But not every smart phone user will have downloaded the relevant app. That's only going to be of interest to people who've bought a Trackr for themselves and considering that globally they've only sold 4.5 million, there's only a very small chance of a fellow user being near enough (within 30m) to your target device to help you find it.
I use a small GPS tracker that I can use on various things like my luggage while travelling, my drone, my camera equipment, and my car. I'm still looking for a way to hide on my bike as the saddle rails are preventing me getting it out of sight under there. Battery life is good and I can track it live on the provided website, or just send it to sleep and ping its location as and when I need to know it and it'll send its coordinates back to me (viewable in Google maps).
It doesn't rely on other people or devices as it works just like a mobile phone. In fact, I can call it and listen to whatever's going on in its vicinity. It'd also be good for wandering pets or elderly relatives who might suffer from Alzheimer's.
An answer to bike thieves?
- Thread starter porteous
- Start date
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I take the point about depending on the take up of apps, but at under £25 I am still very tempted, no running costs apart from annual batteries as far as I can see, and they seem to be selling pretty well, so the "crowd" facility might be good in towns, at least.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
They don't seem to be selling well enough for the crowd facility to be worth a damn. And even that depends on what happens to "TrackR Inc".
Sorry, but I'm going to hammer this point home: even if all 4.5m have been sold in the EU and US and no-one bought multiple TrackRs (unlikely IMO), that's 4.5m out of a population of 835m or about half a percent. So let's say 5¼m people pass through Leicester Rail Station a year, that's an average of less than 17000 per non-Sunday, so maybe 85 Trackr users a day - and that's if the thief is dumb enough to leave the bike within 30m of the gateline of one of the 10th-ish city's rail station and all Trackr users are running the app when they pass through (and I'm not sure why they would unless they hate their phone battery life).
Park it in a back street half a mile away and I suspect it'll see one user every blue moon. Park it in a back garden in a market town and it may never see one. Put it in a container at a self-storage and wait to sell it at a Fresher's Fair the following autumn and the battery will probably have gone flat before it ever sees someone with that app.
It seems like a so-so way to locate stuff you've lost (but the Big Brother cloud/crowd tracking isn't needed for that), but it seems a bit rubbish for tracking stolen bikes even if you can hide it well.
If you think it's a good idea, can I tempt you with some elephant repellant for your bike too?
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
You do know that ROI joined the euro and that a punt is worthless now?
jefmcg
Guru
If you get good at it, you could earn an average of about £175,000/year.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj1fGrHTls8
jefmcg
Guru
Oh, it's TrackR that had the YouTube that really annoyed me. It's the second last line that I found worrying.
View: https://youtu.be/LIMe8cvidGg
View: https://youtu.be/LIMe8cvidGg
"No need to call the police". Yup, you've apparently just found your bike amongst a whole ot of other bicycles, but no need to tell anyone.
classic33
Leg End Member
Do they not still have the map showing the location of users. Nearest to me was five miles away, in a straight line.
jonny jeez
Legendary Member
- Location
- Chislehurst, Kent, UK
glasgowcyclist
Charming but somewhat feckless
- Location
- Scotland
It's your money, your shout.
Here's a map of the TrackR users around Great Malvern (assuming it's near you, going by the given location in your avatar).
I'd point out that their map of users in Isla Vista, "the theft capital of California" where they staged the bike theft demo, has a much higher concentration of app users, yet it took 10 days for him to get a hit from a user who passed close enough to the bike to register its last known position.
That doesn't fill me with any confidence that it would be £25 well spent.
In any case, it's not an answer to bike thieves if it doesn't prevent them from stealing it in the first place, which TrackR can't do.
jefmcg
Guru
That's what I what I was about to say.
And I am not seeing it working out like it did in the video, at least in European cities. If you are standing in front of a row of terraces, and the proximity alarm is going off, what do you do then? Knock on a few doors, and ask them if they stole your bike? Even if you are certain which house it was in, that's not enough for the police to get a warrant. I think the only thing worse than having your bike stolen would be staring into the face of the guy who stole it, who is smiling and lying to you when you know your bike is metres away.
To be fair, the video was done in 2014 before they did their initial crowd funding, so there would have been a lot less trackrs there at the time.
glasgowcyclist
Charming but somewhat feckless
- Location
- Scotland
Fair point.
confusedcyclist
Veteran
I just checked out the TrackR website, and you can see the network on an interactive map from back in March. It seems reasonable in major urban conurbations at first glance, until you zoom right in to see the individual devices, but within the city of Bradford where I work, there were only 7 devices. Chances of your bike being stored within 30 meters of those is slim. I'm thinking that Bluetooth connectivity is up to 30m, probably not that good in the real world use though. As other's have suggested, unless the bike is stored in direct line of sight outdoors, retrieval still has its issues.
classic33
Leg End Member
jefmcg
Guru
"up to". My bluetooth headset cuts out pretty sharply after a few metres if there is a wall in the way.
Thank you very much. TBH I am surprised at how many are in my area. Clearly if it catches on then the £25 might be more cost effective.
