GPS tracker for bicycle

[BankFodder]

I have a decent bicycle. I don't use it as often as I should.

 

However the thought of it getting stolen always bothers me because the bike is a bit special.

 

I cam accross a small GPS tracker made by Ninja Tracking systems.

I bought it directly from their site, although I could have bought it from Amazon - but for the same price.

 

It is probably about the best thing on the market for this size and price and functionality.

However it has some serious flaws. I did a review on Amazon.

 

I've copied it here:- (It's a bit Work In Progress).

 

This review is made of two parts. At the top are my conclusions after a period of using the Ninja Tracker. Underneath is an initial review which I did following some poor experiences I had with the tracker on pretty well the first day I had it. I decided to leave my initial comments up for others to see so that they understand the whole thing a bit better.

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This tracker is pretty good. Its big advantage over its competitors is that the sim card is included and the credits don't expire and they are sold a very reasonable price.

It is small, light and does what is needed. It is not especially sensitive within buildings, so as with any tracker, you could lose the position if your stolen item is brought under cover. I haven't tried it in a car boot.

For this reason, if you know that your item has been stolen, you should send the GPS a command to report back every 10 seconds. You can do this on a PC or on a smartphone.

The tracker itself is just a small rectabgular plastic unit. I don't know if it is weatherproofed but I wrap mine in clingfilm on my bike. It is a shame thqat they haven't fitted on some lugs capable of holding plastic tie-wraps to make it easier to fix into a hiding place. It is suppied with a silly little plastic pouch with a velcro flap and a little tab through whcih you could thread a cord aor a tie-wrap - but it doesn't give me confidence. It's OK for the boot of a car.

You are meant to be able to locate it by SMS but this doesn't appear to be possible but I have yet to hear back from customer service on this.

The PC web-browser control panel is quite good but the mobile view which you would use on your smart phone is very basic and a bit glitchy. It does the job but it is very minimal.

 

The console map cannot be enlarged to fill an entire screen - which I think is pretty silly. I can't imagine why not.

There is no function on the console map to allow you to print the map with the location of the tracker. Very strange.

 

Customer service started out to be good but it has become very much less responsive.

The web-based control panel which broke doewn for a few hours is now working wihtout interruption.

Without direct sms control - if the website goes down, you have no way of using the tracker and no way of finding your item. I think that this is a serious shortcoming of the system.

Instructions are very poor. Whoever wrote them, is not very customer-facing.

For example, so far as I can tell (because customer service has not replied to me) a new command cancels the previous one. So if you want to know the location now, you will then have to reset the reporting intervals - otherwise it won't report. This kind of thing really should be explained.

There is no status report on the website - or on the mobile view as to what the current status of your tracker is - so, if you can't remember what was the last command you sent, then to make sure, you have to send it again.

When you set your phone number (to receive reports), the man on the phone told me that if you include spaces in the number - it won't work. It doesn't understand the international 00 - it needs a + (plus sign) - but none of this is included in the instructions or on the website.

 

If they could sort out the website, the mobile view, the instructions and if they were a bit more responsive with their cust. service, they could get 4-5 stars.

As it is, I give them three stars - but I'm pleased that I have got it and it is probably the best of the trackers currently on offer.

 

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Initial thoughts:-

I bought the tracker to protect a bicycle. However, it is small enough and cheap enough that you could thinking about buying one for a range of purposes and in fact Ninja Tracking that you could track your dog (just slightly too large for that, I think) members of your family - who could carry one in a handbag or a pocket - (not a bad idea) - an old person who has memory problems (very good idea) - and of course cars, motorbikes etc.

 

The unit is fairly small and compact. Black plastic. It has a built-in GPS unit and also a telephone sim card which is wedded to the GPS unit and can't be used in any type of phone.

There is a picture of it on the Ninja Tracker website. You can click the image to enlarge - but in fact when you click, it produces an image which is even smaller!! - Not a good start.

 

A really BIG advantage of this unit is that it comes supplied with a Sim card. You don't have to source your own one and deal with problems such as which supplier, whether the card expires after a certain period, whether credits are lost after a period of non-use etc.

This unit has its own SIM card. There are a few free credits included as a startup gift. After that you buy more credits from the Ninja website. They seem to me to be reasonably priced and I don't sense that this is a company which trying to fleece you for SMS/positioning credits once they have got you tied to their device.

 

The suppliers claim that the GPS is so sensitve that it will continue to receive a satelite signal even if it is indoors - so long as there is a window and the walls aren't too thick. I spoke with one of the tech guys before I bought mine and he said that there would be no problem with it receiving signals from inside a carboot. In fact they use that example in one of their videos.

I'm worried about this claim. I was inside a room on the fourth floor - clear line of sight to the horizon and with a large window and the unit lost the GPS signal.

We'll see.

 

The idea is that you control it from a web-based control panel on the manufacturer's website. If your bike/car/granny gets stolen then you can have a look at a map in the control panel and see where it/she has got to.

Also, you can call the tracker using your phone on the tracker's phone number and it will immediately send you an SMS letting you know its location.

You can also control it from your mobile phone. You don't need an app - you just go to the control panel on the internet.

 

The instructions which are supplied with the unit are frankly pretty poor. They give you only basic information - but they don't "take you through it".

 

I don't know why but they have decided to provide the instructions on three completely separate and independent pieces of paper. They are expensively produced, really quite unnecessary in their quality and as instructions, they really don't do the job. I suppose that they are more a kind of reference - but not really very complete.

 

Especially worrying is that they might even be inaccurate or incomplete.

For instance on one leaflet it says that you can call the unit on the phone using the Device SIM number (shown overleaf) - but there is no number shown overleaf.

I spoke to one of the tech support people and he said that this information and been superseded now and that it wasn't possible to call the unit at all. Depite that, he gave me a number which he said would allow me to call my Tracker. When I tried the number, it didn't work.

 

The mobile view of the Control panel doesn't seem to work very well. I have an HTC Desire HD using Opera browser. However, because it is a webpage - not an app, it shouldn't make any difference what phone you have.

Using my phone, there is an option to "arm" the device - but not to "disarm" it.

The tech support guy agreed that this feature doesn't seem to be working correctly.

 

Telephone support is very friendly and very enthusiastic. (However, see later comments about email support (above).)

 

All of the above are teething problems - other than the GPS sensitivity. This could be an issue once your bike/car etc has been put into a thief's garage.

However, the thing that prompted me to do start this review quickly is that this evening - only about 4 hours after I had started experimenting with the Tracker, I was amazed to find that the control panel had gone off-line.

It has been offline now, for about 4 hours. So long as there is no control panel, the Tracker is useless. This means that your BMW car has gone and been shipped out of the country, your dog/cat/daughter has been abducted and you will have no idea where the ransom note was written from, or your Granny has reached a holiday resort where she visited when she was a little girl - and you have no idea where any of that might be.

 

This really is pretty disastrous. I sent Ninja a message using their support service but only got a standard automated acknowledgement.

The Control panel is still down a few hours later.

 

No status reports on the website. No email alerts as to any problem.

I would have thought that with something so potentially critical, the control panel would be back up and running within minutes and also that there would be status updates.

I'm not very happy so far.

 

I hope very much that it is a mistake that I have made - and not them. We'll see,

 

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The next morning:- the website is back on line - so it isn't me. The tracker control panel was offline for at least 5-6hours. Probably longer. This is very serious and of course there was no alert or status report. It would be nice to know if while the control panel is down, the movements of the tracker are still being recorded somewhere so you could still see the history of the movement when the service is restored. I don't think that this is possible because there was no record of messages which I attempted to send to the tracker while the site was off-line.

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I'm looking at some of the features of the tracker:-

 

One quite neat feature is that you can define a Zone and you can configure the tracker only to trigger an alarm if the unit enters or leaves your zone. You can set up several zones - so far as I can tell.

The only problem is that you don't seem to be able to set the zone in very small steps. 250 metres seems to be the smallest possible.

I think that you would want to know before that if your dog or your granny has gone off on their own.

It's a good idea but needs to be refined. It doesn't seem a lot of use at the moment. In a city like London - 250 metres covers a lot of people and a lot of streets. How many of you have a garden which is larger than 250m?

 

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So far as I can tell, you can simply activate the tracker so that it will report back to you where it is and you can see its position on a map - on a browser on any computer/smart phone - or as well, you can set a motion alarm so that an audible sound is heard on your PC and an SMS alert is sent to your phone as soon as the tracker detects movement.

One glitch is that from a phone - using the Ninja website mobile view, you can arm the tracker - but you can't disarm it.

 

This is quite a serious glitch because it means that once the motion alarm is triggered, if it happens to be a false alarm, then from your phone, you have no way of reseting it so that it simply goes back into its armed state and sends another alert if there is a real attempt to remove your bike/car. At the moment, you have to find your way to a computer terminal to reset the alarm. Not very practical! and it really shows a lack of quality control on a very simple and obvious flaw in the mobile view.

It realy needs a reset instruction and a disarm function. Even on the PC control panel, there is no reset. You have to send two computer SMS messages - one to disarm and then one to re-arm. Silly.

Let's hope that they fix it very soon. My webmaster could fix this within half-an-hour.

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've just had an email response to my site-down query from their Support department:-

"My apologies for this,

 

There was a router down at the server centre, we are twinning the server this week so in the event of another problem the twin server will continue service without downtime."

 

Well that's good news for the future - but I'm still amazed that they don't send out an SMS service-down alert to all their customers. Then people could at least know that they weren't protected and could take appropriate action.

*******************************************

 

Another 24 hours and no further problems with the control panel.

[speedfreek]

Just how expensive is your bike? And what do you use it for?

 

Prevention is better than cure but you can only do so much in reality

 

The general rules are;

 

1, locks are a deterrent only - who remembers the videos of how to unlock a £50 Cryptonite D-Lock with the hexagonal end of a 10p Bic Biro doing nothing more than shoving it in the key hole n twisting? Bolt cutters, master keys and bumping all add to this.

 

2, see 1 if it's that expensive you don't leave it locked and unattended for any length of time round the back of the local college. Well any where for that matter. You should really get a cheap run around for day to day stuff.

 

Just remember if you don't follow the above rules and you lose 2 in 10 months through your own stupidity you'll end up as Prime minister of the UK

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/06/david-cameron-bike-stolen1

 

Whilst the concept of that tracker seams sound, the practicalities of it not so. Where do you hide it? Most expensive biikes are component stripped so would it be hidden for long, plus if it takes off and everybody gets em.... that's the end of their usefulness tbf.

[BankFodder]

Just how expensive is your bike? And what do you use it for?

 

Put it this way, it was a male-mid-life-cirsis purchase!!! (plus, I love gadgets)

 

Is that expensive enough for you?????

[speedfreek]

Watch it lads n lasses not answering the question and giving a wishy washy non decscript answer to the question means Bankfodder = DCam

 

Here have a rule 1 of my beast and she's dirty oh so dirty most of the time

 

 

[BankFodder]

What's DCAM???

[ashmk]

I thought this thread would be about tracking your route/progress via gps. If you want to do that try using a free android app called Endomondo.

[BankFodder]

Well it is about tracking the route of your bike ... it's only that normally it wouldn't be you who was on the bike!

[labrat]

try taking the seat off the bike before you leave it - they can ride it but not for long

[andydd]

]This (and other GPS trackers) were featured in a recent online bike mag, PinkBike I think... Generally the reviews wernt that great, the one featured was disguised as a standard headset but wouldnt be useful if the thief was clever enough to recognise it or stripped the bike down.

 

Most of the people interested in it had DownHill bikes which can cost a small fortune hence why they are interested in theft tracking.

 

Mine wasn't cheap despite a lot of the parts being bought 2nd hand.

 

Andy

 

[bikesmith]

 

I have a decent bicycle. I don't use it as often as I should.

 

However the thought of it getting stolen always bothers me because the bike

is a bit special.

 

I cam accross a small GPS tracker made by Ninja Tracking systems.

 

I bought it directly from their site, although I could have bought it from

Amazon - but for the same price.

 

It is probably about the best thing on the market for this size and price and

functionality.

 

 

I agree with this totally, best thing out there currently. I understand you had a few teething problems as the ninja tracker is a fairly new GPS i believe... anyway these must have been ironed out as I have nothing but a glowing review for the ninja tracker I purchased. My cycle is my pride n joy - very expensive and I looked around for a tracker to suit. The guys at Ninja were so helpful and gave me great advice about where best to place the tracker etc etc Anyway I have had several practice runs and it has tracked quickly and accurately each time - is it wrong that I am almost willing someone to steal it??

Edited March 11, 2013 by slick132
restored quote borders to tidy up