chiefswallow
Banned
My friend just bought a new motorcycle, lives in a condo, works in a shady neighbourhood. He's worried about his bike. I know scorpion has their $500 top of the line unit with rLink (not even sure it works in Canada), but I was looking for a smaller, cheaper, simpler solution, possibly easier on the bikes battery too...
Here's what I'm thinking:
He's got an old/spare android phone he's willing to donate to the project. I checked, it's got "real" GPS as well as "A-GPS" so should be sufficient.
I activated a Wind sim card, $40 for 6 months of unlimited text/picture text/video text ($6.67/mo basically). I installed Cerberus Anti-Theft app, bundled it into the ROM for more difficult removal (survives a full factory wipe/reset, new sim, new SD, the works), and gave it root access so it can remotely take photos and text them to me, turn on data, turn on roaming, GPS, wifi, etc.
I turned off all data (mobile plus roaming, only thing enabled was text messages) on the phone then threw it in the trunk of my car and went for a drive while on the Cerberus mobile tracking website on my normal phone. It was slow with position updates (around one every 60 seconds), and every single update was about 75ft from my actual location (always 75ft to the east every time). In checking the "status" with Ceberus it said the phone was using AGPS (i.e. using cell towers to triangulate the position), I guess in the metal trunk of the car it was a no-go for GPS so I moved the phone to the back seat of the car. Updates were much quicker, around every 20 seconds, and usually it had appeared to have a real GPS lock but again the position wasn't very accurate and this time randomly jumped around, about 100ft from my actual location, but sometimes smack dead on my location. I moved the phone to the back dash of the car and the updates were super smooth (looked like about every 4 seconds) and the location was dead on, no more than a few feet from my actual location.
So this leads me to believe it could be effective for tracking the motorcycle. Here are a couple issues that come to mind:
1. Cerberus is a one time purchase application, no monthly fee, so you don't get an important feature called "device location history". Some other security providers ping the phone every xx seconds and store a days or weeks worth of location events in their server. This way you could log in and see the location right up to the point the phone was turned off, smashed, etc. Where as with Cerberus, if you were say at work, and bike was stolen at noon and they already had the phone battery out by the time you got off work, it would be impossible for you to have any idea where your phone/bike went
2. Cerberus doesn't have a "geo-fence" function, or at least I wasn't able to find it. So you've got no real notification of when your bike gets moved/stolen. Another application called Root Defense has Geo fencing but it's a per-month subscription ($4/mo), but for that $4/mo you get stored logging of everywhere your phone/bike has been. So if it's smashed/disabled, you can still look up its last location (even if you weren't actively tracking it at the time). What I was thinking for the geo fence is just set up a geo fence at his condo, and at his work. As soon as he pulls into either, it'll send him a text saying that he entered the geo fenced zone (so he knows everything is working). As soon as the bike leaves, same deal. This will provide a good security setup, even in his condo underground parking where there is no cell or GPS service, the phone will let him know when it's on its way off the property if it gets stolen.
3. To get "real" GPS signals you couldn't really bury the phone too deep in the bike (i.e. not under the gas tank). Probably have to be under the seat or in the trunk to be effective, leading to easy discovery. If they wake the phone up it'll ask them to do a simple swipe to unlock. When they swipe Cerberus will silently snap a front photo using the camera and text me the picture. If they swap the sim to their own sim it'll text me their mobile number as well as their cell provider and immediately enable gps, data, wifi, the works, so when I start remotely tracking it's good to go. Tested, works sweet.
4. There is a USB power jack on the bike, so I can keep the phone charged from the bikes battery. Not sure how much drain it would be on the bike battery though. For the winter time when the bike isn't being ridden I could rig up two portable USB charger boxes (size of a deck of cards), and keep the phone plugged into that (because the main bike battery would be out of the bike). Once a week just swap the battery boxes and then it'll always keep the phone charged up and ready to track. The phone is in a waterproof case, so no problems with water.
I e-mailed Cerberus about the geo-fence option, if they can add that feature, and an option to store device location/log on their server (possibly only when NOT in a geo fenced area, save their server load a bunch), so you could look up "last known location", even if for a subscription fee would be fine.
Let me know what you think, or if there's already a product out there that for $6.67/mo (or $10.67/mo if you had to subscribe to Root Defense too) has unlimited live tracking with geo fences (would pretty much need unlimited because I want a text every time I pull in or out of a geo fenced zone, so I know it's working), etc.
Thanks!
Here's what I'm thinking:
He's got an old/spare android phone he's willing to donate to the project. I checked, it's got "real" GPS as well as "A-GPS" so should be sufficient.
I activated a Wind sim card, $40 for 6 months of unlimited text/picture text/video text ($6.67/mo basically). I installed Cerberus Anti-Theft app, bundled it into the ROM for more difficult removal (survives a full factory wipe/reset, new sim, new SD, the works), and gave it root access so it can remotely take photos and text them to me, turn on data, turn on roaming, GPS, wifi, etc.
I turned off all data (mobile plus roaming, only thing enabled was text messages) on the phone then threw it in the trunk of my car and went for a drive while on the Cerberus mobile tracking website on my normal phone. It was slow with position updates (around one every 60 seconds), and every single update was about 75ft from my actual location (always 75ft to the east every time). In checking the "status" with Ceberus it said the phone was using AGPS (i.e. using cell towers to triangulate the position), I guess in the metal trunk of the car it was a no-go for GPS so I moved the phone to the back seat of the car. Updates were much quicker, around every 20 seconds, and usually it had appeared to have a real GPS lock but again the position wasn't very accurate and this time randomly jumped around, about 100ft from my actual location, but sometimes smack dead on my location. I moved the phone to the back dash of the car and the updates were super smooth (looked like about every 4 seconds) and the location was dead on, no more than a few feet from my actual location.
So this leads me to believe it could be effective for tracking the motorcycle. Here are a couple issues that come to mind:
1. Cerberus is a one time purchase application, no monthly fee, so you don't get an important feature called "device location history". Some other security providers ping the phone every xx seconds and store a days or weeks worth of location events in their server. This way you could log in and see the location right up to the point the phone was turned off, smashed, etc. Where as with Cerberus, if you were say at work, and bike was stolen at noon and they already had the phone battery out by the time you got off work, it would be impossible for you to have any idea where your phone/bike went
2. Cerberus doesn't have a "geo-fence" function, or at least I wasn't able to find it. So you've got no real notification of when your bike gets moved/stolen. Another application called Root Defense has Geo fencing but it's a per-month subscription ($4/mo), but for that $4/mo you get stored logging of everywhere your phone/bike has been. So if it's smashed/disabled, you can still look up its last location (even if you weren't actively tracking it at the time). What I was thinking for the geo fence is just set up a geo fence at his condo, and at his work. As soon as he pulls into either, it'll send him a text saying that he entered the geo fenced zone (so he knows everything is working). As soon as the bike leaves, same deal. This will provide a good security setup, even in his condo underground parking where there is no cell or GPS service, the phone will let him know when it's on its way off the property if it gets stolen.
3. To get "real" GPS signals you couldn't really bury the phone too deep in the bike (i.e. not under the gas tank). Probably have to be under the seat or in the trunk to be effective, leading to easy discovery. If they wake the phone up it'll ask them to do a simple swipe to unlock. When they swipe Cerberus will silently snap a front photo using the camera and text me the picture. If they swap the sim to their own sim it'll text me their mobile number as well as their cell provider and immediately enable gps, data, wifi, the works, so when I start remotely tracking it's good to go. Tested, works sweet.
4. There is a USB power jack on the bike, so I can keep the phone charged from the bikes battery. Not sure how much drain it would be on the bike battery though. For the winter time when the bike isn't being ridden I could rig up two portable USB charger boxes (size of a deck of cards), and keep the phone plugged into that (because the main bike battery would be out of the bike). Once a week just swap the battery boxes and then it'll always keep the phone charged up and ready to track. The phone is in a waterproof case, so no problems with water.
I e-mailed Cerberus about the geo-fence option, if they can add that feature, and an option to store device location/log on their server (possibly only when NOT in a geo fenced area, save their server load a bunch), so you could look up "last known location", even if for a subscription fee would be fine.
Let me know what you think, or if there's already a product out there that for $6.67/mo (or $10.67/mo if you had to subscribe to Root Defense too) has unlimited live tracking with geo fences (would pretty much need unlimited because I want a text every time I pull in or out of a geo fenced zone, so I know it's working), etc.
Thanks!
Last edited:
I think I checked out lojack but let me check their specs again 
