GPS Tracking for Stolen Camper Trailer wanted?

[Reloadron]

Could you just hide a phone in the trailer and use a GPS tracking app such as this? Any time the phone came within range of a cell-phone mast you could get an alert plus location data.

A good friend of mine did this. Her husband was screwing around and also bankrupting them. She downloaded an app on her husbands phone so she could track it. Seems many of those late at office and "something came up" were bars and girlfriends. She could nail his location within a few feet. The phone did not have to be active either. Long as it was on. Using her phone she could nail his location anytime. He never figured out the app was on his phone. All you need is a phone with an extended service battery and a way to secure it out of sight and out of mind. Of course you are paying for the service but you know where your stuff is including wayward husbands. Then there are things like LoJack but you need to call for cost details?

Ron

 

[Dr_Doggy]

since its in public place, what about something like a car alarm?

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

People ignore them. They go off and you spot the thief, but they still get away. Happened to me.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

People ignore them. They go off and you spot the thief, but they still get away. Happened to me.

That's mostly because they are always going off for no reason, as do house alarms

 

[tcmtech]

The thing I see is that thieves are by far lazy and looking for easy pickings which equates to if you make your stuff look like it could be actual work to steal they will probably bypass you.

If you look like a 'hookup and go' could be pulled off in less than a minute by two people you're a potential target. If you look like it could take several minutes of loud attention-getting cutting and hacking work to get through multiple levels of physical security devices you're not going to be a likely target. Plain and simple.

<30 seconds of work = stealable. >2 minutes of loud hard work = not worth the risk.

Thieves are typically not all that intelligent or ambitious and the few who are don't go after petty goods like camper trailers.

 

[gary350]

On another forum 2 guys are talking about how you take a cell phone apart and wire it so it sends out its GPS location all the time like one of this emergency transmitters on a sinking boat. You don't need to pay for service and you wire in a larger battery that will last a week or longer. You could also wire in a solar charger on the trailer roof the thieves can not see to keep a smaller battery charged. I don't know enough about cell phones to know how this is done. I asked a question and they said, you wire one part to the other part and connect the battery. That is no help to me if I had a circuit drawing I can probably do it.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Well.... https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-track-a-cell-phone/

Possibly with a lot of help, you can essentially "wake up - turn the phone on" the hacked phone with an inertial sensor/processor. So, in esscence, the phone is off until the object moves. There's a sensor I'm thinking about, but can't find it.

 

[Diver300]

Possibly with a lot of help, you can essentially "wake up - turn the phone on" the hacked phone with an inertial sensor/processor. So, in esscence, the phone is off until the object moves. There's a sensor I'm thinking about, but can't find it.

That is why most tracking devices have accelerometers in them. Most will wake and tell you about it if they are configured to do so.

 

[gary350]

The last 20 years I worked a job when a semi truck did not show up on time we use to call the trucking company to find out why. Within 30 seconds while we were still on the phone they would say something like, that truck is parked at a trailer park, space #27 in a certain town. Then 30 seconds later they would say, trucker spent the night with his girl friend he over slept and will be at your loading dock in 2 hours. I don't know how that tracking devise worked but the truck did not need to be moving to know where it was. The emergency trackers for boats work even after the boat sinks. Many of the trackers for sale work on cell phone towers and many camp grounds are in the wilderness far from sell phone towers. The biggest problem I have buying a tracker is lack of information the advertisements to not say if it is satellite or cell town tracking, it does not say anything about monthly service, no information about battery life, total lack of information I don't want to buy a dozen different trackers to find out how they really work and how much the monthly fees are.

I found an AD 2 weeks ago my accident at that moment I did not have time to read every thing so I saved it in favorites on my computer. I remember it was the size of a quarter, battery operated, easy to hide. I checked favorites the link is not there.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

The last 20 years I worked a job when a semi truck did not show up on time we use to call the trucking company to find out why. Within 30 seconds while we were still on the phone they would say something like, that truck is parked at a trailer park, space #27 in a certain town. Then 30 seconds later they would say, trucker spent the night with his girl friend he over slept and will be at your loading dock in 2 hours. I don't know how that tracking devise worked but the truck did not need to be moving to know where it was.

The £16 tracker I posted the link for earlier would have done all that, simply by ringing it and getting a txt back. Fairly obviously the second part of the info was found by actually ringing him and asking.

The emergency trackers for boats work even after the boat sinks. Many of the trackers for sale work on cell phone towers and many camp grounds are in the wilderness far from sell phone towers. The biggest problem I have buying a tracker is lack of information the advertisements to not say if it is satellite or cell town tracking, it does not say anything about monthly service, no information about battery life, total lack of information I don't want to buy a dozen different trackers to find out how they really work and how much the monthly fees are.

If you caravan sinks, it's not worth finding anyway

Your entire premise throughout this thread has been wanting CHEAP - so you don't want tracking for ships, which would be hugely expensive, and hugely expensive to find. Likewise you don't want satellite based trackers (assuming you can get them?, do they still make satellite phones?), as it would be hugely expensive again.

The ONLY option is GPS/GSM trackers, which are dead cheap, and pretty effective. If you want real-time tracking, then you need to subscribe to a server based system to do that, but surely all you need to do is ring the tracker and get it to txt you back it's position and speed. In the UK you can simply get a free SIM for it, stick £10 credit on it, and that will allow it to send 40+ txt messages.

I found an AD 2 weeks ago my accident at that moment I did not have time to read every thing so I saved it in favorites on my computer. I remember it was the size of a quarter, battery operated, easy to hide. I checked favorites the link is not there.

If it sounds too good to be true, them it most likely is.

 

[gary350]

The £16 tracker I posted the link for earlier would have done all that, simply by ringing it and getting a txt back. Fairly obviously the second part of the info was found by actually ringing him and asking.



If you caravan sinks, it's not worth finding anyway

Your entire premise throughout this thread has been wanting CHEAP - so you don't want tracking for ships, which would be hugely expensive, and hugely expensive to find. Likewise you don't want satellite based trackers (assuming you can get them?, do they still make satellite phones?), as it would be hugely expensive again.

The ONLY option is GPS/GSM trackers, which are dead cheap, and pretty effective. If you want real-time tracking, then you need to subscribe to a server based system to do that, but surely all you need to do is ring the tracker and get it to txt you back it's position and speed. In the UK you can simply get a free SIM for it, stick £10 credit on it, and that will allow it to send 40+ txt messages.



If it sounds too good to be true, them it most likely is.

I would like to have enough good information about trackers to make an educated choice when buying one. If we go camping at our favorite place Fall Creek Falls State Park the nearest town and nearest cell phone tower is 30 miles in all directions. The visitor center in the park has a cell tower but there is a donut circle round the park with no cell service for 25 miles in any direction. If I buy a tracker that works on cell phone towers and the thief only pulls the stolen camper 15 miles away the tracker is worthless. GPS seems to be the best way to go but none of the advertisement say much about them either. The battery in the tracker needs to last long enough for it to be found by the police. I do not want to buy something that I have to return because it will not work.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

As I've repeatedly said, power (charge) the tracker from the caravan battery - if they disconnect the caravan battery, then you've still got the full tracker charge to go.

As for cell phone coverage, you're pretty well stuffed whatever you use - although you could probably use extremely expensive solutions, but you appear not to want to do that?.

 

[shortbus=]

Let's see if I have this right..... You have an expensive camper, but the cost of a cell phone or tracker is too much????

 

[gary350]

Let's see if I have this right..... You have an expensive camper, but the cost of a cell phone or tracker is too much????

I never said anything about fees being too expensive. I only said none of the tracker advertisements say anything about fees. Not sure there is a fee? Wife can track it on here cell phone I have not learned how my new phone works yet.

Would you buy from, Home Depot, restaurant, Walmart if there is no price tag? Would you buy a new car with no price tag? Would you buy or rent a house with no price? What if all the gas stations had NO prices.

 

[Dr_Doggy]

... fleet tracking is expensive compared to cellular since it uses satellites and special equipment

you need more than gps, since you want to relay that gps data, not just record it

any quarter sized tracker is most likely , again GSM(cell tower) , or wifi (finding keys around the house)

also your tracker will lock back up when the device goes back to range in another tower...

getting a cell data plan and phone specific for trailer is again prolly cheapest you will find...

 

[tcmtech]

Anyone else here getting a headache?

Standard GPS tracking relies on cell phone signal and service.
Where he wants to go has no cell service.
Worst case scenarios are imagined.
Thieves have inconspicuous tools that can cut through materials in seconds that normal welding and fabrication service guys and their trucks don't have the capacity to do in like time frames ruling out a good physical multi-level passive defence system.
Practical reality is largely irrelevant.
Cost is but isn't relevant.
Want's to play 'Batman' on a Nickle and dime budget using things he does not have solid understandings of.

What else did I miss?

 

[alec_t]

I have not learned how my new phone works yet

When you have, you can phone a tracker vendor and ask them about fees, coverage, etc .

 

[Diver300]

... fleet tracking is expensive compared to cellular since it uses satellites and special equipment

It isn't much more expensive. GPS is free to use, and a GPS receiver is <$20 as a component.
Most fleet tracking uses GPS to find position and cellular radio to send that to server, so the running costs are only the cellular radio. If a fleet tracking company decided to add 24/7 call centres and other bells and whistles, and charge $50 per vehicle per month, someone will still buy them. The lack of cost indication on the fleet tracking websites is because the companies want room to charge lots of money.

If a camper trailer with GPS/cellular tracking is stolen where there is cellular coverage, and then taken where there isn't any, the system should still record where it was headed when it left cellular coverage. It doesn't seem very likely that a camper trailer would be stolen and then permanently left where there is no cellular coverage.

If you want coverage where there is no cellular coverage, look at https://www.findmespot.com/international/
That sends data via satellite, so it works anywhere. Data is much more expensive like that, so you don't get detailed track information sent routinely.

 

[Diver300]

The last 20 years I worked a job when a semi truck did not show up on time we use to call the trucking company to find out why. Within 30 seconds while we were still on the phone they would say something like, that truck is parked at a trailer park, space #27 in a certain town.

If a tracking unit is on a semi truck that is in use every day, the GPS receiver and the cellular phone in the tracking device in the truck can be left turned on all the time. The only reason most tracking units shut down is to save power, so that a car they are fitted to will last a month without being driven. Also, and good tracking system will record whenever the truck starts or stops, so the webserver that the company was looking at already had the position where the truck stopped some hours before. If the truck had been started, the tracking unit on it would have already told the webserver, so the fact that it hadn't meant that the truck hadn't been moved. The dispatchers at the trucking company will be really familiar with their systems so it is no surprise that they can find information like that quickly.

 

[Dr_Doggy]

tracking by cellular phone does not do those good things, GSM cell phones can only give locations and take pics and stuff....
you may be able to do more in vehicle with a special GSM module installed,
but anything that runs on gsm/sim will not work when out of tower range, and prolly pay per month for local plan, again prolly data required too. (idk prices/packages)
for personal phone use My cell company allows me to have my phone number on 1 sim, and data on another for only extra 10$
also when we say out of tower range i also mean that space between 2 towers that has just a bit too little signal strength

devices i mentioned earlier run on satellite so they never go out of range.. dont need sim card or phone plan.... which is what they used 20 yrs ago before cell towers