Sure-Track

[cfmonk]

Hi All,

 

After having a generator stolen last year we decided to invest in a couple of trackers. One to put in our own unit and one for use in hired in plant.

 

They weren't cheap, a few hundred quid plus a year subscription fee but Sure-Track had been recommended to us by a company who saw that we had had one pinched before and so we went with it.

 

On Thursday of last week I was awoken on my holidays by my business partner telling me that somebody had broken into the farm where our yard is and managed to get the wheel lock off our genny and helped themselves to it. Long story short, after a bit of a false start (we got the tracker numbers wrong and so they spent the morning tracking the unit in our office!) the generator has been recovered and is now sitting in a secure compound in Chertsey.

 

I wasn't directly involved in the process and so can't make any comment about how straight forward it is and it did cost £500 to get it recovered but having it back is an absolute win! And hopefully the police will do some forensics and try and link it to the guy who's house it was found outside who, at the moment, claims he "Never saw it before".

 

Anyway, the point of the post is if you have nickable plant of any description then check these guys out: http://www.sure-track.co.uk/.

 

Chris

[adam2]

Sounds a good idea, glad to hear that you got the equipment back.

Would insurance cover the £500 reclaiming fee ? Cheaper for the insurance company than replacement cost.

 

As such devices become more common, I suspect that more thieves will leave the stolen equipment outside their home etc, in order to claim that it is nothing to do with them. Hopefully the police are aware of this tactic ?

[cfmonk]

Hi Adam,

 

Our own unit is essentially uninsured. The excess on any generator theft is £2,500 which is about what it's worth! So, I'm sure they would if you agreed it in advance but not in our case!

 

And yes, of course the police know the guy was involved in its theft / selling on. It was parked on his bloody driveway! They now have it for forensics. Hopefully they will be able to link it to him or some other known low life!

 

Cheers,

 

Chris

[Lamplighter]

You would be suprised what equipment has similar trackers fitted. Ten years ago I fitted one inside a domestic boiler. I was later advised that the culprit who stole it and the tenant who turned a blind eye were spending time at one of Her Majesty's less desireable residences. It turned out to be a repeat performance.

Brian

[bigclive]

I bet there's an Android app for using a cheap phone as a GPS tracker/locator.

[Gerry]

I bet there's an Android app for using a cheap phone as a GPS tracker/locator.

Avast mobile security will do this.

Just send a SMS message to the phone and it will report back it's location.

Cheers

Gerry

[timtheenchanteruk]

as will prey, scream and load of other apps.

[cedd]

Or alternatively, if you fancy a little project, buy yourself an arduino, a GPS module and a GSM module. They're surprisingly cheap and most of the code's freely available.

Take a look at scooterputer for instance as a decent example. It's capable of texting him if his scooter's started, and replies with gps coordinates if you text it.

 

Of course, you've got to power the thing. I guess most thieves will be wise to this kind of thing and will remove the main battery pretty quickly. A secondary battery within the unit charged from the main one should give you enough life to track the thing down.

 

You say you got charged for recovery. Who charged you that?

 

The worry of course with knowing where your equipment is, is that you're tempted to go and retrieve it yourself. Potential for meeting with the culprits seems pretty high!

[bigclive]

This ones neat. I didn't realise that even if you had a bare phone with no apps you can push them out onto it from the market. That means that a basic android tracker system would just require a bare, but registered phone.

 

Android lost site.

 

Better still, you can activate the camera and take pictures, so if the phone was in an internal waterproof enclosure with a hole where the lens was it could back up GPS location with pictures of the surroundings and perhaps even the thief themselves.

 

Shame 3 stopped doing the ZTE Racer. It was a barebones android phone with a basic resistive screen that was very robust.

 

Come to think of it... I guess this application could be used with an old Android phone with a broken screen?

[cfmonk]

The issue with all trackers is battery life. We used to have one in the generator which you sent a text to and it told you where it was. The issue is that if you left it on for a few days then it flattened the generators battery. The sure track ones have a battery life of about three years and they will tell you when its battery is getting low. They are also a small black box the size of about two cigarette packets and hence can be hidden easily inside a unit.

 

The recovery cost was charged by sure-track and covers the cost of the bailiff who goes and locates and recovers the asset.

 

Chris