S4 stolen

[Risky]

Sounds daft I know but I have read people keep the key in the adapter thinking it is meant to go there, not realising you can start the car with it!

It was useless to US as the car didn't have the plasic key to get into it. Lincoln Audi forgot to mention that when the sold it.

[flylife2k]

Gutted for you mate, hope the scum get what they deserve and you get it back in one piece...soon

[Risky]

Don't rate my chances. Probably broken into small parts already. The police haven't even found it on CCTV yet.

[HOL]

I am seriously considering getting an old Iphone3g we have and hardwiring it deep behind the dash to keep it charged, so I can track the car with find my iphone.

I think you can also get something with a payg sim card that does the same sort of thing for under £100.00

[MikeFish]

I am seriously considering getting an old Iphone3g we have and hardwiring it deep behind the dash to keep it charged, so I can track the car with find my iphone.

I think you can also get something with a payg sim card that does the same sort of thing for under £100.00

Why not get a tracker fitted in the same place?

[HOL]

I am seriously considering getting an old Iphone3g we have and hardwiring it deep behind the dash to keep it charged, so I can track the car with find my iphone.

I think you can also get something with a payg sim card that does the same sort of thing for under £100.00

Why not get a tracker fitted in the same place?

I had a proper Tracker in my Type R impreza back in 2000. (Subaru's were actually cool 1999 - 2003 - before they got cheap and common, like the Sierra Cosworth).

Maybe technology has changed now?, but it was £100 a year, only the Police could acess the system to find a car and would drain my battery if the car sat in my garage for 14 days (like a holiday) as it constantly tried and failed to find a satellite.


After writing the above yesterday, I found simple hardwired kits as cheap as £30, that you can stick a PAYG sim in, which not only allow you to track the car in a google map on your smartphone, but they will actually text you first - if it moves position from a box on the map, or between 'x & y' hours of the day.

I might buy a few for peeps as Xmas presents.

[adsgreen]

Ok - I've covered lots of this in the past but I commercially involved with hardware trackers and have done a lot in this area.
Short version - GPS based systems (anything) are very very fragile in that given 10 quid from ebay you can block it. A GPS signal is like looking for a candle flame 20miles away. It's trivial. If thieves are going to the hassle of getting a workshop laptop worth thousands then you can be damn sure they will be expecting and prepared for GPS based systems. The units we have do contain security aspects but to completely avoid this minefield we sell them as an asset tracking unit rather than security. We got 20-30 competitor products and tested them against our own and in all cases without fail it was possible to block the signals with the same process.

The VHF tracker based systems don't suffer as they frequency hop and are short range (compared to GPS) but these are very few and require a network of receivers and are comparatively more expensive. But you need to decide if you want the car back or not.

The battery systems are more advanced now - most modern cars have a battery management system that will sequentially disconnect non essential items as the battery level drops. Also the units themselves are more conscious of battery use and the increased mobile network coverage means that in general less power is required to transmit a signal. We have two units, one that's about cigarette size that lasts 30 days and a housebrick unit that should last 5 years on one charge but the demo one is still going (I think) after 7 years.

Cheap units are cheap for a reason - they are probably very fragile, have no IP rating and a payg sim needs to be topped up. You can get dedicated embedded sims that over the course of a year will work out the same price but wont need active maintenance.

Also consider how bad iphones were with tom tom when used on a dash. They use a lot of software to mask the fact that their view of the sky is obstructed by the roof. Putting a cheap unit behind the dash may "work" but will get frequent drop outs and may get lost in a built up area/city.

Personally an extra non-oem immobiliser has more chance of keeping the car safe. For example, I had a simple normally open relay on the starter button 12v feed linked to a rfid tag. You had to have the tag in the right place when pressing the starter and even keeping it on the key wasn't the end of the world as it was unmarked and the receiver in the car was behind trim panels with no external indications to it's location (and a very short range - 2cm or so). If it failed for whatever reason it wasn't hard to bypass but it was spliced in away from the button so if you removed the centre console you'd still not find it.

[RossDagley]

I use www.pinpointpal.com

Cheap, alerts me on over speed or movement outside an area etc if I want. Very good value I think.

If anyone is interested, I can get you a free month as an existing customer (I'll get a free month too!)

[Nobby]

RE: the ODB port reprogramming - can you not just pull the plug out for the OBD socket, or it is used for other things too?

Or, chop the OBD plug off and wire in a secondary connector to each end. Or just splice a certain wire to it and add a switch.

[adsgreen]

It's twisted pair for the data channels so have to be very careful not to wreck the signal.
However most obd readers use the +12v and -12v pins to determine if they are plugged in so adding a switch to that would work.