Yes, Hearing Aid dryer.
There are bluetooth “radar” apps that help with this kind of search…found my partners Fitbit in the dirt near where she was gardening using that.
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Just giving you a hard time. I’ve put my in the washing machine a couple of times by accident and the hearing aid dryer saved the day. Plus the aids looked brand new.
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and they smelt of Lavender?
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But did the fabric softener make the sound less crisp?
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I have a backup set, the ones I replaced. It’s not as good as what I’m wearing but I can get by with. My current set has a GPS locator function on the phone app. Might help narrow the search a little. Your method was amazing and effective. So glad for you to find the hearing aid and happy it dried out and works.
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Great story! My Widex set were red, making it easier to find near the vegetable garden the two times I lost one there. Sadly, ReSound doesn’t offer them in “fashion colors”–yet.
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That was a smart approach.
Last April, I too was in my Apiary installing bees without head gear or a suit. Later that day it became clear that I had lost my Left hearing aid.
I searched and searched, thou not as clever as you, and did not find it. Bummed.
I spent 8 days looking for a place to purchase one replacement and was hitting many dead ends. The VA was not able to help as my HA’s were only 10 months old.
During my next trip out, when I was checking to see if the queens were released and removing the cages, I found my HA.
Yes it had been glued to a frame with propolis.
Cleaned, dried and the fittings replaced, all was good
Oticon OPN 1.
Good luck with the girls!!!
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thanks for sharing. I would never have figured all that out , and I know that sinking feeling when something goes wrong. So far, the sports lock has saved me. there has been more than 1 time that my hat jarred my hearing aid lose and it was just hanging there, and I did not know until something did not work
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Actually some ReSound aids including LiNXs purchased through audiologists are available in bright red cases and other colors.
https://www.resoundpro.com/~/media/REFRESH/US/00-DOWNLOADS/Guides/MK604151_CC_FullLineupColorChart.ashx?la=en-CA
I second the recommendation for red hearing aids to make it easier to find a dropped aid–as long as you’re not worried about being “seen” wearing aids.
Also for people who aren’t buying new or don’t get the option to buy colored cases, Ear Gears are available in a range of colors: https://www.gearforears.com/
My audi warned me that this function is of limited value. It’s not as useful as it can be for a missing cell phone or other device that pings its location to cell phone towers; hearing aids don’t do that. A “find my aid” app can help you if your aids were connected to the app when one or both aids went missing. But if you didn’t have your phone with you, and maybe if it wasn’t running the app as well at the time the aid went missing, the app may show the location of the aid when the phone was last near it and running the app, rather than where the aid is now.
It is short range because it is limited by the range of bluetooth, but if you drop an aid or a Fitbit in some weeds or grass, try finding it without a bt radar app!
Oh no question; I think my audi’s point was not that “Find My Aid” can’t be very helpful, but just a warning that it can only do so much. I think he’s had customers come back to him who couldn’t find a missing aid because they had no idea where it was so didn’t know where to start looking with the phone. Their expectations that the phone could find an aid anywhere were unrealistic.
Thought I would offer two additional methods for finding things - don’t know if HA’s have enough of the right sort of metal to work with either method and the magnet method might damage an HA even if it did work.
The BT method is great and would work if the batteries are still alive.
Since I don’t have HA’s with zinc-air batteries, I can’t test these methods directly myself but past posts over the years on Hearing Tracker suggest at least zinc-air batteries might have enough metal in them to set off a properly tuned metal detector, e.g. posts on concerns about going through airport metal detectors…
But I’ve lost a bunch of things in my yard, including house keys, lawn mower bolts, small special locking screws for Ring doorbell covers, special hose reel bolts, etc., and had roofers leave behind lots of nail debris that their pathetic magnetic sweeps don’t pick up.
So on Amazon one can buy very powerful neodymium magnets e.g. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012DNFP6/ - so powerful they are dangerous because they can jump onto objects and shatter on collision, crush your fingers if caught in between, not to mentioning demagnetizing credit cards, tape recordings, perhaps a hard drive if rested on a computer, etc. So I taped mine all around with labeling tape, put it in a small plastic bucket with a handle, and hang the bucket from a dog leash. If you sweep the ground as close as you can get, anything with a fair amount of ferromagnetic material in it literally leaps right off the ground and if you have decent enough low-frequency hearing, you can hear a clack of the impact against the bottom of the bucket (probably not good for HA’s and probably won’t work with them for lack of ferromagentic material). I keep my magnet in a iron filing cabinet in a remote region of the house when not in use.
A problem with using magnets is that any iron alloyed with other materials to make stainless steel is less ferromagnetic than plain old iron. And, of course, a magnet won’t work with aluminum.
Metal detectors are pretty amazing for finding lost metalic objects, too. Don’t know if the wires in RIC HA’s or zinc-air batteries would provide enough metal to set off a detector. But I’ve lost lawnmower bolts and keys off a belt loop here and there in the yard. I used to borrow my neighbor’s toy beachcombing Radio Shack metal detector and that worked quite well-better away from construction debris left in the ground around a house or the rebar in foundations and sidewalks. So finally the nth time I lost something over several decades, I decided why not get my own metal detector rather than embarassingly go knock on the neighbor’s door and ask if he still had that detector from more than a decade ago. Alas! A fairly sophisticated detector bought on Amazon does not seem quite as good as the neighbor’s El Cheapo one from Radio Shack and that great source of “gear” has now gone out of business.
So if BT detection fails to find a lost HA, a very strong magnet or a metal detector might be an option, although perhaps not likely to work for lack of ferromagnetic material or even metal in an HA. I should imagine the trick with any method, though, if used in the outdoors, is to avoid stepping on your HA while looking for it …
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I have a magnet on the end of a long handle. It is made for just as you describe, sweeping an area. That was my fall back plan. I did test it with my HA that was not lost and the magnet picked it up, but I was afraid it might damage the HA, so I went the bluetooth route first. I’m not expert, but I remember as a kid tearing old speakers apart to pull out the magnet to play with. Since there are tiny speakers in our hearing aids, I wasn’t sure if a strong magnet would hurt them. But, good idea!
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You are such a geek, Jim, love it. 
Way outside the box…
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I’m not sure losing things in one’s yard and using desperate measures to try to find them is geekiness - probably just ineptness on my part and bad design of bolts on lawn mower handles, hose reels, belt clip keychains, and requiring silly little security screws on Ring doorbells covers in hard to reach places with my fingers dead cold when it’s 30 degrees out in the middle of winter - and you drop stuff from numbness (and dumbness) - after hunting and hunting for the cover screw, I’m, “Oh, yeah. There’s that magnet I have! Bingo!” I have since learned to put a nice soft WHITE towel under the Ring doorbell whenever I need to remove the cover. Since then, I’ve also started using removable Locktite on stuff when I assemble it for the very first time if it’s equipment thatt will experience a lot of vibration as it operates or is rolled around. (BTW, it’s interesting to read the various magnet reviews on Amazon - most of the folks buying such stuff seem to be like me - lost something and desperate to find it - often at the bottoms of rivers and lakes!).
Just thought my caveman methods of hunting for stuff I’ve lost in the yard might help someone who can’t find a lost HA via BT tracking.
Yess, but who else here gets that inventive? neodymium magnets
Very practical and all, but your “engineer mind” solutions makes me chuckle.
I spend days in the mountains in summer, technical climbs, and this guy would haul in tools and pieces if aluminum so he could design climbing anchors at night for the crazy, crumbly rock we were trying to climb, safely with some protection that standard hardware could not offer. This guy tickled me constantly with his analytic mind and way outside the box solutions. For many days and summers, great fun and memories.
Brilliant, now that’s using your noggin !!!
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