Losing valuable headphones, earbuds, and other personal electronic items is irritating and costly for consumers. The massive global network of Apple devices holds the key to finding these again. The Find My network accessory program enables third-party companies to build finding capabilities into their products, letting users access Apple’s Find My app to locate and keep track of valuable items like earbuds and headphones, even when they’re not nearby.
This approved reference implementation of Apple Find My network support is designed for use in headsets, headphones, earbuds, and other portable audio devices. The licensable software component simplifies the path for product OEMs and ODMs to add Apple Find My network support to their existing or new products, including full support for lost device discovery and tracking, seamless user pairing, over-the-air firmware updates, and unwanted tracking prevention.
Even though Google already emulated the features of Apple’s Find My implementation for Android devices, the fragmented nature of that OS ecosystem and inconsistent updating policies from every manufacturer, mean that it will take some time until consumers are able to benefit from similar features supported by a considerable number of devices. That is why Apple created the third party Find My network accessory program.
The Apple Find My network — made up of over a billion Apple devices — provides an easy, secure way to locate compatible personal items using the Find My app on iPhone, iPad, Mac, or using the Find Items app on Apple Watch. Find My requires iOS 14.5, iPad OS 14.5, Mac OS Big Sur 11.1, and watchOS 8.0 or later.
The Find My network accessory program enables third-party companies to build finding capabilities into their own products, letting users access Apple’s Find My app to locate and keep track of important items, even when they’re not nearby. The Find My network is anonymous and uses advanced encryption, meaning that no one else – not even Apple, Virscient, or partner audio accessory manufacturers – can view the location of those items.
Virscient has collaborated with communications semiconductor specialist Qualcomm to ensure launch support for SoundTrack on Qualcomm’s range of market leading QCC51xx and QCC30xx Bluetooth audio SoCs, including QCC5171, QCC5181, QCC3081, QCC3083, QCC3084, QCC3091, QCC3095, and forthcoming products.
SoundTrack integrates rapidly into new or existing products as a software add-on, seamlessly combining with Qualcomm’s Audio Development Kit (ADK) reference applications.
“Apple’s Find My network is a fantastic technology that provides an incredibly practical and valuable service for its users – the ability to locate lost accessories quickly and easily. Through SoundTrack, Virscient is enabling OEMs and ODMs to bring this exciting feature to their audio products with minimum complexity and fastest time-to-market. We see strong end-user demand for this feature and are very excited to partner with Qualcomm to make this real for their customers, today,” says Dean Armstrong, CTO of Virscient.
SoundTrack is available to evaluate and license directly from Virscient, with optional wrap-around services available in support of integration, product hardware and software development, and design and implementation of other value-add features.
For more information on SoundTrack or Virscient’s other connected audio products and services, contact Jonny McClintock – Virscient’s Director of the Connected Audio Centre of Excellence.
With five locations around the world, Virscient works with the world's leading semiconductor and product companies, who choose them because of their deep expertise in wireless, embedded, and connected technologies. In every strategic engineering project, Virscient develops secure embedded software for connected systems, designing hardware from silicon to PCB/product-level, and supporting all other aspects of the connectivity journey from technology selection through to product RF and interoperability certification.
www.virscient.com
