How good are bike tracking devices?

[Throttled]

Has anyone any experience or knowledge of the effectiveness of tracking devices such as;

http://www.biketrac.co.uk/

Their twitter feed shows that their tracker helps recover about 4 bikes a month. But we do not know how many bikes are never found or have the tracker.

I like the idea of trackers, especially this one with a text alert, which means you could be back with your bike to stop the theft. I also like the idea of the thief being caught with the bike. But I have no experience at all of them actually working.

[TC1474]

There are good and bad and of course like insurance you never know how good something is until you have to put it to the test.

Many of the professional thieves are very slick and have already got a buyer overseas, and the bike is out of the country in many cases before the owner realises that the bike (or car) has been stolen, or it is into a garage where it is broken down and the tracker is dismantled pdq.

Some trackers will not operate or send out their signal once they are placed inside a shipping container, but on a more positive note some bikes ave been traced to their ultimate thieving scumbag destination and the whole scumbag team have been nicked and the bike recovered.

So to a degree it is a stick your finger in the air and decide which way the wind is blowing type decision. If you can afford it no harm done, but physical security in my opinion is often a better more cost affective deterent

[cockercas]

Plus they can block the signal with a signal blocker.

[Joeman]

Yes the pros can block the signal but the average scrote who nicks bikes for beer money won't.

You'll never stop the pro thieves.

My cheap ebay tracker will alert me when the bike moves, and will continue to send its last known location, so even wih a jammer it just needs a small window of time to shout out its location.

What's also nice is that rather than walking to the garage to see if its still there, I can send a message and my bike replies. Kind of sad haha.

[Classickid21]

I looked into these quite recently heard mixed reviews they arent to acruate.

If you find a good one please share on here

[Classickid21]

Yes the pros can block the signal but the average scrote who nicks bikes for beer money won't.

You'll never stop the pro thieves.

My cheap ebay tracker will alert me when the bike moves, and will continue to send its last known location, so even wih a jammer it just needs a small window of time to shout out its location.

What's also nice is that rather than walking to the garage to see if its still there, I can send a message and my bike replies. Kind of sad haha.

 

What tracker do you have sounds smart

[MrBrightside]

Ok my experiences:

I've recovered many bikes and cars with tracker fitted. Actually it's more bikes than cars, but cars are easier to locate. There are many different types of devices, however the Police tend to only have the Tracker (actual brand) receivers. This is only a basic device (receiver) but it works surprisingly well and is how I've got some amazing results. This is the only brand that most forces can actively track with no outside assistance. I won't go into procedure as that's not for open forum, but all I can say is it is very effective.

The other types, road star etc are effective but most of the time they are 1 step behind, in the owner has to track themselves and pass the info on (or a call centre) and by the time the info gets to ground units we are behind and playing catch up.

Tracker used to have equipment on most big police buildings in London, and even a receiver on the Helicopters. This was a good time for us, but due to cost cutting they have been stripped and tracker equipment in London is limited to Traffic and area cars. Not sure which cars get tracker equipment in county forces.

I have been thinking about going for a tracker, but part of me is thinking that if its stolen I'd probably never want to ride it again after some mutant piece of shit has had hold of it.

[Six30]

As some one said a pro thief would be able to block it but if a scrote nicked it bike would probably be wrecked in half hour, only advantage would be it might bring insurance down , but would it bring it down more than cost of buying tracker.

[MrBrightside]

Bikes tend to have 1 of 3 things happen.

1 - the bike is left at a location for around 24 hrs to see if it's found via tracker (getting rarer)

2 - they are stripped bare within hours of being taken and tracker found/disabled..

3 - they are put into an ISO container and are in Europe before you know it's stolen and you've eaten your crunchy nut cornflakes.

Swings and roundabouts. Yes they get found, but more never get found, than actually do.

[Joeman]

I've not told my insurance company about my tracker. I got it more becaue its a cool gadget than becaue I think my bike will get stolen. Bike theft in my area is very low and my garage is pretty secure so the chances of it going missing whilst at home are slim.

But when i park it up, a quick text will arm the tracker so any movement will alert me. Handy feature. Also it texts me to tell me the battery is dying and time to charge it up!

Also because I'm an IT geek, I activated the real-time date feed, wrote some code that runs on a cloud hosted server, and whilst the bike is moving it logs real-time speed and position data to my server for viewing after the ride on Google maps. As I've mentioned before, i was considering opening it up to the public. It's good fun to see your ride on Google maps!

[Six30]

I've not told my insurance company about my tracker. I got it more becaue its a cool gadget than becaue I think my bike will get stolen. Bike theft in my area is very low and my garage is pretty secure so the chances of it going missing whilst at home are slim.

But when i park it up, a quick text will arm the tracker so any movement will alert me. Handy feature. Also it texts me to tell me the battery is dying and time to charge it up!

Also because I'm an IT geek, I activated the real-time date feed, wrote some code that runs on a cloud hosted server, and whilst the bike is moving it logs real-time speed and position data to my server for viewing after the ride on Google maps. As I've mentioned before, i was considering opening it up to the public. It's good fun to see your ride on Google maps!

 

Clever stuff

[Throttled]

Yes the pros can block the signal but the average scrote who nicks bikes for beer money won't.

You'll never stop the pro thieves.

My cheap ebay tracker will alert me when the bike moves, and will continue to send its last known location, so even wih a jammer it just needs a small window of time to shout out its location.

What's also nice is that rather than walking to the garage to see if its still there, I can send a message and my bike replies. Kind of sad haha.

 

What does it say?

[Six30]

Yes the pros can block the signal but the average scrote who nicks bikes for beer money won't.

You'll never stop the pro thieves.

My cheap ebay tracker will alert me when the bike moves, and will continue to send its last known location, so even wih a jammer it just needs a small window of time to shout out its location.

What's also nice is that rather than walking to the garage to see if its still there, I can send a message and my bike replies. Kind of sad haha.

 

What does it say?

 

Put the cat down , pull your pants up and get out here .... I'm being f*^*cking nicked !

[Gavalar]

Coincidence coming across this thread as I was reading about trackers earlier (considering last weeks experience) and came across a DIY tracker thread.

My personal reason for considering the DIY route is the cost versus 'window of opportunity'. I couldn't warrant a £300 outlay and apx £190 a year tracking subscription if it all comes down to the window of opportunity, the time before it ends up in a steel container, like a box van.

Have a look at this link but give it a good read before knocking it. Besides the simple tracking and alert options there's also 'geofence' and 'movement alert' options, all giving you instant texts.

http://www.fastbikesmag.com/fastbikes-forum/showthread.php?t=441

Edited January 17, 2016 by Gavalar

[Stu]

I looked in to trackers as I was supposed to get one posted to me to test but it never materialised

this one was £100 a year subscription

the saving on my insurance was £6 a year!!

so are the worth it?

NOPE!!

[Joeman]

Coincidence coming across this thread as I was reading about trackers earlier (considering last weeks experience) and came across a DIY tracker thread.

My personal reason for considering the DIY route is the cost versus 'window of opportunity'. I couldn't warrant a £300 outlay and apx £190 a year tracking subscription if it all comes down to the window of opportunity, the time before it ends up in a steel container, like a box van.

Have a look at this link but give it a good read before knocking it. Besides the simple tracking and alert options there's also 'geofence' and 'movement alert' options, all giving you instant texts.

http://www.fastbikesmag.com/fastbikes-forum/showthread.php?t=441

 

Similar idea to the one I use.

Look up TLT2 trackers on ebay. About 30quid and do all the same but they do a waterproof one specifically for bikes.

That's the one I've got. It's a nice gadget to have.

[Gavalar]

Thanks Joe its reassuring to know you're getting on well with it. It seems a no brainer for the cost and time to fit it and cheaper than an Oxford chain which I've come to realise aren't worth sh*te.

[Joeman]

Thanks Joe its reassuring to know you're getting on well with it. It seems a no brainer for the cost and time to fit it and cheaper than an Oxford chain which I've come to realise aren't worth sh*te.

 

It's also got an ignition kill feature. Send the right text message and it triggers a relay. No reason that relay couldn't set off a small explosive charge under the fuel tank