Car (GPS) Tracker

Dr_Crypto

Has anyone any recommendations for a tracker system to be installed in my cars?

The cars are not garaged at night and, although I live in a safe area I would like to install such a system for added security.

Thanks in advance.

Dr_Crypto

Nobody using one of these?

sccooter

thats a bit 1990s? You know you can just throw a cheap bluetooth tracker in the car. Like peer to peer tracking. Use a community of over 8 million Tile tracker users. 100s of users in every 20 square miles. One drives past you car and it automatically reports its location back to the app on your phone. Costs next to nothing. Good solution if you have lots of cars as your post suggests. see here:
https://youtu.be/IkLo6ETvMcg

Ectophile

That sounds a bit hit-and-miss. The thieves only need to drive the car to an out-of-the-way farm outbuilding and it will never be found.

It then goes into a container to be shipped overseas, or stripped for parts.

shaun_from_Africa

If anyone wanted to steal a car and they wanted to block a GPS tracker, all they need to do is spend a few hundred £s and get a GPS jammer, something that can be purchased quite easily from companies overseas.

AnotherJoe

sccooter wrote: »

thats a bit 1990s? You know you can just throw a cheap bluetooth tracker in the car. Like peer to peer tracking. Use a community of over 8 million Tile tracker users. 100s of users in every 20 square miles. One drives past you car and it automatically reports its location back to the app on your phone. Costs next to nothing. Good solution if you have lots of cars as your post suggests. see here:
https://youtu.be/IkLo6ETvMcg

Colour me sceptical. Those drivers or users will need to be within a very short distance of your car and if its moving it’s no use anyway as it won’t be where it was as reported even seconds later.. Low power Bluetooth will also be blocked by the metal in cars making but even less likely it will even be tracked in the first place.

Not to mention I very much doubt there are hundreds of users of this device within 20 square miles, except perhaps in the centre of London where your stolen car is highly unlikely to be and even then given low power Bluetooth has a range of a few tens of metres even , hundreds of users in 20 square miles might as well be zero for all practical purposes.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

The Tile trackers don't really work - poor software, and the transmission distance is not enough. OK for finding your keys in the house, but not good enough.

There are a couple of types of tracker, one is essentially a mobile phone and a movement sensor, and the other uses a VHF transmitter and relies on the police using the receiving equipment. Some have both.

For casual theft either is fine. If you have a highly desirable car, then the most robust is the twin system.

They aren't massively expensive to install - £150-£300ish last time I looked. What does cost is the annual charges, and there are a range of costs associated with it.

I had a Tracker system on my 1999 Merc when new, and I had a 5 year contract on it, after that I just let it expire on the basis that it wasn't desirable any longer. Probably costs the same now as then. Couldn't report on whether it worked as it wasn't nicked, and one of the points of them is that you don't advertise that one is fitted (so the thieves don't rip the car apart looking for which door panel it is fitted in) so it is not a deterrent as such.

AdrianC

Dr_Crypto wrote: »

Has anyone any recommendations for a tracker system to be installed in my cars?

The cars are not garaged at night and, although I live in a safe area I would like to install such a system for added security.

A tracker won't increase security. It won't stop your car being broken into, it won't stop it being stolen.


It might increase the chances of it being found once it is stolen. BUT... Do you really want it back after it's been abused by the thieves? Even that's just a "might" - as said above, it's not hard to "hide" a tracker. They're just GPS attached to a mobile phone. Park the car somewhere there's no phone signal, or where there's no GPS view of the sky, and it's not telling anybody anything. Shipping containers are dirt cheap and don't arouse suspicion.


What cars are we talking about? Why would they be stolen? Would they just be nicked for transport home from the pub then dumped, for breaking for parts, for getaway transport for robberies - or for sale whole in another part of the world?

neilmcl

AdrianC wrote: »

A tracker won't increase security. It won't stop your car being broken into, it won't stop it being stolen.


It might increase the chances of it being found once it is stolen. BUT... Do you really want it back after it's been abused by the thieves? Even that's just a "might" - as said above, it's not hard to "hide" a tracker. They're just GPS attached to a mobile phone. Park the car somewhere there's no phone signal, or where there's no GPS view of the sky, and it's not telling anybody anything. Shipping containers are dirt cheap and don't arouse suspicion.


What cars are we talking about? Why would they be stolen? Would they just be nicked for transport home from the pub then dumped, for breaking for parts, for getaway transport for robberies - or for sale whole in another part of the world?

This is a year old thread.

AdrianC

neilmcl wrote: »

This is a year old thread.

So it is. But there was another recent post that had brought it to the fore - and has since been deleted. I think it might have been a spammy one.


Honest! I haven't really been trawling the archives...

Car_54

neilmcl wrote: »

This is a year old thread.

It's now a two-year old thread!
But it doesn't stop the spammers.