Had your tools ripped off before? Try the Milwaukee Tick to keep them safe

I’m sure they struggled naming the Milwaukee Tick tool tracker after an insect that’s ugly and dangerous. However, it’s also grimly accurate considering that this insect-like digital add-on does a dirty job all by itself—tracking your tools. Lyme Disease not included.

Note: We partnered with The Home Depot on this blog; we’re grateful to be part of their ProSpective program. The ideas and observations are all ours. So is the bewilderment at a table saw connected to me by satellites orbiting the Earth. Read on, it gets better.

This device can be used both as a digital assistant of sorts for inventory management (boy, that sounds fun) and as a near total tool tracker if things get ripped off.

Because we live in the Matrix, the Tick is a relatively inexpensive thing (99-bucks for an 8-pack at Home Depot). However, its existence requires the infrastructure of space travel, a quintillion dollar string of satellites, and possibly humanity’s greatest creation, the Web.

So you can find your stepladder.

The meta of how it works—while awesomely amazing and also totally beyond my comprehension—doesn’t really matter. If someone walks off with my table saw, however, I can wrap my arms around that.

The Tick, combines with Milwaukee’s ONE – KEY app (free). In the app you list the tools that have the Tick on then, I’m guessing just like RunKeeper or Strava or Waze knows where you are, ONE – KEY knows where the miter saw is. Maybe you could put one on your dog’s collar, name it DOG in the app.

The Milwaukee Tick’s range is only about 100-yards—that means your device needs to be within a 100-yards to pick up its signal. However, like real bugs, there is power in numbers.

Let’s say somebody pinches your riding lawn mower—the unit can be used with any brand or type of tool, heck you could put one on your truck—and takes it miles away. In the application, you can report the tool missing and then—this is gold—any device with the ONE – KEY app (and there are LOTS) that comes within range senses the Milwaukee Tick ping. Because the item has been listed as missing, that initiates Mr. Anderson (aka Neo) to send an alert to your device as to the missing item’s whereabouts.

The Tick is tough. It can be bolted, screwed, glued or zip-tied to whatever you want. I’d make it invisible if possible—inside a tool box, under a table saw, inside the vehicle, &c—so it can do its ugly, important work in private. Like a real tick. Only this one is from the Matrix.