Seriously though, GPS receivers and GSM radios are a few dollars each these days. Seems like an easy thing to hide in the frame (of course a thief could still part out everything except the frame)
Except if you're yourself willing to enforce your retrieval with violence... at which point the police will be interested if everything does not go easily.
There's a two well known flea markets where bike thieves sell their stolen property. Even if you are at the flea market, with you bike's serial number in hand, the cops do not come out.
A huge guy, who had his bike stolen once too many times advertises in CL. He will literally show up at the flea market, and take your bike back, after you show him the serial number. (Guys like this do not get enough props. He does it because it's just the right thing to do.)
I have never used his services, but have had bikes stolen. I've literally given up. My bikes are now pretty much throwaway. If they are stolen, it's no big deal. I want to buy a motorcyle this summer, but theft is first feature on my mind.
Would I prosecute a bike thief? If I felt they were professionals--yes. If, I thought it was a yuppie, who gets a rush out of stealing--yes. If it was a homeless person--no.
I saw a great deterrent to bike theft at Target. Outside the store they had these little pods you put your bike in. You supply the lock. They take up too much room for most businesses though, but they look like you could stack them two units high?
New service like uber: "rent a 350 pound Samoan"
VC money please!
I'll take some equity for the name.
However, you should definitely press charges every time if you do get the police involved. That's the only way to reduce bike theft. If you don't press charges, the thief simply goes and steals another bike the next day.
For ultralight racing bikes, definitely not, but those are probably a minority even in cycling-friendly cities like Seattle.
But if the police does not care, it is not useful.
Or use BLE and an accelerometer. If your phone isn't in range and the bike is moving then starting tracking.
I haven't done the math but you could probably get away with recharging every 6 months or so.
Switching it on for a minute or so every hour if outside BLE range could help, but would make it harder to locate your bike fast. Maybe, it should start at a 100% duty cycle, and drop off over time? (Clock drift shouldn't be a problem. The device has GPS, so it has an accurate clock)
And you need to filter that 'motion detected' thing, or your bike will keep resetting itself, even before it can check the BLE connection. Or is that something that the sensor ICs can do for you, too, nowadays?
I've always thought about doing stings from the other direction: with bait bikes. For a bait bike, you just need a bike and a GPS tracker with a battery life of a week or so (a poorly-locked bike will be stolen in a matter of days). The GPS tracker is inserted in the seat tube, and if you glue/oxidize the seat in the seat tube, the thief can't remove the seat to check even if they are smart enough to check for a tracker. You can even add security cameras where you set up the bait bike (outside your apartment or home is a great place) to get additional information. The GPS tracker then gives you a location of either where the thief lives or where they store their stolen property, which lets you bust them pretty easily.
Even in a bicycle-friendly town with 100,000 in population (ala Berkeley), I can't imagine that there are more than a few hundred bike thieves. It would take only a dozen individuals doing bait bikes to bring down bike theft drastically. Combine that with "Bike Batman" style vigilantism identifying stolen bikes on the used market, and I think it's possible to reduce bike theft to near zero in a local area.
Not true, there are multiple battle-tested solutions out there, like these: www.spybike.com
It's not a bad product - but the company seems to have gone bust. They've stopped answering any emails, and the last news was that their Seat Post Tracker was meant to launch in 2012/2013:
http://www.bike-eu.com/sales-trends/nieuws/2012/8/spybike-se...
Their current trackers are 3G only - and most countries are shutting down (or have already shut down) their 3G GSM networks.
I'm definitely on the lookout for any replacements.
What? Some operators are closing 3G networks, but not, I think, "most countries". Frequency allocation is moved to LTE, yes.
But 3G modems fall back to 2G (GSM) which is'nt going away any time soon in most places (yes, there are exceptions), and 2G is quite enough to send location info.
No, it just has to be around the object. Try wrapping your cellphone in aluminum foil. It won't receive or send anymore.