Stolen Jeep recovered with GPS Tracker

DieselPowered

"A man from Dunshaughlin Co Meath, who had his jeep stolen last night, has located the vehicle, thanks to his iPhone and iPad.
The jeep had a GPS tracker installed which the owner was able to track.He contacted Gardai last night and together they tracked the vehicle on an iPad to a field off a main road. Gardai then contacted the air support unit and the jeep was recovered shortly before 1am this morning".

Friday 11 October 2013 - taken from a local radio station.

Has anyone else got trackers installed? Are there good ones on the market?

RandomAccess

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/balloonist-finds-stolen-jeep-in-meath-field-using-gps-29654863.html

pred racer

You could use a cheapo android phone and a find my phone app.

fletch

Yes I have a tracker. It's very handy, it can alert me when my car moves from its current location/outside a given radius (which I use a lot as I cycle to work so my car sits outside the house all week). It can alert me when my car goes over a certain speed. I can ring the car and listen in to the cabin. If I wanted I can remotely shut down the car (although I didn't bother wiring this up).
I popped a ready to go meteor sim into mine and top it up once every 6 months by €5/€10 so it's very cheap to monitor

Denis322

fletch wrote: »

Yes I have a tracker. It's very handy, it can alert me when my car moves from its current location/outside a given radius (which I use a lot as I cycle to work so my car sits outside the house all week). It can alert me when my car goes over a certain speed. I can ring the car and listen in to the cabin. If I wanted I can remotely shut down the car (although I didn't bother wiring this up).
I popped a ready to go meteor sim into mine and top it up once every 6 months by €5/€10 so it's very cheap to monitor

Do you mind me asking where you got it and you intstall it yourself? What sort of price did it cost?

pogsick

fletch wrote: »

Yes I have a tracker. It's very handy, it can alert me when my car moves from its current location/outside a given radius (which I use a lot as I cycle to work so my car sits outside the house all week). It can alert me when my car goes over a certain speed. I can ring the car and listen in to the cabin. If I wanted I can remotely shut down the car (although I didn't bother wiring this up).
I popped a ready to go meteor sim into mine and top it up once every 6 months by €5/€10 so it's very cheap to monitor

What one do you use/where did you get it?

fletch

I got it here
It was really easy to install....just tapped into a 12V constant wire. The most difficult part was finding a good hiding spot for it/figuring how to remove dash panels. I fitted it myself in about 20mins.

DieselPowered

Have looked at those China import Trackers before and dubious whether to trust them or not. Sounds like you have good experience from them?

advertsfox

Holy crap that's my last landlord! Delighted he got it back

fletch

DieselPowered wrote: »

Have looked at those China import Trackers before and dubious whether to trust them or not. Sounds like you have good experience from them?

Absolutely no problems with mine. The "instructions" were interesting (badly translated from Chinese) but they were enough to get it installed and working. You could buy it from an Irish supplier but it's essentially the same thing

BMJD

bit of a mad story, he was able to get the Gardai to pick him up from the pub and call in the Air Support Unit to locate it, I couldn't even get them to answer the phone last time my car was broken into!

“I'm self-employed and the 2008 passenger Landcruiser cost me €70,000.

“There's no way I'd ever have been able to replace it if I didn't get it back.

“The GPS was professionally installed on my phone and every year I deliberate over paying the €150 renewal charge. That €150 saved me €70,000,” he added.

also doesn't seem to understand depreciation and insurance :pac:

dauphin_army

That was me who had my jeep stolen.
The golden rules of journalism, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The REAL FACTS: That same evening, prior to my jeep reported stolen, there were a number of other very similar thefts in the same area.

The Gardai were anxious to use my tracking detail in the hope the organised gang who stole it we're responsible for the other thefts and may have hid all the vehicles in the same place.

clint_silver

fletch wrote: »

I got it here
It was really easy to install....just tapped into a 12V constant wire. The most difficult part was finding a good hiding spot for it/figuring how to remove dash panels. I fitted it myself in about 20mins.

mind me asking more on this. (sorry if questions sound simple)

does it need a sim card? whats best way to do that? cost?

does it need to stay charged, can it be connected to an external power source and be located elsewhere in the vehicle other than under the dash?

fletch

clint_silver wrote: »

mind me asking more on this. (sorry if questions sound simple)

does it need a sim card? whats best way to do that? cost?

does it need to stay charged, can it be connected to an external power source and be located elsewhere in the vehicle other than under the dash?

Yes it needs a sim card....I have a ready to go sim card from meteor...top it up by EUR5 every 6 months and that keeps it active.
Yes it needs power. I have mine wired into the 12V constant and haven't had any issues with it draining the battery (I went away on a 2 week holiday and the car started first turn)
You can locate the unit anywhere you like once you can get 12V power.
I dropped my car in to a garage to get work done recently and the unit let me know that the guys in the garage took the car for a 160km/h+ spin.

ironclaw

If you have a high end car, just remember two things about trackers:

1) You can jam the cellular / GPRS / EDGE / 3G signal so the unit cannot communicate with the mobile networks. You can also jam the GPS signal. The technology to do so is common place and has been found in the past when people were lifting cars here in Ireland. Also, simply placing the car inside a closed shipping container (Or similar) will block both (Faraday cage principal)

2) If you kill the power i.e. Disconnect the battery then the tracker will go dead unless it has a supplemental power supply.

When we fitted GPS trackers to high end, we always recommended fitted two, both wired independently and on their own supplemented power supplies. The cost of the tracker and the top up for the SIM card is utterly negligible to the worth of the car.

Glad they recovered the car. I wish more people would fit these and insurance companies should be encouraging it with discounted rates for those who invest in such tech.

clint_silver

ironclaw wrote: »

If you have a high end car, just remember two things about trackers:

1) You can jam the cellular / GPRS / EDGE / 3G signal so the unit cannot communicate with the mobile networks. You can also jam the GPS signal. The technology to do so is common place and has been found in the past when people were lifting cars here in Ireland. Also, simply placing the car inside a closed shipping container (Or similar) will block both (Faraday cage principal)

2) If you kill the power i.e. Disconnect the battery then the tracker will go dead unless it has a supplemental power supply.

When we fitted GPS trackers to high end, we always recommended fitted two, both wired independently and on their own supplemented power supplies. The cost of the tracker and the top up for the SIM card is utterly negligible to the worth of the car.

Glad they recovered the car. I wish more people would fit these and insurance companies should be encouraging it with discounted rates for those who invest in such tech.

you can get a gps blocker from the chinese sites for 15 quid. mate got one last year, walked up henry st in dublin find someone on the phone, switch on the blocker and listen to the expletives.

sort of Related Question, eircom phone watch (or whoever owns it now) called recently and when put to them that their GPs system can be blocked with a simple blocker said their system can bypass GPS blockers someway with a new system that makes direct contact. any idea what he was talking about?

how would one get a supplemental power supply, is that an actual car battery? Im more concerned about the contents of my vehice than the vehicle itself so would like to place the tracker in a self contained unit if possible.

ironclaw

sort of Related Question, eircom phone watch (or whoever owns it now) called recently and when put to them that their GPs system can be blocked with a simple blocker said their system can bypass GPS blockers someway with a new system that makes direct contact. any idea what he was talking about?

Just as an aside, your mixing up GPS and Cellular jammers. GPS is what is used to position someone, a cellular jammer blocks a phone from communicating with a base station i.e. You can't make a call, use internet, send a text etc.

Eircom normally uses the landline. If it uses a mobile phone signal (Or any radio signal in general), it can be jammed and there is no way to prevent this. So by 'direct contact' I presume they are referring to the landline connection. By the way, jamming a radio frequency in a licensed band is extremely illegal.

how would one get a supplemental power supply, is that an actual car battery? Im more concerned about the contents of my vehice than the vehicle itself so would like to place the tracker in a self contained unit if possible.

You can easily wire a small 12V battery to the unit and place a charge / relay circuit on this so when the car is on it will run from the car battery and when the car is switched off, it is transferred to the supplemental battery. Most GPS Trackers are extremely low power so will happily run for weeks on a decent 12V battery. Most professional units already have an internal battery and will be very intelligent when it comes to power saving.

deaglan169

i thought about fitting one of these but figured it would be hard to hide the antennas or maybe having them visible would be a deterrant

Atlantic Dawn

Do Jeep have poor security on their vehicles or were the keys taken to steal it?

fletch

deaglan169 wrote: »

i thought about fitting one of these but figured it would be hard to hide the antennas or maybe having them visible would be a deterrant

The antennae don't need to be on the exterior to get signal

NuckingFacker

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Do Jeep have poor security on their vehicles or were the keys taken to steal it?

It was a landcruiser, hence Toyota.

challengemaster

fletch wrote: »

Yes it needs a sim card....I have a ready to go sim card from meteor...top it up by EUR5 every 6 months and that keeps it active.
Yes it needs power. I have mine wired into the 12V constant and haven't had any issues with it draining the battery (I went away on a 2 week holiday and the car started first turn)
You can locate the unit anywhere you like once you can get 12V power.
I dropped my car in to a garage to get work done recently and the unit let me know that the guys in the garage took the car for a 160km/h+ spin.

What sort of interface have you for setting up parameters such as radius etc and viewing activity?

ABajaninCork

If you have a 'High End'/'High Performance' car, some insurers will insist a tracker is fitted.

fletch

challengemaster wrote: »

What sort of interface have you for setting up parameters such as radius etc and viewing activity?

It's all text commands, I created a simple Android app for my text dialler on my house alarm, keep meaning to getting around to doing one for the GPS tracker. For now, I have all the commands stored in a text file on the phone and I just copy and paste whatever I need