[tlrobinson]

Exploding bike seats? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlBT1d_GWo

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)

[ptaipale]

Finding your bike is not helpful if the police is not interested. And they usually aren't where I live.

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.

[LanceH]

I've heard of people meeting, trying "the fit" and just riding off.

[marincounty]

I bet you live in the Bay Area? Specifically, the east bay? Near Berkeley?

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?

[cpeterso]

Karin Cycle in Berkeley is a known fence for stolen bikes. The Yelp reviews are depressing, but clearly busting Karim Cycle is not economical for the Berkeley Police Department.

http://yelp.com/biz/karim-cycle-berkeley-3

[vostrocity]

You have to consider how difficult it is for the police to do anything in that circumstance – it's just 'he say, she say.' It might be easier if you've filed a police report and your bike is registered, but even then there is no evidence (especially on the spot) that the seller (who is probably just lingering around and not an actual registered flea market seller) stole the bike. I think part of it is also the culture: you don't want cops coming into a flea market to arrest people, because the whole flea market is a bit of a legal grey zone.

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.

[walrus01]

"A huge guy"...?

New service like uber: "rent a 350 pound Samoan"

VC money please!

[joncrocks]

Vigilant-me.

I'll take some equity for the name.

[ptaipale]

No, not Berkeley, not even the USA. This phenomenon is global.

[dpark]

The problem is then you need to remember to keep your bike's GPS tracker charged. Your bike isn't carrying a large capacity 12V battery the way your car is.

[tlrobinson]

For this purpose you could just have the cellular module wake up every x minutes to check to see if it should begin tracking.

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.

[dpark]

I have to be honest. I'm seriously doubting that math you didn't do. In my experience GPS murders small batteries. And putting large batteries on bikes seems like a nonstarter for bikes that aren't electric assist.

[mikepurvis]

But the GPS only needs to be active when the bike is a) moving, with b) the BLE phone connection absent. There are ultra low power motion sensor ICs that literally have a GPIO for "motion detected". Put that on the reset pin of your CC2541, and you'll be set for months of battery life.

[vostrocity]

Bluetooth LE and motion sensors are actually brilliant, but I think we're treating this too much as an individual problem when we can eliminate bike theft in the first place and not worry about installing trackers.

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.

[Someone]

You don't care where your bike went, you care where it is, and you want a way to get that data remotely. The GPS only needs to be on when you call your bike, and that's where the problem lies: you have to find a way to decrease power usage of the GSM part.

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?

[walrus01]

I am pretty sure you could make a very, very low power watchdog circuit that only wakes up a GPS receiver and 2G/3G modem when it detects 60+ seconds of continual motion. Otherwise it'd sleep at very low power. This would fit in a $50 CF seatpost.

[Natsu]

Couldn't you power something like this from the bike itself somehow?

[dpark]

I am still doubtful but frankly neither informed nor interested enough to debate it further. Maybe BLE is more impressive than I've been assuming.

[tlrobinson]

There are a number of BLE beacons that last for a year on a single CR2302 battery. They only transmit for a fraction of a second at a time, then sleep for 2+ seconds.

[anc84]

That sounds like a great Kickstarter project. ;)

[rorykoehler]

I thought about turning this into a hardware startup. GPS stickers for anything like bikes, guitars etc. Energy consumption was the big issue. Didn't pursue it further because of that.

[rorykoehler]

You could hook it up with a dyno that attaches to the bottom bracket with the gps sitting in the down tube. Cycling would charge it. Also checkout lock8.me . They made a smart lock instead which makes a lot of sense.

[justinator]

Here you go,

http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=128

[JustSomeNobody]

I would only buy one that charged while I rode my bike.

[wildmusings]

I wonder if you could do the same thing a car does, charge the battery with the engine.

[dpark]

For electric-assist bikes, the GPS tracking could be worthwhile. For other bikes, the complexity of the system seems not worth it. It's probably more cost effective to just insure the bike and not have a small generator, battery, GPS, and wires all over.

For ultralight racing bikes, definitely not, but those are probably a minority even in cycling-friendly cities like Seattle.

[ptaipale]

Put the GPS tracker + battery in the headlight of a bike with hub dynamo... the tracker would work, you can activate it for just a few munutes a few times a day.

But if the police does not care, it is not useful.

[jdblair]

I've thought a lot about this. The problem with hiding the tracker in the frame is the GPS and GSM antenna will be blocked by the metal tube. There would have to be a way to get the antenna out (maybe a special bottle cage, with the antenna leads going through the lugs?). It would work for carbon fiber, though, and those are the most expensive bikes.

[Audiophilip]

>The problem with hiding the tracker in the frame is the GPS and GSM antenna will be blocked by the metal tube.

Not true, there are multiple battle-tested solutions out there, like these: www.spybike.com

[victorhooi]

I have one of their products.

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.

[ptaipale]

Their current trackers are 3G only - and most countries are shutting down (or have already shut down) their 3G GSM networks.

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.

[victorhooi]

Sorry, I meant 2G - e.g. in Australia, Telstra/Optus have already announced shut-down dates, the third network Vodafone hasn't, but they're expected to soon - which renders the device useless.

[walrus01]

Most good GPS receivers will get a signal through an ordinary low cost generic Chinese carbon fiber seatpost. Careful not to get the very cheap ones which are Alu wrapped in a CF laminate.

[7952]

You could also embed it in the steerer tub and have the antenna in a lockable headset cap.

[WalterBright]

Wouldn't a metal frame act as a Faraday cage and block all radio waves?

[lostlogin]

A cage needs to be earthed - the rubber tyres probably hinder this, however I'm not an electrical expert at any stretch.

[WalterBright]

> A cage needs to be earthed

No, it just has to be around the object. Try wrapping your cellphone in aluminum foil. It won't receive or send anymore.