Is there anyway to find a turned off iPad?

They already have fixed it. You just have to wait until this fall. See -> iOS 15 Preview - Apple

“Find My. See your family and friends’ locations with continuous streaming updates. Locate your devices using the Find My network even if they’re powered off or erased.”

On the preview page. The various Apple news are saying if enabled (it’s an option) it means the phone doesn’t really get turned off with the power button. It goes into a very low power state so that Bluetooth can still use the Find My network of anonymous user devices, just like airtags do.

9-to-5 Mac, MacWorld and all the others had articles on it too in the last week or so.

I believe that you’ll find that OFF is still fully OFF…

What Apple are actually doing, as you’ve already intimated, is to allow the iPad/iPhone to use the BTLE and UWB radio’s (when Cellular and WiFi are otherwise unavailable) as a beacon. Other devices in near proximity detect the beacon and silently communicate the detection to Apple’s back-end server network. As you correctly observe, this is the same mechanism used by AirTags.

Right, but even an airtag needs power from its internal CR2032 battery. The lost device still has to send its secure encrypted signal to any nearby Find My enabled devices. So when the iOS 15 feature is enabled, and the device shut down, there must still be some trickle power made available that in normal shutdown is also shut off. It’s a tiny amount of power sure, and exclusively for that secure encrypted signal transmissions and nothing else.

As things are now, when you shut off an iPhone, nothing is transmitted at all. So there has been changes to the power management features in iOS 15 to allow the ultra-low power transmission for use of the Find My network.

P.S. I’m mainly going by the first article I saw about this feature -> https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off/

Re: “… So there has been changes to the power management features in iOS 15 to allow the ultra-low power transmission for use of the [beacon] Find My network.

This would seem to be only possible way to pull this off.

FWIW, I’ve tested the “beacon-based offline finding” as currently fielded (with a WiFi-only iPad) and was impressed w/ how well it worked.

Pending that, stick an AirTag on it.

Perhaps my point has been missed - noting that we obviously cannot speculate as to the actual implementation of new features until their detail has been announced.

Speaking therefore from a purely generic technical standpoint… OFF (as in “shipping condition”) will be fully OFF (i.e., all radios disabled).

In a “can be detected” mode, one or more BTLE/UWB radios will be in a low power “beacon” state - advertising presence to devices. The majority of Bluetooth radios (including iPad and iPhone) are already detectable, using appropriate monitoring hardware/software, when the host device is in the low-power (sleep) state.

This facet of existing BT functionality might be constructively exploited with addition of active “listening” capability on devices with an active network connection - or through additional beacon capability.

Unless the beacon radio has an independent power source, it follows that device power management may require modification to provide an additional power state between OFF and Sleep as required.

when an iPad (or other) goes missing and it is not turned on that it cannot be found.

It's OFF. Without power, just how do you expect the device to report its GPS location?

Never mind, then.

Your question has been answered.

Wow!

Where did you find THAT little tidbit of information?

This will be a new feature of FindMy in the up and coming iOS/iPadOS 15?

That surely will solve all of the FindMy shortcomings of the past!