GPS tracker/ immobilizer

ham hock

Recently picked up a new Skoda vRS and was thinking of installing a GPS tracker. Anyone have any experience or recommendations? There has been a considerable increase in the local area of new cars being stolen lately so I want to try and take some extra precautions.

colm_mcm

if someone stole my car I wouldn't want it to be found.
maybe beef up your home security as a lot of car robberies involve breakin into the house for the key.

Atlantic Dawn

It will be 99% if they want the car they will break in to the house looking for the keys, increasing security on your house would be the best idea, maybe add CCTV.

kirving

Yeah, who knows what damage they'd have done to it in the minutes after they got it.

In terms of keys, leaving them in the hall or kitchen table, visible but out of reach of a fishing rod through the letterbox. You don't want some lad in a balaclava waking you up in the middle of the night with a kettle full of boiling water standing over you.

TrailerBob

OP, I got similar advice last week about a tracker here. One person actually recommended a brand, everyone else said to do different things. In the end I bought a Rottweiler to live in the passenger side, and now remove the gearbox each night for added security. I also park it outside someone else's house so they get broken into instead.

Can't be too careful....

This was the one recommended to me.. which I have bought...

http://www.itrack-uk.co.uk/

Wibbs

colm_mcm wrote: »

maybe beef up your home security as a lot of car robberies involve breakin into the house for the key.

+1. Home security is a biggie and would go a long way to put off the opportunist criminal.

I'd personally add a secondary canbus based alarm/immobiliser HH(shouldn't screw with your warranty as it's effectively an added plug in to your cars existing internal network and can be removed if required). This adds an extra layer HH, as factory security because of it's very nature as a standard, if broken once is all too easily repeated. EG the BMW key cloning thefts. Doubly so if you have keyless/comfort open and start. EG again the recent BMW theft using said weakness(though it's not just BMW). Physical deterrents like steering wheel locks that cover the entire wheel and maybe a driveway post would add to it, but would also increase the inconvenience for you. So it's a bit of a compromise. You can make a car "unstealable" beyond the scum using a trailer, because it makes for layers of inconvenience, but it does mean extra inconvenience for you the owner. So it's a bit of a balancing act of how far you want to take it.

TrailerBob wrote: »

OP, I got similar advice last week about a tracker here. One person actually recommended a brand, everyone else said to do different things. In the end I bought a Rottweiler to live in the passenger side, and now remove the gearbox each night for added security. I also park it outside someone else's house so they get broken into instead.

Can't be too careful....

This was the one recommended to me.. which I have bought...

http://www.itrack-uk.co.uk/

Which can be easily defeated by a widely available sub hundred quid device that plugs into the ciggie lighter. Criminals know this and use this. But you were hellbent on a tracker as the be all and end all, even though your car as a classic would be farcically easy to steal in the first place, which you admitted yourself.

Oh and nice one to dismiss and demean those out of genuine interest who were seeking to give you actually solid security advice, advice that would actually secure your car, rather than make you feel secure because you already decided tracker = gooooood. If ever there was an example of you can lead a horse to water…

TrailerBob

Wow, I wasn't having a go at you... Just a bit of humour.. it's a trend I boards that people (in general) tend to answer questions you didn't ask, rather than the one you did. In no way was I "hell bent" as you suggest...I appreciated the advice on the other thread, and decided that it was still something I wanted to pursue as an extra option for when it's not in the secure lock up, or just parked outside the shop for 5 minutes...does that make me stupid?
Not a million miles from attack on a poster with the last bit I feel

ironclaw

Wibbs wrote: »

Which can be easily defeated by a widely available sub hundred quid device that plugs into the ciggie lighter. Criminals know this and use this. But you were hellbent on a tracker as the be all and end all, even though your car as a classic would be farcically easy to steal in the first place, which you admitted yourself.

Not quite that easy.

I have two installed in a car as a test bed at the moment given I'm developing a system. They are off the shelf hardware from the UK but I've built the entire back end myself.

Its true, you can jam the GPS or GPRS/GSM/3G side, but you need to do it continually. Both of the systems in my car, when we tried, were very hard to jam. In fact we didn't actually succeed fully as although you may jam the one in the front, you couldn't jam the one in the rear (To jam GSM / GPS at at distance, you need decent output power) These trackers also take in all vectors, so if you can't get a GPS fix, it will report all the GSM/3G, noting GSM and 3G are entire different radio bands, so even you then need to block both. Not an accurate fix, but it gets you in the ball park.

Which leads us to when the car is parked up, again, you need to keep it locked down and jammed. The internal batteries in mine are set up in two different ways. Tracker A, he's going to be hell bent on trying to get a signal out. Once he loses power, he's got enough juice for about 6 hours (Sleeping if no signal is found in between) Tracker B, he's in for the long haul. A deep sleep, only waking to report the position at hour intervals. On test, it lasted over a week. And thats assuming they totally lose power, if they are left connected to the car battery, I'm fairly confident they would last 6 months or more.

Of course, the system could be run into an underground car park or shipping container. Your goose is fairly much cooked in the latter, but under test in Dundrum at the lowest level (Which actually has a cell station near M&S btw) we could still find the car. If the car isn't jammed on approach, you'll know the car park anyway.

I agree there are further 'hardening' features that can be undertaken, but €500 on trackers and perhaps €20 every six months on sim cards is money well spent.

Wibbs

Don't get me wrong IC, trackers are a fantastic layer of security and I have been tempted by them, but my main problem is a) they're seen almost as a fashion as the thing for security and more b) they're the layer after the fact that your car has already been stolen. A tracking system that allows the owner to stop the car remotely in the case of say a carjacking is a better layer(and why I was looking at them myself), but illegal under EU and therefore Irish law. You can only remotely immobilise the car when it is switched off.

It also depends on the type of car crime involved. The more "professional" thief who is stealing to order and/or for parts is more likely to park the car up somewhere to see if it "cools off", so in that case being able to find your car is more likely to come good(unless they drive straight to a car ferry and away). The "joyrider", or the criminal needing the car for a robbery has a different outcome. Sure you might be able to see your GPS signal coming from the kinda place where gardens have old fridges and stained mattresses in place of shrubbery, but what then? The Guards tend to be understandably reluctant to pursue while the scumbags are driving around like loonies, rather waiting for your car to be left abandoned and burnt out to then go in. Intervening yourself would be a very risky move. The robbery scenario nearly always results in a burnt out car too, after a high speed dash across the country and again the Guards understandably tend to stay back until it's safe for them and the public to intervene.

The type of car itself might skew things too. Some would be bigger targets for the pros because of the cost of parts, others would be bigger targets for joyriders because of ease of theft and performance, some of course would cover both bases.

Wibbs

TrailerBob wrote: »

Not a million miles from attack on a poster with the last bit I feel

Fair enough and I apologise for that.

ham hock

Thanks for replies - I suppose everything is a balance. As stated above the type of robbery in some way determine whether you would want the car back anyway.

The car is normally parked in a communal area in the cul de sac so it is not that obvious which house it belongs to, this is not intentional as the drive way only fits one car.