Lost Bluetooth Aid! Found Using App!

My wife lost one of her hearing aids several hours ago while we were raking leaves and piling them in the street.

Using The “Easy Line Remote” App and choosing “Connect” after roaming the entire yard, I was able to finally “connect” using Easy Line to the lost hearing aid when I approached the (huge) leaf pile on the street in front of our house, so, I assumed that the hearing was probably somewhere in the pile of leaves.

The Bluetooth “connect” range seems to be up to a 50’ radius, so, I circled the pile about 30’ away and the app stayed connect to the aid all of the way around, so I was pretty sure that the aid was somewhere in the pile.

It took me a while to figure out my next step. I made sure the other aid was in the house and on the charger.

I then ran the lost hearing aid’s volume to maximum using the Easy Line Remote app.

I started a popular streaming music station on her phone and ran the volume of that podcast to maximum.

On my hands and knees (I have pretty good hearing) I crawled slowly around the leaf pile with my head as close to the leaves as possible without touching them. Our street still had regular traffic well after dark, so I had to stop until each car was at least a block away.

When I went around to the street side of the pile, my main job was to convince my distraught wife to forget the hearing aid and to shine the flashlight at oncoming cars to avoid things getting worse by being hit by one of them.

Finally, about 1/3rd of the way up the backside of the 25’ long leaf pile, I finally heard (very faintly) the music station.

I moved back and forth to get centered on the music, and when I did, I started pulling leaves out of the pile where the music was audible. When I put my head back to where I originally heard the music, it was gone so that meant that the aid was now probably somewhere in the leaves that I had pulled out of the pile.

We started to sort through leaves from that part of the pile and spread them (between passing cars) to try and hear it again, but I couldn’t. My wife visually spotted the aid after several false alarms among the twigs and wet leaves.

SUCCESS!

A couple of notes… first, because of battery life, the search using the above process needs to be started as soon as possible and be done by someone with good hearing.

Quiet is essential… don’t make any sounds such as touching the leaves as you try to listen to the location you have determined is where the aid is.

The “Easy Line Remote” App is not stable. When doing the initial “connect” attempts, the app times out quickly and I found when that happens, the apps connect process is compromised. To deal with this, I went to the app’s “Info” option and then issued a “Force Stop” and then went back to the “connect” screen. I probably had to do this at least a half dozen times during this search… what this does is gives the app a “fresh start”

For the final locator process, I have an (android) app named “Dog Whistle Pro” (which is no longer available) but it allows tapping and holding a frequency icon that results in a tone being generated while you touch the icon… this silence/sound contrast helps zero in on the aid.

There is a “find my headset” app that does something similar… don’t know it, but hope that someone posts results using it or another app to do the same.

Hope this saga helps others in similar circumstances.

Beverly Howard

This post edited on Jan 12/22 to clarify and expand the search process.

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Great result. Did you remember to turn up the volume to max?

I accidentally posted the incomplete message… so, I had to go back in and edit it several times so you probably read one of the incomplete messages. Thanks for the back pat!

Beverly

Great story! And very good idea to play loud music to locate it! :blush:

Impressive!

For future, get Otoclip. Comes for BTE or RIC hearing aids. Comes in several colors. Find what you want here, the shop on Amazon (may be lower cost, not always). Hearing Aid Retainers

It’s esoteric to Apple but Apple really needs to add MFi HA’s to their Find My app capabilities. With BT on on an iPhone, the HA’s are always connected to your iPhone when you’re in BT range and iOS could always be logging their “last seen” location and iOS could provide a BT signal strength meter for close quarters location. Instead, the ReSound Smart 3D app has to independently provide this functionality for its own aids. In the interests of “One-Stop Shopping,” I’d rather have MFi HA tracking/location finding built into iOS. There should be no privacy concerns as, after all, it’s your own HA’s that you’re wearing and tracking so the only privacy you’re invading if Apple provided the feature built-in would be your own privacy! I have suggested to Apple through its web feedback page that they ought to enable Find My for MFi HA’s and I suggest any other interested HA wearers using an iPhone do the same:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

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When all hearing aids and phones have Bluetooth 5.1 or greater, you should be able to tell an app on your phone to show an arrow pointing straight to your hearing aids. That’s my understanding anyway. That still leaves the case where your aids are out of range. Apple’s “find my” would be nice then. What would be even nicer would be a global “find my” standard.

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Wow, I’ve filed this away for future reference! Thanks for sharing your creative solution!

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