24 Oct Product Review: BlueSleuth-Lite BLE Tag Detector
No wonder the BlueSleuth-Lite Bluetooth detector has been so popular
– Melbourne, Australia – Oct. 24, 2024
The small size and long battery life of modern Bluetooth-enabled tracking devices has made them invaluable for keeping tabs on everything from your bike and dog to your suitcases, your cars, and even your children.
The diminutive devices – which aren’t much larger than a quarter – can be easily hidden and finding them can be extremely difficult, which is why they have become such a problem in stalking cases and, as authorities have found, favoured by criminals that use the trackers to ensure that shipments of narcotics, guns, and other contraband reach their intended destinations uninterrupted.
“The shipments are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and [criminals] want to make sure they get from this point to that point,” explained Scott Schober, founder and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems (BVS), which was contacted by authorities as it was considering how to leverage its expertise – which spans a broad range of signal analysis and wireless sensing applications – into a way to easily find the tags, whose speakers are often disabled by the criminals to keep them under the radar.
“Authorities were finding that if they opened the boxes and removed the tags, when the package was delivered there would be nobody there to arrest,” Schober told Cybercrime Magazine, “because the interventions were tipping off the criminals.”
“It’s a bigger problem than we ever realised – and we saw this as a natural application for a tool that could see if there is a tag chirping away inside a package, allowing you to instantly hone in on it.”
The tiny size of the new trackers has made them much easier to conceal than conventional GPS trackers that were typically phone-sized, had battery life measured in days rather than months, and required a separate and easily traceable mobile phone SIM card to transmit their data.
The market has rapidly responded to the availability of smaller, longer-lasting devices: with sales of trackers from Tile, Apple, Samsung, Eufy and others expected to grow by 13.5 percent annually, according to Cognitive Market Research, Bluetooth trackers are riding the crest of a wave of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that is expected to push 40 billion connected IoT devices into the world by 2030.
Sniffing out hidden devices
Recognising the potential demand for a device that could quickly sniff out Bluetooth trackers from the ocean of radiofrequency transmissions, BVS set about designing a product that would be able to detect and identify the telltale signatures that such devices use to advertise themselves to other devices as part of the Bluetooth standard.
Developing such a tool was far from simple: the frequency-hopping trackers operate in the unlicensed 2.4GHz spectrum range, and use standards like Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to extend battery life by emitting low-powered data bursts at intervals, using novel techniques to detect and avoid frequencies that are already being used.
“That baked-in intelligence is what makes this technology so robust, and it’s getting better and better,” Schober explained. “That’s really the fundamental part of the algorithms they’re putting in there: they can propagate the signals much further at very low power, so it’s not transmitting a lot of energy. This makes it a great technology for low-cost electronics that consumers just eat up.”
Given that Bluetooth is so common now that you’re likely bathed in the signals of dozens or hundreds of devices nearly anywhere you go – phones, tablets, laptops, headphones, speakers, hearing aids, and many other devices regularly communicate via Bluetooth – the tracker tags are a proverbial needle in a haystack of similar radiofrequency noise that also includes emissions from industrial equipment, microwave ovens, and other everyday devices.
The result – called BlueSleuth-Lite – is a keyfob-sized tool that slips into a pocket and rapidly detects the presence of BLE devices in the area, using a proprietary technique to examining each device’s BLE advertising packets to determine what it is, BlueSleuth-Lite displays each tag’s the signal strength in real time – allowing users to hone in on its precise location by watching the signal strength change as they move around.
To gauge demand, BVS listed the product on Kickstarter, where it more than doubled its initial goal of $18,000 to raise $38,393 from 70 backers in just 30 days – paving the way for the development and commercialisation of the device, which was followed by a professional-grade handheld unit called the BlueSleuth-Pro, which was launched in Jul. 2024 to replace the popular BlueSleuth Bluetooth Skimmer Locator.
Because it can be easily carried in a pocket, Schober said BlueSleuth-Lite’s form factor makes it an easy companion for anybody who is worried they, their car, their bag or their home may be targeted with a tracking device.
With more than 1000 units sold and over 100 shipping per month, the device has also proved popular with law enforcement agencies, executive protection specialists, and other organisations that weren’t on the BVS radar at the start but have, in what Schober called “an eye opener for us”, proven to be a natural audience for the technology.
“It has been a really exciting journey,” he said.
– David Braue is an award-winning technology writer based in Melbourne, Australia.
