July 14, 2026

How a tag with no SIM reports its location

A BluTag beacon has no cellular radio, no GPS receiver and no way to phone home. It still turns up on a map. The trick is that it never reports its own location at all — it persuades passing strangers' phones to do it, without those phones, Apple, or us ever learning where it is.

May 3, 2026

Why our beacon has no 32 kHz crystal

The BL653 module ships without a 32 kHz watch crystal, and the obvious fix — asking Zephyr for one anyway — quietly costs about 3 mA of continuous idle draw. Notes on retargeting the firmware, dropping a power setting that turned out to be a no-op, and why we still will not quote you a battery life.