Lost then found!

It is short range because it is limited by the range of bluetooth, but if you drop an aid or a Fitbit in some weeds or grass, try finding it without a bt radar app!

Oh no question; I think my audi’s point was not that “Find My Aid” can’t be very helpful, but just a warning that it can only do so much. I think he’s had customers come back to him who couldn’t find a missing aid because they had no idea where it was so didn’t know where to start looking with the phone. Their expectations that the phone could find an aid anywhere were unrealistic.

Thought I would offer two additional methods for finding things - don’t know if HA’s have enough of the right sort of metal to work with either method and the magnet method might damage an HA even if it did work.

The BT method is great and would work if the batteries are still alive.

Since I don’t have HA’s with zinc-air batteries, I can’t test these methods directly myself but past posts over the years on Hearing Tracker suggest at least zinc-air batteries might have enough metal in them to set off a properly tuned metal detector, e.g. posts on concerns about going through airport metal detectors…

But I’ve lost a bunch of things in my yard, including house keys, lawn mower bolts, small special locking screws for Ring doorbell covers, special hose reel bolts, etc., and had roofers leave behind lots of nail debris that their pathetic magnetic sweeps don’t pick up.

So on Amazon one can buy very powerful neodymium magnets e.g. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012DNFP6/6 - so powerful they are dangerous because they can jump onto objects and shatter on collision, crush your fingers if caught in between, not to mentioning demagnetizing credit cards, tape recordings, perhaps a hard drive if rested on a computer, etc. So I taped mine all around with labeling tape, put it in a small plastic bucket with a handle, and hang the bucket from a dog leash. If you sweep the ground as close as you can get, anything with a fair amount of ferromagnetic material in it literally leaps right off the ground and if you have decent enough low-frequency hearing, you can hear a clack of the impact against the bottom of the bucket (probably not good for HA’s and probably won’t work with them for lack of ferromagentic material). I keep my magnet in a iron filing cabinet in a remote region of the house when not in use.

A problem with using magnets is that any iron alloyed with other materials to make stainless steel is less ferromagnetic than plain old iron. And, of course, a magnet won’t work with aluminum.

Metal detectors are pretty amazing for finding lost metalic objects, too. Don’t know if the wires in RIC HA’s or zinc-air batteries would provide enough metal to set off a detector. But I’ve lost lawnmower bolts and keys off a belt loop here and there in the yard. I used to borrow my neighbor’s toy beachcombing Radio Shack metal detector and that worked quite well-better away from construction debris left in the ground around a house or the rebar in foundations and sidewalks. So finally the nth time I lost something over several decades, I decided why not get my own metal detector rather than embarassingly go knock on the neighbor’s door and ask if he still had that detector from more than a decade ago. Alas! A fairly sophisticated detector bought on Amazon does not seem quite as good as the neighbor’s El Cheapo one from Radio Shack and that great source of “gear” has now gone out of business.

So if BT detection fails to find a lost HA, a very strong magnet or a metal detector might be an option, although perhaps not likely to work for lack of ferromagnetic material or even metal in an HA. I should imagine the trick with any method, though, if used in the outdoors, is to avoid stepping on your HA while looking for it …

https://forum.hearingtracker.com/t/ha-s-gardening-where-not-to-wear-hearing-aids/38882/15?u=jim_lewis (member archive)

I’m not sure losing things in one’s yard and using desperate measures to try to find them is geekiness - probably just ineptness on my part and bad design of bolts on lawn mower handles, hose reels, belt clip keychains, and requiring silly little security screws on Ring doorbells covers in hard to reach places with my fingers dead cold when it’s 30 degrees out in the middle of winter - and you drop stuff from numbness (and dumbness) - after hunting and hunting for the cover screw, I’m, “Oh, yeah. There’s that magnet I have! Bingo!” I have since learned to put a nice soft WHITE towel under the Ring doorbell whenever I need to remove the cover. Since then, I’ve also started using removable Locktite on stuff when I assemble it for the very first time if it’s equipment thatt will experience a lot of vibration as it operates or is rolled around. (BTW, it’s interesting to read the various magnet reviews on Amazon - most of the folks buying such stuff seem to be like me - lost something and desperate to find it - often at the bottoms of rivers and lakes!).

Just thought my caveman methods of hunting for stuff I’ve lost in the yard might help someone who can’t find a lost HA via BT tracking.

@jim_lewis said:

I’m not sure losing things in one’s yard and using desperate measures to try to find them is geekiness

Yess, but who else here gets that inventive? neodymium magnets

Very practical and all, but your “engineer mind” solutions makes me chuckle.

I spend days in the mountains in summer, technical climbs, and this guy would haul in tools and pieces if aluminum so he could design climbing anchors at night for the crazy, crumbly rock we were trying to climb, safely with some protection that standard hardware could not offer. This guy tickled me constantly with his analytic mind and way outside the box solutions. For many days and summers, great fun and memories.

Brilliant, now that’s using your noggin !!!