I met with a manufacturer today of a very advanced GPS vehicle tracking system (unlike LoJack). I wanted to see if this kind of product would be of interest for those with high theft cars such as ours..... What do you guys think?

If you want more info on the product, email me at ginadunn@mindspring.com, I really dont want to post too much info on it on a public message board...

 

Got any patent numbers I can look up?

 

Ed, email me for info....

 

Alpine came out with one a couple of years ago called Mobile Mayday.

It's is a GPS/cellular system that monitors and track the car in realtime. They can give you directions (like OnStar), track the car, unlock doors remotely, honk horn, and disable the ignition of the car if necessary. It merged with Alpines alarm system and could also be used with a navigation computer/display.

It works very very well - I have it installed in my car. It was taken off the market this year due to lack of demand and very high cost.

Unless the system you plan is affordable - I would say that interest in it would be low. The other question you have to ask yourself is who plans to do the monitoring??

 

This system is similar to that one, but a little more advanced. The cost is high, but compared to lojack and an alarm which will both barely protect a Type R from being towed away in the middle of the night, it seems very worth it to me.

I am installing this in my car very soon, but I wanted to pass the info on to anyone else who may be interested. It's a fantastic product....

 

A while back I was looking for something in GPS and ran across a couple of sites that sold a GPS system. With a $10 monthly fee you could track the car realtime on the web. Yes you not the Cops. I thought it be cool, the price was ~1K for the GPS.

 

Only big draw back to GPS based is that you can hide a car indoors or in a container and the GPS can't pick it up....Cell based systems (ie Boomerang system) is better.


[Modified by JohnnyBoy, 2:53 PM 4/10/2002]

 

JohnnyBoy ---- Yes hiding a car indoors or a container may cause a problem, if the system wasnt designed with so much forethought... BUT this system will pick up any movement of the car once it is parked, i.e. it being "put" or moved indoors or into a container. This system alerts you in real time as soon as the car has moved, whether the motor is running or not. So, in this case, the system would alert you via cell, pager or email at the first sign of car movement, prior to it being put into a container. Also this system runs on both GPS and a specific cellular network in order to eminate this sort of problem. If the car was hidden inside or in a container it wouldnt matter, you would have tracked it when it was moved from its parked location on the way to hiding it inside something. The system will also give you the exact coordinates (exact address) of where the car is located (whether moving or not) along with the speed if the vehicle is moving (whether on its own or being towed) so you can alert the police or seek it out yourself. I hope that this helps explain a little.

 

I had GPS tracking on my R when it was stolen. Sure it works but by the time you find out it was stolen it's long gone. At least that's my experience.

And according to the last transmission from the CDPD modem, it was in the same spot I parked the R...


[Modified by redblues, 8:48 PM 4/10/2002]

 

that sux...

 

Redblues--- Did your system alert you when its coordinates changed and how often did the system check for movement or changes? This system actually checks the coordinates of the car every few minutes and if those coordinates of the car change, it will send an alert to you in multiple formats. In this case, it is both a security alarm and a gps tracking system. At any time you can ping the car from their website with your login and find out where the car is and where it is going. There is a lot of good technology in this unit.


[Modified by 00 Type R Chick, 10:34 PM 4/10/2002]

 

Here's my setup- Dell Latitude LM laptop, serial cable hookup to Garmin GPS12 GPS receiver, Novatel CDPD wireless modem in PC Card slot. External GPS antenna mounted underneath rear bumper cover. Laptop running Windows NT, GPS tracking software, and a script I wrote that automatically sends GPS coordinates every 5 seconds to my desktop system (I have a log file about 2 GBs large with every single location the car has been, minus the times when CDPD coverage wasn't existent).

The problem here is, even with this system, the car was stolen. I know exactly how they defeated the system I put in. It doesn't hurt to add a layer of security to the car though, so by all means install the tracker box. There might not be any way to *prevent* a thief from taking a car. If a thief wants your car, he'll take it.

 

http://www.trackmenow.com/ http://www.covert-gps-vehicle-tracking-systems.com/ http://www.trackmyvehicle.com/locateproducts.htm http://www.teletype.com/pages/tracking.html http://www.traveleyes.com