How do I find my lost tracker?

[K_buck]

I downloaded the LightBlue app and see that it shows my Flex as a peripheral nearby.  Does that mean it is somewhere in my house?

[Doug]

Well it means it is within range.  Technically, it could be somewhere nearby outside your house yet withing range of your phone.

If you have not found it yet, the idea once you can see the device listed in the app is to watch the signal strength as you move around.  The idea is to keep moving until you find the strongest signal.  Depending on what it ended up behind / under, some materials block radio waves more than others.  So the signal strength does not always correspond directly to how close you are.  It may have a better radio "line of sight" at a location physically farther away.  But it should get you close enough to find it readily.

Another choice once you are that close is to try setting an alarm.  Since you should be close enough to sync, doing so then waiting for the alarm to go off will make the device vibrate.  You may or may not be able to hear it do so, but it can be useful especially when it is resting on something that acts as a soundboard to amplify the noise.

[Ytarqui]

Are you in Panama? I am in Panama and found a fitbit one.

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@K_buck wrote:

I downloaded the LightBlue app and see that it shows my Flex as a peripheral nearby.  Does that mean it is somewhere in my house?

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[Blade7658]

I have not seen the lightblue app, but if it is like the others, it is seeing a bluetooth device, which might be your bitbit, but could be your phone or other device.

[Doug]

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@Blade7658 wrote:

I have not seen the lightblue app, but if it is like the others, it is seeing a bluetooth device, which might be your bitbit, but could be your phone or other device.

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Actually you can tell which entry is a Fitbit.  Most (but not all) BLE devices will broadcast a name along with other services.  My Fitbit One shows up named "One" in all LightBlue (and BLE Scanner and BTLExplorer).

Presumably a Fitbit Flex will show up as "Flex".

So it is easy enough to tell a Fitbit from a phone or heart rate monitor or whatever.  It is harder to tell identical models apart.  Both me and my wife use a One, so to distinguish those I look at the UDID value where I know the last 3 characters of my own.

One exception to the name broadcast is the iPhone itself.  At least up through iOS 7 it does NOT send a name.  For awhile, BLE Scanner had a bug where if it did not receive a name from a device it repeated the name from the device entry just before it in the list.  This could make it appear like there were more of that type device then really existed.  They fixed that bug though.

One thing some people may like about LightBlue is it gives actual signal strength bars in addition to the numeric RSSI value.  Since those are negative dbm values, there could be confusion to some users who think -90 is better than -66, when in fact -66 would be the stronger signal of those two values.

[kmbake76]

I downloaded two free apps to try to locate my Charge 2 and neither of them worked. I finally set the Silent Alarm from my phone and after 5 attempts, I finally located my FitBit. 

[Ona166]

Hi I am using the Blue Light app to try to locate my Charge 3.  It brings up various 'Unnamed' peripherals.   How do I know what my UUID is to validate whether one or other of the Unnamed is my device (she says hopefully)?  Thank you

[Doug]

Probably a good chance it is none of them.  I still use a much older model, Fitbit One, and that broadcast its name ("One") instead of being Unnamed.  So guessing a Charge 3 would too.  But what you can do is tap on each Unnamed to drill into its details and check for the Manufacturer Name String and possibly Model Number String (if available). You can likely eliminate some of them.  And if the Charge 3 does not broadcast its name, you should still be able to tell which device is made by Fitbit.

If all have a manufacturer other than Fitbit, try moving around the area(s) where it may have been misplaced and see what other devices are detected.

[Ona166]

Thank you Doug, I'm delighted to report that I found my device.  Happy Days!