front door and my bedroom and still couldn’t find it. I opted not to go out and retrace my steps as it was already late and I really wasn’t feeling well (did I mention I had the flu?).
Late the next day, after trying to rest as much as possible (because, like, I had the flu), I set out to find my FitBit One. I didn’t go out and retrace my footsteps because I really thought I had it when I got home the previous day. I opened the FitBit mobile app on phone and saw that it was connecting to the One so I knew it had to be in the house. I moved around the house a bit and re-synced the app with every move so I could see if I was still close to it. If the app detected it then I was within 30 feet of it (the distance limit of it’s Bluetooth signal). After doing this a while I narrowed the search back to the bedroom where a very thorough search turned up the One wrapped in the shirt I had been wearing the day before.
Though the description above makes it sound simple the search actually took a while. And while FitBit’s own help pages states “Many users find that their trackers wind up in the dirty clothes pile…” it still too me some time to get there.
When I first discovered it was missing I had tweeted how it would be nice if there was some kind of Find My FitBit app similar to Apple’s Find My iPhone app. What I discovered after I had found it (but wish I saw it before) was that someone had replied with a link to just such an app. FitBit Finder detects the signal of any nearby FitBits and displays it’s signal strength on a graph. Instead of knowing if you’re within 30 feet using this app will tell you roughly how close you are within the 30 foot radius. I wish I had found this app before.
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