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Ask Slashdot: Inexpensive Anti-Theft Vehicle Tracking System?
New submitter Chuckles08 writes "I'm about to complete the purchase of an electric scooter that is worth over $5,000. Since I'll be parking it on a college campus, it will be vulnerable to theft. I'd like to install some kind of tracking device on it but the solutions I've seen so far seem quite expensive. Are there any reasonably priced and effective solutions out there? Ideally, I'd like to be informed by text message if my scooter moves without my knowing. I'd like to then track the scooter's movements." And anything small enough to work for a scooter might be very useful for car owners, too.
Chances are that the insurance company will pick up a significant portion of the tab to have the vehicle lojaced. I was looking into it when I was going to buy a motorcycle and the cost after insurance company rebate and discount makes it quite inexpensive. Plus they have a good record for recovery and ever car that's lojaced increases the likelihood that a vehicle thief is going to be caught red handed and sent to prison.
Garmin has two plans. The simple one lets you draw virtual fences around where it's OK for the thing to be, and alerts you when it leaves the area, and also lets you poll for location at any time.
The more full-featured plan (basically $10/month) also will automagically poll and keep history, so you at least know where the thing was when the thieves realized that it had a GPS tracker on it and ripped the thing off.
I built a little 12v -> 5v converter for the one of these I have on a device that has a battery, and hooked it in permanently, so every time the main device is switched on, the GPS's battery gets recharged.