Vehicle Tracker

defender

Well-Known Member
Following the theft of my Defender I have decided to fit a tracker to the replacement Defender and below is my experience of the chosen device.

I ordered one of these and it arrived a couple of days later, the contents of the box are shown below
IMG_0484.JPG

The kit included the tracker itself (shown second left in the top row and you can see it is very compact), mains charger, in car charger, a magnetic back if you decide to use magnetic mounting (next to the tracker), a waterproof zip lock bag (bottom left) and an O2 sim card, there is also a mini cd but I can't play that.

Set up was really simple:
  • Activate sim card in a suitable phone, luckily wife wires phone is O2 and disable voicemail (text 1760), I then set up an online account and set up automatic payments so if my credit gets below £10 it adds £10.
  • Insert sim card and battery and charge for 11 hours.
  • Initialise the tracker by texting 'begin123456' 123456 is the default password and this is easily changed, after a text is sent to the unit it will respond i.e. 'begin ok!'
  • Set up the phone that can access the unit, these phones will all receive messages from the unit, so I set up my phone first by texting 'admin123456 447769etc' note the use of country code to support international roaming. After setting my phone, now the primary phone, I repeated the above message with my wife's number. This may have been a mistake because she can now check where I am at any time!
The unit is now set up.
Telephone the number of the tracker and after a short while it will send a text to all of the registered phones with lat, long, speed and time. The text also includes a link to google maps so you can see the position.
There are lots more features that can be set up like a movement alert but I have not set that up at the moment because it would need deactivating every time that I use the vehicle but I shall start using it after the holiday - again simple to use text 'move123456' to the tracker to activate the feature and 'nomove123456' to cancel.

Once charged the battery has a 120 hour life so I am using this to identify the best position prior to properly installing the device but so far is working well in my first choice of location, I was concerned that I might not get gps reception where it is but it seems ok.

So far I am really pleased with the function and the simple set up and would highly recommend it.

Martin
 
Thanks for posting, sounds good. Only things that would worry me are running costs, if it's constantly accessing GPS satellite signals would this not be expensive? Or does it only work when you dial to access it?
Also would it work if under cover for example multi story car park or as led to believe for most defenders a shipping container?
Would be interested on any updates
Wingy
 
I think you can get two types, on the work vans i have one fitted that you track on the internet, costs £10.00 per month butnyou can log on and see a map showing vehicle journey on any day. You can also set it up to notify you if vehicle is breaking the speed limit, vehicle is stationary for long period etc, even shows you when engine is running
i also have a covert type on my range rover, this doesnt send out any data normally but if itsnstolen you phone a number and they activate itbso police can trace. Think i paid a £200.00 one off payment for the sim card in thatone but it covers the vehicle for as long aa i own it
hope this helps
 
Thanks for posting, sounds good. Only things that would worry me are running costs, if it's constantly accessing GPS satellite signals would this not be expensive? Or does it only work when you dial to access it?
Also would it work if under cover for example multi story car park or as led to believe for most defenders a shipping container?
Would be interested on any updates
Wingy

Wingy,

The access to gps is free the only costs are the texts it sends to you, so if you change a setting it sends a text - 10p
If the vehicle is stolen, depending on setup, it will either send you a position when requested or send a series of positions every few minutes, so costs of these texts. If it cannot use gps for a fix it will send a position based on triangulation of the phone signal which is obviously not as accurate. I suspect that no tracker will work inside a shipping container but if the tracker is sending out position updates you will know where it disappears and that should lead the police to the point at where it disappears and hopefully recovery.

Martin
 
What happens if it's been stashed before you realise it's gone, does the tracker store and send historic data. IE it's route from several hours ago ?
 
The Internet ones certainly do, you can look back at any day in the past and it will show you the journey the vehicle took on that day including speeds vehicle was travelling at etc
 
Hi Rodp,

That should not be an issue if you set up the movement feature, as soon as it moves more than 200m it will alert you and start sending position reports.
There is the facility to add an SD card but, as pointed out by Wingy, once it is in a container you cannot communicate but the above should negate the issue that you are concerned about.

Regards,

Martin

Regards,

Martin

What happens if it's been stashed before you realise it's gone, does the tracker store and send historic data. IE it's route from several hours ago ?
 
Hi Rodp,

That should not be an issue if you set up the movement feature, as soon as it moves more than 200m it will alert you and start sending position reports.
There is the facility to add an SD card but, as pointed out by Wingy, once it is in a container you cannot communicate but the above should negate the issue that you are concerned about.

Regards,

Martin

Regards,

Martin

Cheers :thumb:
 
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