4iiii has become the first power meter company to add Apple’s Find My support to their devices. This capability is called ‘Find My’, but is essentially the 3rd party program Apple has that allows companies to make a variant of an AirTag. This allows you to track these items just like any other AirTag, with the singular exception of not having UWB (Ultra Wide Band) support, which helps when you get really close to the object but still can’t visibly see it. In the case of a power meter/bike, that’s likely less critical.
In any case, let’s walk through how it all works. A couple of quick notes first:
A) It requires 4iiii latest Precision 3+ units, which means existing units pods aren’t compatible by default (but wait, see below)
B) Requires an Apple iPhone, iPad, or iPod to activate
On the first item, 4iiii can’t offer a simple firmware update for existing users, due to the Apple Find My requirement that each item have a unique serial number etched into it. Thus instead, 4iiii is offering a program that for $29 you can send in your compatible 4iiii power meter and get it upgraded. Given that’s the same price as an AirTag, that seems exceptionally reasonable to me. Kudos to 4iiii there.
In any case, to get things activated, you’ll take your 4iiii crankset, on the left side (non-drive side), and wake it up. Then, go ahead and remove the battery and insert the battery again three times. That’ll start the pairing process. Pro Tip: You don’t need to take the battery out of the compartment, just simply twist and lift 3mm and insert again, that’ll do the trick.
You can see the etching here:
Once that’s done, go into your Apple Find My app on your phone/iPad/etc, and search for a new 3rd party item:
It’ll find the power meter, and you can give it both a custom name and icon – just like any other AirTag:
After that it’ll warn you to only use your powers for good, not evil, and that it’s linked to your phone number in case the police need to get involved for stalking. Obviously, this is a boilerplate Apple message for Find My devices, though, I suspect most people aren’t going to be stashing a crankset in somebody’s jacket pocket for stalking. Nobody wants an unexpected crank in their pocket.
At that point you’re done. You can see it in your list of devices like any other AirTag, and it’ll show the serial number as well as battery status. Also, remember that with iOS 17, you can now share AirTag’s with family members (including Find My devices).
This is huge, because it finally allows you to share an AirTag with family members for devices. We have AirTags on our cargo bikes, and this allows us to easily see the location of the bike from either my account or my wife’s account. The same is true here. Certainly, my wife can generally just see where I am on a ride by looking at my FindMy location based on my phone, but if for some reason I didn’t bring it, then this can still be seen by her.
Ultimately, this is super cool. While Apple and others will say it’s not for theft tracking, the reality is that it very much is. Especially in cases like this where most thieves have absolutely no idea that a power meter crankset can have an AirTag. They can use Bluetooth scanners to narrow it down, but may not understand the exact location. Further, as I’ve long said, in fancy-bike theft (like this), you’re typically looking more at the scenario of someone grabbing it from a cafe you’re at, rather than a bike left on the street locked to a pole. Thus, in those cases, they tend to be grab and run, and you often notice immediately – before someone can inspect a bike and remove an AirTag.
Alternatively, if travelling, this just saves you from having to put an AirTag in a bike case as I usually do. Either way, it’s awesome stuff.
Oh, and note/remember that 4iiii did try Chipolo tracking years ago, and ultimately there just wasn’t enough critical mass on the network to make it meaningfully work. Obviously, we already know the critical mass is there on Apple’s Find My, that story has been written.
Finally, note that 4iiii also released an Apple Watch app that allows power meter recording, called 4iiii Ride. They’ve actually been working on this since last fall, and I’ve tested it on and off since then. I’m going to dig into the final version here now that it’s released. Obviously, Apple added native power meter recording to their Apple Watch app as part of WatchOS 10 (currently in beta, release likely September). It’ll be interesting to see how these two differ once the dust has settled. I suspect that the 4iiii variant will have more features and edge cases, while the Apple native variant will be more mass-market. Either way, it’s cool to see companies taking this watch market segment seriously.
With that – thanks for reading!
FOUND THIS POST USEFUL? SUPPORT THE SITE!
Hopefully, you found this post useful. The website is really a labor of love, so please consider becoming a DC RAINMAKER Supporter. This gets you an ad-free experience, and access to our (mostly) bi-monthly behind-the-scenes video series of “Shed Talkin’”.
Support DCRainMaker - Shop on Amazon
Otherwise, perhaps consider using the below link if shopping on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. It could simply be buying toilet paper, or this pizza oven we use and love.
So is this US/Canada only? The upgrade isn’t available on their UK store. Hopefully they can hurry up with the dual sided power too….
I’ll have to defer to 4iiii to answer that one, no idea on the UK plans exactly.
Hi there, the PRECISION 3+ with Apple Find My, as well as dual-side PRECISION 3+ PRO cranks is set for release in the best few weeks. – Andrew/4iiii
Id say Worldwide….we have availability in Australia and we are a small market (compared to UK) so am sure you will
The Apple Watch app is a nice touch. I believe it’s the only free app that supports external sensors.
Yeah, I’m not aware of any free apps either that do it. All have been tied to various training platforms/plans.
Ray, are you aware of any instance where a police organization has used AirTag tracking to recover an item, any item?
Yup, there are tons of stories on YouTube, regular sites, etc..
In almost every case, the owner basically went to the police with the current/exact location and said “Look, here’s where my stolen item is”, and they went in.
The responsiveness of the police has varied by location/dept. From the pieces I’ve seen, some don’t want to deal with it at all, while others are like “Hold my beer!”, and seem to revel in it. After all, it’s theoretically an easy win in the right circumstances. Most police have been clear to not approach the offending person/location by themselves, and to involve police.
Heck, back in May the New York City Police Department even instructed people to put AirTags in cars to make them easier to find, telling people they’d work with them directly if/when a vehicle was stolen: link to macrumors.com
Ultimately, my biggest use case continues to be just tracking my suitcases. Even two weeks ago, my bike got lost again coming back from the Alps. In this case I wasn’t super concerned about it, because it was a bike I didn’t need immediately, but knowing where it watch each day was nice. On other trips, having that piece is mind to be able to tell an airline where it is, or now that it’s still on the wrong continent (and not wait around in your hotel all day), is awesome.
Here is a recent Facebook post by the Dutch police: link to facebook.com
You can use chrome to translate it. Story goeslike this: someone loses his bag with expensive contents on the train. He traces it back to a flat. He calls the police and they come with him. The people in the flat let them in and they see the bag. They can’t explain how it got there. The police gets a warrant and searhes the flat. They find more than 200 (!) stolen items including laptops, iPads, telephones, camera’s and jewllery.
In a flat! That’s interesting…
Just attaching a gps tracker won’t work in a multi level apartment building since it can basically be any apartment there. But here the police even knew they had to go three meters to the right at some point, they say.
How dioes AirTag work to do that? Combination of gps and Bluetooth? But Bluetooth doesn’t have a 3 meter reach I think?
There’s this magical place called the Internet where you can find answers to questions like that. In short, AirTags don’t have GPS, but iPhones do, AirTags make a connection to every iPhone, and there are a lot of iPhones around. Bluetooth’s range is longer than 3 meters.
Hi Eugene and Paul
The Apple Airtag utilises UWB (Ultra-Wideband) for accurate close proximity sensing.
This can be observed when using your iPhone to find an item that’s within 5 meters or so , the iPhone will provide directions with arrows such as right 3 Meters
link to pcmag.com
Yeah, I know. I’ve used UWB to find my AirPods or keys with an AirTag. But as Ray says above, 4iiii doesn’t include UWB with this (and neither does Knog with the Scouts I have). It’s not needed with a bike because they’re so large. A bike is not going to slip into a crack in the sofa or fall under a bed.
Got my bike back because of the AirTag. Went to the police and they came with me following the signal. It works better if the AirTag/bike is not moving, otherwise it seems you’re following a ghost. It’s just a matter of patience though. Recovered not only my bike, but also more two bikes, a van, lots of bags, tools, and so on. It worked!
I would love to see other manufacturers follow suit here. Would it be possible for Favero or pedal based companies to do this with existing hardware?
Setting aside the etching requirements, I don’t believe Favero’s existing BT stack is capable of multi-BT connectivity. For their specific device profile, that’d likely be a requirement, since otherwise it’d mean that people wouldn’t be able to use BT on their power meter for connecting to watches/devices.
I know there’s some bits on how BT beaconing mode works there, which is a bit beyond what I have, but I don’t think you can both beacon and be actively connected (such as to Zwift) with a single-channel BT chip. But again, happy to be corrected by someone like Keith Wakeham.
Assioma is nrf52832 based on the FCC filing I’ve seen so should be hardware capable. There are 3 available soft devices that can work. S312,S313, and the most common original S332. There were updates over the years to all of these. All are capable now of concurrent BLE connections (4,4,20 respectively), but I believe some early versions weren’t. Depending on how they do updates (using Nordic reference or their own bootloader) it might be easy or could be hard to upgrade those soft devices. A lot of products have stuck with their launch soft devices because you do risk a bad update bricking things and only wire programming will save you — I could imagine that would be a bit of an impossibility with Assioma being epoxy filled.
It’s also a bit of a programming pain and Nordic does not provide concurrent BLE connection examples. At best they do a clone the previous connection example. The way the reference libraries are setup can make concurrent connections crazy hard. I set up for a project multi central receive and peripherals that would startup second (identical) connection with these chips (central took the data, but the cell phone to debug).
FCC says 4iiii’s got the same single nrf52832 (+ Accel + ADC + aux memory chip) so they both have similar capabilities. link to fccid.io .
So it appears to be more about programming skillset, available ram/flash space (which honestly, shouldn’t be a limit), and old softdevices / bootloaders that might risk bricking field products if updated causing warranty replacement since there is no recovery. Those are just my analysis and not meant to represent ideas or opinions of the companies.
The Nordic soft devices you refer to are part of the nRF5 SDK from Nordic which is in maintenance mode and has been for some time now. The whole of Nordic SDKs were unified around the nRF91 style SDK which is Zephyr RTOS based – this became known as the nRF Connect SDK, which is multi-protocol and most importantly the only show in town for Nordic now.
Apple developed the AirTag using the Nordic nRF52 but crucially using the nRF Connect SDK. The FindyMy implementation is an extension to the vanilla SDK that can only be obtained with an MFi Licence from Apple and contacting a Nordic FAE in your geo to get access. You can’t just download it and have a go without registration with Apple and Nordic.
The FindMy implementation is also more sophisticated that just advertising a BLE ID which is picked up by an iOS device and relayed to the cloud. There is well thought out and implemented shared key authentication and exchange baked into the FindMy implementation. Unless you have the correct MFi Licence from Apple, are registered with them and have access to the repos with the correct keys and protocol then you won’t be able to use it. Whilst may be possible to back port the FindMy extension for the nRF Connect SDK to the nRF5 SDK this would seem a lot of effort for little reward when you need to reflash the device completely anyway. You can’t implement implement FindMy with a FOTA update.
As I said below I did prototype work for a client to add FindyMy to their product. In the end they decided not to do it as there were too many hopes to jump through with Apple to bring it to market.
Finally, I am not surprised 4iiii implemented this – I know they planned to do an ANT+ location based network for their products sometime back.
Very cool and good on them for making it attainable for most of their customers. I actually had them deactivate the Chipolpo as I had massive battery drain when it was enabled that disappeared once it was disabled. 🤞that has been resolved with this implementation.
Is this something Stages could also implement on their crank arm power meters?
My rough understanding from talking to various companies that have poked at it, is that most recent existing Bluetooth stacks can handle it just fine. However, there are two key things:
A) The Apple certification process is long and full of detail-inducing items.
B) Apple also requires specific etching/labels on the device for tracking purposes
I really thought we’d see more devices go through the Apple Find My process a few years ago, especially given we saw some relatively inexpensive items do so. I’d be curious to hear from any companies (privately is fine, e-mail just my first name at domain name), on why they decided against if, if they took a serious look at it.
Hi Ray,
I have done some prototyping around the Apple FindMy for a client.
– It is only available as part of the Nordic nRF Connect SDK at the moment on the Nordic nRF52 family. The nR52 is by far the most popular BLE and ANT+ chipset out there so in theory most BLE and ANT+ sports tech products can support this.
– It is still a bit of a closed shop, you need to approach and make contact with a Nordic FAE to get access to the Apple FindMy version of the Nordic nRF Connect SDK. You can’t just download it easily as a hacker and have a go.
– When I worked on this, just over a year ago now, the Apple FindMy version of the nRF Connect SDK only supported BLE, not BLE + ANT+. This was even though that nRF52 HW obviously supports ANT+. Historically the nRF Connect SDK is a relatively new firmware stack for the nRF52 and replaced the older soft device based firmware. There are probably a lot of legacy soft device based firmwares out there in products and companies don’t want to spend money and time migrating to the nRF Connect SDK.
– It is a pain in the ass to go through the certification process for the product with Apple, in the end the company I was working for decided against it.
Any more questions Ray – shoot me an email. Have actually spoken to you before at Eurobike in a previous life!
This (cool) feature aside, is there anything meaningful for the average Joe to set the 4iiii apart from the Stages equivalent?
Does the same hold true for the L-R versions of both? I understood that 4iiii have some issues with the L-R version of their Gen 3. Is Stages OK (again, for average Joe)
I haven’t gone into the testing yet on this new 4iiii unit. But I can say, my ever-belated Stages LR unit review is really solid. Shane Miller/GPLAMA found the same too.
Thanks. A couple cracking deals in the U.K. on the Stages LR Ultegra so pulled the trigger at £555. A bit of cash back from selling the original off the bike (hard to do L only) and comes out as a bargain.
It’s nice that they’re allowing upgrades – but that $29 quickly becomes a lot more when you add in $20 shipping charge plus the cost to ship to their Canadian factory from the US.
not to mention even higher costs for the rest of the world!
Hi Ray,
I have an older (non-3+) 4iiii left crank power meter and live in the Netherlands. Do you know if it is possible to get the upgrade by sending my crank to 4iiii? And if so, how much it would cost?
Hi there, if you have a PRECISION 3 Powermeter, then it’s compatible for the upgrade to PRECISION 3+. Here are the details: link to shop.4iiii.com
The upgrade option will be available in the Netherlands in a couple months, if you prefer not to send to Canada. – Andrew / 4iiii
Hi Ray, have you tested if there’s any impact on battery life as a result of this? Presumably it’s a bit more awake than previously while sleeping…
Which older units specifically are they allowing the $29 upgrade? Only recent ones? Or very old ones too?
Hi there,
We’re only able to update the PRECISION 3 Powermeter models (the most current version before this release). – Andrew / 4iiii
seriously, the only reason they can’t push this as a firmware update to everyone is the requirement to have a barely legible serial no printed on the side that nobody is ever going to even try to read? typical apple control freaks!
i can write it on in permanent marker if they’re really that bothered, i just don’t want to pay to send my crank halfway around the world (and be unable to ride in the meantime).
Hi there, the ability to upgrade to PRECISION 3+ will be available in the UK, Spain and Benelux region in the coming months, so sending it halfway around the world isn’t necessary if you can wait until then.
– Andrew / 4iiii
Info on their website suggests that the find my function only becomes active 4 minutes after pedaling has stopped, so hopefully any bike thief riding away stops eventually for the find my to kick in
Find My is pretty useless on a moving target anyway due to (a) reporting lag, and (b) by the time you got to that location, it wouldn’t be there are more.
Now, over to you Stages and Wahoo (for the Powrlink).
I dunno. This is cute and all but it’s like a helmet: something you hope you never have to actually use for it’s intended purpose. It’s not like you can misplace a bike like you misplace your keys. The one advantage to this or to the Knog Scouts I have on a couple of bikes is that when the thief’s iPhone tells him he’s being followed by an unknown AirTag he’s likely to search for an AirTag rather than something else. I’d actually be surprised if anyone else built something like this. Easier just to design a secret compartment into your crank arm or pedal for an actual AirTag. Or maybe Apple will come out with an AIrTag mini. The size of the current AirTag is essentially the size of the 2032 battery it uses.
N=1 spoiler on the 4iiii ride companion app—not ready for prime time. It stopped recording every few minutes without warning — I’d get a notification of some kind (text, email, another app) and when I glanced at my watch a few minutes later—after the notification cleared—it’d just be showing the watch face. When I switched back to the ride app I’d have to start a new recording. I ended up with 6 recordings by the time I gave up on it. The first one also failed to produce a .fit file.
Everything else seems to work ok – pairing was easy, the phone app will email the .fit file to you, it has a sync with strava function but I didn’t activate it until after the ride and it must only upload rides when it receives the .fit file from the watch.
I’m sure Ray will go into a lot more detail as I don’t plan to use it any more until I know it works better
Hi Matt, I forwarded your feedback to our Ride App developer at 4iiii and here’s what he had to say:
“This something we’re working on – it will be fixed in the next update to go out September/October. When the app is forced into the background by a notification popping up, the system will stop the app for using too much CPU when in the background. If it stays in the foreground this issue won’t happen, but some people get a lot of notifications coming in on their watches. We did test for this pretty thoroughly, and it didn’t happen to to us, but seems there’s more work to be done in reducing its CPU load.
Something you can do to work around the problem in the meantime is to disable notifications during use: Settings > Notifications > Show Notifications on Wrist Down > Show Notifications. Switch them off for the duration of the ride. Then the app will stay in the foreground and not be stopped by the system.”
But then I won’t get any notifications which is the whole reason for having the Apple Watch in the first place. I figured there would be an an answer like this , it just doesn’t make sense to do it. I tried the app again and within a few minutes had the same problem and gave up. Unfortunately sept/Oct will be when Apple workouts app can read the power meter so Ride will no longer be useful. Thanks for replying, though. Like I said, everything else seems to be working and my 4iiii’s power meters are great
Can I ask which model of watch you have? With some of the Series 4 or older – we found in testing that these models ocassionally struggled with the demands that the app puts on the system. Thanks for your feedback, it’s helpful in working out the kinks of a new release asap.
It’s a series 5
I’m buying a new bike and love to soec a Shimano DA crank with the dual sided Precision 4iii Power Meter. Redit has a thread about frequent signal dropouts.
link to reddit.com
Here’s a thread from your support website also identifying the problem:
link to 4iiii.zendesk.com
Users have been waiting for a promised software update that is supposed to fix the issue. Can you comment about this issue, please?
I’m hesitant to buy your product until I’ve heard the issue has been resolved!
Hi Peter,
The link you shared to the reddit post is over a year old, as is the 4iiii Zendesk article. We’ve addressed the issue since that time.
– Andrew / 4iiii
Hi Andrew, with a new 4iiii P3 R7000 crank I could easily upgrade to firmware 1.2.0. However, with a 4iiii P3+ R8100 crank the 4iiii app states that it’s running 1.6.122. And that it is the latest and upgrades are not available. I was expecting also the option to upgrade to 1.2.0 for this power meter. Can you clarify this? Is this P3+ R8100 power meter indeed running the latest firmware which tackles the problems mentioned above?
Hi Peter,
I passed your question along to those in company who work on firmware, here’s their reply:
“1.6.122 is the most recent firmware version that improves 1.2.0 and also includes Apple Find My.
Cranks that are out in the field already and are not PG3+ cannot go past 1.2.0 as they don’t have a serial number lazered on them and can’t be registered with Apple Find My.
It sounds like he believs that 1.6.122 is older that 1.2.0 which is incorrect. 1.6.122 is the newest version.”
Hope that helps,
Andrew / 4iiii
Thanks, Andrew!
B) Requires an Apple iPhone, iPad, or iPod to activate
Well, I can’t use it. Nothing pisses me off more than a company implementing features that I’m excluded from using. I’ve seen cars that only have AndroidAuto or appleCarPlay. Stoopit marketing decisions.
I know one company eliminated from my new power meter list.
This device is built to access Apple’s Find My network. So of course it’s only available on Apple products. Just like AirTags or the Knog Scouts I have.
To be fair, they implemented on a device-neutral network first (Chipolo). Nobody cared or utilized it.
Hard to blame them for going where the users are.
For the traveling with AirTag situation: I have an AirTag in a holder under the bidon cage. If you don’t know it’s there, you don’t see it.
That way it’s simply permanent to the bike.
Do 4iiii have plans for it to also to work on the google find my network which is expected to launch the end of this year?. (google, according to their blog post, are waiting on collaboration from apple to launch their network – so that apple will give anti stalking alerts for non apple trackers also) and they released “draft-detecting-unwanted-location-trackers” IETF draft back on 05/05/2023
Android also has support for UWB, latest handsets from samsung and google have these sensors, hopefully more handset and tracking devices will follow and add uwb as the google find my network is launched. Tile seem to be holding back their UWB tracker for this. The latest versions of android updates released less than two weeks ago also alerts to unwanted tracker/anti stalking for AirTags (they are working on support for tile and other trackers)
It will be interesting to see if google and apple can have some level of interoperability across their networks. Apple released android app com.apple.trackerdetect in play store to detect AirTags from an unwanted tracker standpoint. Even through the reviews are not great and that “AirGuard – AirTag protection” de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection.release seems to do a better job for airtags as well as supporting other tracker devices. But as this is been directly supported in android these apps will probably go away.
I am wondering how the battery life will be impacted w the FindMy function pinging it’s location intermittently rather than being “off” if was just in power meter configuration. I received my Precision 3+ in September and the battery went out today (Nov 18).