How much would you pay for a gps tracking/immoblizer system?

[hyper24]

I was thinking of building a GPS tracking/immobilizer system for your car.
All you would have to do is wire it to your power, then you can do various things by sending an sms to a specific number. It would give you the GPS position of your car, you could also immobilize the car, etc...

There are many systems out there but they cost 1000+ i believe, im wondering what features would you like in it and how much would it have to cost for you to buy it.

[LSX-438]

i think quicktrak have a special on for CAMS license holders this month, $300 install and just pay for monitoring or something

[ByfordBlade]

I'd either pay $70k as long as it came with a free car, or not do it at all. I choose the latter as the install cost plus monitoring would well exceed a years insurance and let's face it, if someone steals your car it will be damaged regardless of if you direct the police to your immobilised vehicle or they find it a week later out the back of an industrial estate.

The only value in GPS immobilising systems in my view is if your car has been stolen and is within 100m of you, just so you can make it stop and beat the living bejjezus out of the lowlife piece of crap who stole it from you.

Otherwise, comprehensive insurance FTW.

[LSX-438]

I'd either pay $70k as long as it came with a free car, or not do it at all. I choose the latter as the install cost plus monitoring would well exceed a years insurance and let's face it, if someone steals your car it will be damaged regardless of if you direct the police to your immobilised vehicle or they find it a week later out the back of an industrial estate.

The only value in GPS immobilising systems in my view is if your car has been stolen and is within 100m of you, just so you can make it stop and beat the living bejjezus out of the lowlife piece of crap who stole it from you.

Otherwise, comprehensive insurance FTW.

Some insurers require it too. It was the only way i could actually get insurance on a particular car.

[hyper24]

No thats the thing, their are NO monitoring costs. It runs off the phone networks.

Lets say you were at work, and someone started you car without your permission it would send you an sms automatically, at the cost of normal sms rates so 20 cents.
Then at any time you can text your car and it would respond with the gps co-ordinates. Or you could just immobilize it.

[bush_basha]

that would be pretty damn good, but then again if your asleep and someone steals it or your out of range for mobile phone reception it wouldnt be that great, as where i live my car is undecover in "secure" parking and i dont get any reception down there. but it would be a great feature for an add on to an existing alarm, see'ing as tho it wouldnt cost monitoring costs, just the cost of a message, did you say you built them or thinking about it, how much are you looking at doing them for?

[CarlFST60L]

No thats the thing, their are NO monitoring costs. It runs off the phone networks.

Lets say you were at work, and someone started you car without your permission it would send you an sms automatically, at the cost of normal sms rates so 20 cents.
Then at any time you can text your car and it would respond with the gps co-ordinates. Or you could just immobilize it.

Here are some points about these systes:

Quiktrak Pro's:
- Uses a dedicated network for location
- Is able to locate the device without clear view of sky (as requied by GPS)
- Reasonably well priced, great design, dedicated montioring room
Quiktrak Con's:
- Drive anywhere outside Sydney basin, and you get zero coverage
- Its not an alarm, its a tracking system. You need to 'add' and alarm
- Accurate to 15m in good reception, worse as you get to Sydney's outskirts
- Not very good as a fleet monitoring solution
- On going fee's

GPS trackers Pro's:
- Always accurate
- Even though it needs to see clear sky for a GPS fix, it will usually store its last known position. So if it goes into a car park, last known point will be the carpark entry.
- Not an alarm, you have to buy this seperately
GPS Con's:
- Great fleet tracking software available to allow you to monitor fleets of cars, run reports, log's, warnings etc etc etc This is really what tracking is for!
- Relies on GSM coverage (mobile coverage)
- Intall a good alarm and no one will ever start your car or move it without a flat bed. 99% of the time, if they went to the trouble of a flat bed, locating a GSM antenna will not be a challange for them, they will unplug the GPS antenna, or cut it, and take your car.
- High on going fee's

GSM based car alarm Pro's (Rhino RAMV2):
- Fully featured alarm, 2 point immobiliser (option up to 3 point, even though thats a waste of time), shock/body impact sensor, tilt sensor (for the flat bed), all points of entry protection, option to work off factory remote, internal mass movement sensor (body movement or other mass), glass break detection, door, boot, bonnet, ignition sense
- SMS to 5 numbers when ever any of the above is triggered, with detail of what triggered
- 3 outputs to activate when you want via SMS. This is great for anti hijack, let them take your car at gun point, wait 2 minutes, the send a message to activate a relay which cuts the fuel pump
- You can get a location of the car over the GSM phone network, however, this is not accurate, somewhere between 50m and 500m
- Design based on Austrlian NZ standard 3749 and 4601
- Low battery warning via SMS
- All black wiring so pro's cant just 'find the blue wires'
- To my knowledge, out of thousands of high risk cars, no one has successfully taken a car with this product fitted.
Con's:
- Need a good installer to set it all up properly
- Doesnt have GPS or Quiktrack's tracking ablity
- Relies soley on the GSM / SMS network

Standards approved Car alarms (3749) Pro's:
- 3 point immob
- All points of entry protection (Glass, boot, bonnet, ign, shock etc)
- All black wiring
- Alarm is in a sealed unit
- Very high quality alarms that have passed standards that test just about everything that makes a great alarm.
Standards approved Car alarms (3749) con's:
- Require a pro installer to install it as per the standards
- You should ask the installer to confine the unit to somewhere that takes time to access, such as, behind the speedo's, or way up the top of the dash, and keep the wiring and installation looking factory so people cannot just see the unit hanging. Expect to be paying a little more this.
- Alarms cost more, but it also costs the companies $$$ to get it passed standards, so its a good thing really

Every day cheap alarm Pro's:
- Cheap, need I say more?
Every day cheap alarm Pro's:
- Cheap, need I say more?

[hyper24]

Well if your car was undercover and out of cell phone range it would alert you once it gets into coverage. So imagine the guy steals your car, he drives out of the car park and then it alerts you. You sms back telling the car to shut down then you run out the front to meet him.

Or if they pick up you car on a flat bed, they don't even start your car. But the system is hard wired to the power (and has battery back up) and it could easily be stored in a weird place say behind the dash or under a seat or something. So when they look for an alarm they wont find this because it has nothing to do with the ignition barrel.

Anyways so your car is on a flat bed and switched off, but you can still sms your car and find its gps coordinates, which is accurate to within a few meters.
Now gps works everywhere, so your only limited to phone cell coverage areas. And i doubt they would be taking your car out of cell phone coverage as its everywhere these days.

I have already built a gps speed limiter system, which limits the speed of your car depending on where you are. Adapting this to gps tracking over gsm network would be fairly straight forward. Im just trying to figure out if I should try and make something out of it (production wise)

So as you can see the system uses the free GPS network and the telephone network so on going costs are nill except the price of an sms when you want to find some info out. Also the box would be extremly discrete, just a little black box you could hide anywhere, and even if they find it and disconnect the power to it, it would still work for a while off backup.

[C4B]

Of course you could plug one of these little puppies into the car you're stealing and neither GSM nor GPS will help...... :nyuk:

http://www.navigadget.com/index.php/2007/01/29/gps-and-gsm-jammer/

[CarlFST60L]

Well if your car was undercover and out of cell phone range it would alert you once it gets into coverage. So imagine the guy steals your car, he drives out of the car park and then it alerts you. You sms back telling the car to shut down then you run out the front to meet him.

Or if they pick up you car on a flat bed, they don't even start your car. But the system is hard wired to the power (and has battery back up) and it could easily be stored in a weird place say behind the dash or under a seat or something. So when they look for an alarm they wont find this because it has nothing to do with the ignition barrel.

Anyways so your car is on a flat bed and switched off, but you can still sms your car and find its gps coordinates, which is accurate to within a few meters.
Now gps works everywhere, so your only limited to phone cell coverage areas. And i doubt they would be taking your car out of cell phone coverage as its everywhere these days.

I have already built a gps speed limiter system, which limits the speed of your car depending on where you are. Adapting this to gps tracking over gsm network would be fairly straight forward. Im just trying to figure out if I should try and make something out of it (production wise)

So as you can see the system uses the free GPS network and the telephone network so on going costs are nill except the price of an sms when you want to find some info out. Also the box would be extremly discrete, just a little black box you could hide anywhere, and even if they find it and disconnect the power to it, it would still work for a while off backup.

To your first few paragraph's, see C4B's post :nyuk: IF the pro's want your car, its gone, simple as that. What most do, is take your car on a flat bed to a neutral location, strip the main parts out, they will find your box, chuck it, then take the car to the chop shop.

Two your last two paragraphs. Why reinvest the wheel? Also, how have you limited the speed of the car? Factory PCM I hope, nothing worse than a mechanical limiter. Is this the system the government is trialling, or just finished? Or something your playing with.

Nothing personal, just interested worked in the industry for a few years.

PS, There are heaps of these products around. They dont sell in any kind of volume, there is no big market for it here. You can pick them up pretty cheap, but again, no real market in AU for them.

[hyper24]

Yeah thats what I was thinking as well, there wont be a big enough market to make it worth while.
Yeah but how would they know the car has this box in it? If you installed it say behind the dash or inside a head rest, im sure people can think of creative places, they wouldn't even know where to look to find it. And by then you would of already followed the GPS co-ordinates to the place.

Theirs various ways to slow down the car, either by cutting spark or cutting fuel. I was going to make it so it cuts one injector at a time slowly, till it comes back under speed then enables them again.

Its just something ive put together in my spare time at work as being a student engineer at my current placement they wanted me to make my own project so ive thrown this together.

Its been working for a while on the breadboard, im making a pcb for it now and a proper housing, but i guess its just more a proof of concept. But cost to make them in bulk would be about $40, thats just parts though of course.

[bush_basha]

have ago at making one anyway mate, im sure if it worked perfectly and they'd be cheap enough youd get a couple of responses, i know id be pretty keen at looking into one of these, they sound pretty cool

[blackjacknz]

This sounds like the system ive been looking at for mine...

http://www.ezitrack.com/ezitrak/

[Super Snake]

There is I believe only one system out there.

YouTube - Suburban Auto Group Trunk Monkey #4 - Thrown off a Bridge (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geynA-JYDHE)

[LCTorry]

I have been doing some research into this today. Seems there is some cheap china alarms with SMS and GPS that can be had for almost under $200. I just need to find somewhere that supply them. Reports from people using them say they work and are good. Con is coloured wiring and not approved.

The Rhino one looks the goods but as CarlFST60L said no GPS. Ill keep hunting.