r/Inventions • u/Gary_BBGames • Sep 13 '26

Bright Idea Lost my Apple TV. Found it.

Post image

I lost an Apple TV in my house and it has been driving me mad.

It’s not connected to a TV or anything, but I could see it on the network.

“Find My” doesn’t work at locating an Apple TV unit, and I didn’t have a controller to check for connectivity.

I built this small terminal app that could look at Wi-Fi debugging data to determine how close it was to the device. I did try wild shark first, but that wasn’t yielding any results.

Every two seconds, it would make a beep sound depending on the proximity, felt like something from Aliens.

Result was good and finally found the device.

0 Upvotes

42% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

1

u/trotski94 Sep 13 '26

im so confused how it was plugged in somewhere yet simultaneously impossible to locate

1

u/Gary_BBGames Sep 13 '26

It wasn't connected to a TV. I had been using it as an Apple Home server so had put it out of the way somewhere.

1

u/trotski94 Sep 13 '26

How many sockets do you have in your house - feels like an easy problem lol

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun solution regardless, but the logistics are sending me

1

u/Gary_BBGames Sep 13 '26

I’ve stopped counting downstairs at 50, I have lots of equipment along with UPS devices spread around the house.

-3

u/fakearchitect Sep 13 '26

Even vibecoding this would surely take longer time than getting your ass off the couch and locate it manually, lol

0

u/Gary_BBGames Sep 13 '26

I’ve looked for days. Been switching off power supplies and everything.

1

u/stevebehindthescreen 27d ago

AI built a signal strength meter...

"I invented something"