Prepaid phone with GPS as theft recovery device

[ryan]

One of the fun projects I look forward to building with my sons one day is a near-space balloon. In the first iterations people were buying expensive GPS trackers, but now they're just using pay-as-you-go phones with GPS. I'm wondering about using this technology on a bike. Essentially they upload some open sourced software to be able to remotely map its coordinates.

Here's the cost breakdown for a Motorola i290:
One time cost: $50 new, or significantly less if you eBay it
Re-use cost: $10 activation, $1.35 per day of use

The plan:
Buy phone, wire it to main battery for constant power, never use it (let activation expire). In the event of theft, reactivate phone ($10+$1.35) and track it down.

Unknowns:
1) Can you re-activate a phone remotely?
2) Can you keep the phone on, but not pay $1.35/day -- as in, keep it inactive?

Anyone have any experience with prepaid phones to vet this concept?

 

[NickF23]

I was going to do this about 3 years ago with a gsm only phone. When I tested out the mapping software it was only accurate to within a mile, so basically useless in the city where I live.

With GPS plus GSM which is what most new smartphones use, it should work much better, but GPS generally needs line of sight, so where you mount it is important. Also the GPS on many phones is rubbish, sometimes taking up to 10 minutes to get a position. A thief may have taken your bike and put it in garage somewhere by then.

I still think its a great idea for an ebike as the GPS battery can be auto topped up and also its much easier to hide than on a normal bike·

 

[ptd]

it IS a great idea. problem is, GPS jamming devices are fairly cheap now, and i'd think any thief looking at high priced items would be having one in his arsenal. a better idea, might be a high powered RF chip. kind of like a local lojack.

 

[cohberg]

The plan:
Buy phone, wire it to main battery for constant power, never use it (let activation expire). In the event of theft, reactivate phone ($10+$1.35) and track it down.

I've used the i415 before with boost mobile. Its actually $0.35 per day with boost (the ucsd page is out of date).

1) Can you re-activate a phone remotely?

Yeah you can just put money onto your account. I don't even think you need the 10 dollar reactivation fee.

2) Can you keep the phone on, but not pay $1.35/day -- as in, keep it inactive?

Again you would just let the balance run down to 0. Then, theoretically, you would just put money onto your account and start tracking

Anyone have any experience with prepaid phones to vet this concept?

This should work, but the problem i see is the same as NickF23: the phone maintaining lock.

Go buy a cheap i415 on ebay and load some money on it and try it out

Also the programs are finiky as hell and tend to freeze, so you might not know if its working or not when you go to check it.

go look on http://s.dealextreme.com/search/gps+tracker it might be cheaper overall.

 

[themadhatter106]

Interesting Idea. Have you ever considered the Little Buddy Child Tracker. It's smaller than a cellphone so it'd be easier to hide, only costs about $30 new, and with the pay as you go plan it's .99 per track, no monthly fees.

 

[HAROX]

Ever heard (of) a device called GPS tracking system, and are you afraid of being tracked by it?

Being tracked, as an assailant or as one being assailed? As the doo-er or the doo-ee?

 

[MadRhino]

You can buy a smaller GPS tracker that will have much better autonomy and precision than a cell phone.
The cell phone is normally at the other end of the comm
I hide a GPS tracker on my everyday commuter. Eventually on all my bikes soon.
Seeing you bike fly away on Google Map... Priceless :wink:

 

[xenodius]

Here's what you need. In a few form-factors and already programmed... way better than BikeSpike at $7/mo.

http://www.integratedtrackers.com/GPSTrack/

From what I've read the battery lasts 2-8 months depending on service, how much you ride (with it off) etc for the smaller head-tube model.

Vibrations cause it to turn on and dump the location data repeatedly, as well as send an SMS to a preset number alerting you of the movement. Get an SMS app that lets you set up individual ringer settings and make your phone go batshit when you get a text from your bike.

You can turn it on/off by SMS too, but when it's "off" it only wakes up to check sms every 30 minutes IIRC. That's why it draws so little power. Still, it has GSM fallback so even if your thief gets back to his jammed chopshop before you turn it on, you can get an approximate location. I know my GSM phone is accurate to less than a kilometer, not great, but a hell of a lot better than nothing.

I'm going to have to ask my parents where they get their prepaid cards, because I know they have an emergency tracfone... they first charged it up with a cheap high minutes card, then found some 1year/100 or 250 minute card... then they realized that each time they apply a new card, it adds that number of minutes and extends the expiration date for all minutes by 1 year. So you can rollover stockpiled minutes by applying cheap, long-expiration date cards. I'm pretty sure they paid $25 for the 1-year card. I'll have to ask. I know you used to be able to buy SIM's with bonuses for their lifetime, like double minutes or double expiration. Wonder how that's programmed? =)

Neither of these will probably fit well on my KMX but I'm going to make it work. NO THEFT for my bike! Even though recumbents aren't a common target for theft...