Help us fight bike theft and bike jacking!

[johannrissik]

Question 6 is where the wheels come off.....what if I don't use anything.....pse add a "none of the above" option.

Ditto Question 10 needs a "not at all option".

 

You'll be getting some skewed results...

[Spez247]

Survey done.

How about an app like "Find my IPhone"? Sim carrying device glued inside fork steerer, or inside seat post. Can't be on the frame, as manufacturers will only be too keen to void warranty, should anything happen unrelated.

[KingTJ]

I'm currently evaluating one of the overseas products in the mentioned price range. (Two devices for that price).

 

Will give more feedback in a month or two.

 

Couple of notes for now:

a) Make it with less features - start with just tracking of the bike to safe battery life - which you would need as long as possible from the moment the theft took place, not for fancy stuff while riding. Strava do the rest already.

 

b) Make the app rock solid stable - easier with less/basic/important features.

 

c) The less it is discussed on public forums, the less information is available on how to find/bypass/disable the device. This is the biggest issue - the more people use it, the more informed the thieves would be.

 

d) Mine has a LED light and noise alerts that you can trigger to see/hear your device - The sound might give the thieve a fright, but then also indicate where the device are. Only worthwhile if it make a noise when exiting the virtual fence I guess. Recording voices/discussions might be a later / advance feature.

 

If you can find a place/way on the bike to hide the device completely and where it cant be removed in a minute or two by an angle grinder, you would have a winner - even at more than R500.

Less is more...the simpler you make it the better it will be...dont get caught up in gimmicks...thats whate we have strava for

[GlockG4]

Great idea, and thanks for trying to do something. Like it was mentioned, keep it very simple, small, light and cheap. There are loads of other fancy toys that we can buy to tell us all kinds off useless info.

[Wally39]

Survey done. Question 6 definitely needs a "None of the above" option.

Good luck with the development.

[Martin PJ]

I bought a GPS tracking watch for my son off Aliexpress, this cost R450. I set it up to update a Chinese website every ten minutes. The battery lasts about 10 hours. They have lots of other similar devices.

[Wannabe]

Done.

[Beefy]

Less is more...the simpler you make it the better it will be...dont get caught up in gimmicks...thats whate we have strava for

Agreed. Keep it simple and help with the bike jacking risk. We have sites like strava and training peaks already for the performance functionality.

[Martin PJ]

Agreed. Keep it simple and help with the bike jacking risk. We have sites like strava and training peaks already for the performance functionality.

yep, we have all that.

 

The need is for a reliable device that can show you on GPS where you bike is.

[T-Bob]

I bought a GPS tracking watch for my son off Aliexpress, this cost R450. I set it up to update a Chinese website every ten minutes. The battery lasts about 10 hours. They have lots of other similar devices.

 

Who did you buy off? 

[T-Bob]

Ease of hiding it is also the key. Most of the ones I've seen have been big and either in the post or as part of the stem. You need it to be able to be stuffed into a down tube or up a seat post tube or even on an inner of a rim if possible.  

[Kall]

Sounds gd done

[Martin PJ]

Who did you buy off? 

Aliexpress.com.

[FootballingCyclist]

I reckon the best thing will be to have an online tracking page because 95% of the time when people are bike jacked, their phones are taken too so very few people will be able to check immediately, whilst stranded, where their bike is actually going!! Obviously for the "lucky" few who manage to keep their phones whilst being jacked, a phone app will be beneficial or for the people whose houses get burgled or bikes get stolen off the back of their vehicles.

 

It is a great idea, but as someone quite rightly stated, the less the public knows, the better, because we ourselves as hubbers cannot be certain that the leader of a massive bike theft syndicate isn't 1 of the members on here.

 

But I look forward to getting something like this...

[deanbean]

Need something like this :clap:

 

and did your survey

[Martin PJ]

I reckon the best thing will be to have an online tracking page because 95% of the time when people are bike jacked, their phones are taken too so very few people will be able to check immediately, whilst stranded, where their bike is actually going!! Obviously for the "lucky" few who manage to keep their phones whilst being jacked, a phone app will be beneficial or for the people whose houses get burgled or bikes get stolen off the back of their vehicles.

 

It is a great idea, but as someone quite rightly stated, the less the public knows, the better, because we ourselves as hubbers cannot be certain that the leader of a massive bike theft syndicate isn't 1 of the members on here.

 

But I look forward to getting something like this...

 

Like this. This is what the child GPS watch gives you on the Chinese website, www.gpsime.net. The accuracy of the GPS is around 6 m. It is good enough to see which room in the house the watch is in.

 

You can set the watch to update as often as you want. I have set it to every ten minutes. The website stores all the updates. The watch needs a SIM card with data.

 

There is an SOS button on the watch which can phone a designated number. You can also phone the watch to listen, I haven't worked out that part yet. You can also send an SMS to the watch, if will reply with the GPS location link in google maps.

 

I bought this for 35 USD on Aliexpress.com. I reckon a cheap option would be to buy one of these and put it somewhere on your bike. You would need to charge it every time you ride, battery last about 10 hours. It is also not waterproof.

 

There are many different watches and devices like this on Aliexpress.com. This one works OK, however, if I bought a local product I would expect the support to be better and the battery life to be longer. The Chinese chaps could not really tell me much on how to use it, I had to work out everything for myself.