- Tracker: £300 to buy, £150 to fit + £109 per year subscription .
- My solution: £20 total for two years .

Step 1: I bought a PAYG sim card last week for £2.50. I can charge up the credit and it lasts for ever, I must use the phone once every 90 days.

Step 2: I registered with http://www.followus.co.uk/. I paid £15 for 50 "credits". To register the phone number is 10 credits. Each time you track it's 1 credit. They have to, by law, send you 20 messages during the first year and 12 the year after, to say you are being tracked and each one costs 1 credit. Therefore £15 will last 2 years with 4 tracks per year.

Step 3: Find an old phone and Test!
I was going to put the maps up here but then though it would just be an advert for my car!! The resulting map gives a yellow circle on the map (mine was 700m wide) and the phone is expected to be touching the outer ring. Sure enough mine was right next to the line.
Very impressive.

Step 4: Hard wire car charger and hide phone (behind the dash maybe).


I'm told that when a car is stolen it is usually driven out of the area and parked on a random street for a few days so the burglars can see if has a tracker fitted. If no tracker is fitted then they come back two days later and pick it up, if it is fitted then the car is recovered and the robbers are long gone. Therefore I recon with my system I have a day or so to find it. If I can find out within a half mile where it is I can tell the police and we can drive around the highlighted area looking, but at least we will be looking in a small area.

Dan

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Now we just need a voluteer to nick the car to test the system!

 

thats awsome

 

pretty damn clever


will be on mine soon im sure.

 

Interesting concept, probably got an old mobile knocking around.

 

Hmm, having given Tracker nearly £750 over the past three years this looks promising.

 

I have a better solution.

Have the car permanently in pieces in the garage and only put it together when you want to go somewhere, it's worked for me in the past 2 years

Andrew...

 

Isn't BT bring out some pincode system, where you enter your code via a Bluetooth device to start the car? Read about this somewhere.

 

my mate has done thing b4 and it works v good ! got it hard wired in a box.

try to make it hands free ;-)

u can ring the phone when your car gets nicked and listen in !.... . or go Boo ha ha

 

Great idea fella! I'm all paid up on tracker already, but maybe worth adding as extra security !! Hide it somewhere away from the tracker device, they find the tracker after nicking the car, think they are safe, you follow them with this, then cut their nuts off!! Result!

 

Or use a ring tone that shouts out. WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE!!!

 

It's an old idea, which will work well. Downsides are that the batt will drain quicker - don't leave it in an airport car park and expect it to start! Also get a Vodaphone SIM as this has the best coverage and pinpoints to a 100M circle. Try Yell.com for their subscription rates as well as other companies that may be cheaper.

You could fit one of those solar batt chargers onto the rear parcel shelf to avoid flat batts?

F
PS for even more fun you can wire the mute signal from the phone to an ignition kill or a spark plug in the petrol tank Call the thieving scum and blow 'em up

 

top idea, but surely what about the problems of reception?

 

Good idea, have heard of it before but may now have a go myself.
Couple of thought, get an old mobile which does auto-answer (without ringing) so if nicked you could ring it (if able to locate a hansfree mic) listen to the scum who nicked the car for better idea where it's stashed.

Or better still, if you could locate a camera phone (so it couldn't be seen, tricky I know) and take a lovely snapshot of the scr*te and get it to picture-message it to your mobile or straight to the cops?
Easier said than done...