Ask Slashdot: Inexpensive Anti-Theft Vehicle Tracking System?

New submitter Chuckles08 writes "I'm about to complete the purchase of an electric scooter that is worth over $5,000. Since I'll be parking it on a college campus, it will be vulnerable to theft. I'd like to install some kind of tracking device on it but the solutions I've seen so far seem quite expensive. Are there any reasonably priced and effective solutions out there? Ideally, I'd like to be informed by text message if my scooter moves without my knowing. I'd like to then track the scooter's movements." And anything small enough to work for a scooter might be very useful for car owners, too.

lojack

[hedwards]

Chances are that the insurance company will pick up a significant portion of the tab to have the vehicle lojaced. I was looking into it when I was going to buy a motorcycle and the cost after insurance company rebate and discount makes it quite inexpensive. Plus they have a good record for recovery and ever car that's lojaced increases the likelihood that a vehicle thief is going to be caught red handed and sent to prison.

Tracking on the cheap

[ldm]

Find a Xexun TK-102 on ebay, they will report back their position via the mobile network (you supply a SIM card, and can send it a request for the current position, it will text you back). You can get large extended battery packs too, or you could wire it into the bike's power. They work well enough for us to track drivers at work. Just make sure you get a genuine Xexun one, the others are less reliable and tend to lie about their position, in my case being offset by about 4 miles. There are separate car sized ones, but I have not used them.

dealextreme comes to rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

less than 30 euro
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/gsm-realtime-anti-theft-vehicle-tracker-81881

the downside: chineese documentation

Garmin GTU-10

[pem]

I have two, on things I don't want to get lost.

Garmin has two plans. The simple one lets you draw virtual fences around where it's OK for the thing to be, and alerts you when it leaves the area, and also lets you poll for location at any time.

The more full-featured plan (basically $10/month) also will automagically poll and keep history, so you at least know where the thing was when the thieves realized that it had a GPS tracker on it and ripped the thing off.

I built a little 12v -> 5v converter for the one of these I have on a device that has a battery, and hooked it in permanently, so every time the main device is switched on, the GPS's battery gets recharged.

Re:It's called "Insurance"

[tomhudson]

I use "The Club" as icing on the cake combined with a hidden switch that turns off the PATS RFID antenna [1] and another switch for the fuel pump. If a thief gets past that, that is what insurance is for. But, they are going to fight for what they steal.

I agree -- The Club can be defeated easily. But it forces a thief to have to deal with it, and time is their enemy

[1]: The reason I turn off the PATS antenna is that for more sophisticated thieves, it will throw them off the scent, because all attempts they try at key cloning will not work. Of course, if that gets bypassed, the fuel pump switch ensures they won't go far.

Tow truck, shove into a cheap used metal shipping container, dismantle at your leisure - no tracking device will be able to get a signal through the steel walls.

Dump the stripped frame and body, buy it at the insurance auction, get the pink slip, and put the engine, transaxle, wheels, seats, etc. back in an sell it.

And yes, people DO do this. It's one reason insurance companies have begun crushing "strippers".

Re:It's called "Insurance"

[j-beda]

Boy, that's a lot of work though. One would think that if people applied this amount of initiative and ingenuity into something legal they could make almost as much money a similar amount of effort and much less risk.

Re:Easy!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mention a legitimate problem with GM's 3400 engine, ignoring the oil sludge problem with Toyota's 3L V6, or the differential problems on the Titan. Perhaps it should be only Honda stands behind their products rather than a Foreign vs Domestic rant?

Also, a V6 in a front-wheel-drive car is asking for trouble. Your Civic doesn't have that problem.

On another note, it seems one has to judge based on the model, not the manufacturer. If I judged the manufactures based on my personal anecdotal evidence, it would be:
1) GM has nearly flawless trucks, but can't build a front-drive car worth driving
2) Ford builds awesome rear-wheel-drive big cars, aside from the plastic intake manifold on the 4.6L V8
3) Lexus IS250 is in the shop every other month for a recall.
4) Toyota tundra in the shop for transmission problems.

There's statistics, and then there's you lying ...

[damn_registrars]

That Honda that you love so much? If you actually read the news you would know that for model year 2009 Ford matched Honda and Toyota in initial quality and owner satisfaction surveys. And if it wasn't for the touchscreens they installed in 2010 vehicles, they would have matched them for that year as well.

So before you go bashing three completely different corporations under one blind moniker, do your research.

Hell, the 2010 Motor Trend Car of the Year [slashdot.org] was the Ford Fusion. Being as that was also a model year for an all-new (and therefore CotY eligible) Toyota Camry, that is a huge coup for Ford. Anybody who reads Motor Trend knows that very few awards from them have gone to Ford, GM, or Chrysler in the past couple decades.

But you didn't seem to want to bother with facts in your post. So I won't expect you to follow up on this.