Friday, Jun 08, 2012 at 13:30
Ralph & Anne - I haven't come across any cheap tracking systems yet. They all rely on human monitoring and tracking, and you have to pay for that.
In addition, the current tracking systems are full of flaws. They lose tracked items when they go inside steel-walled seatainers or concrete walled buildings. Many of the tracking companies are poorly run.
Read up on the South Africans experiences with tracking operations. Not too many of their systems are really effective, and they're all costly.
Put simply, the monthly cost of comprehensive insurance is still generally less than the monthly cost of paying a tracking company, who may or may not be able to find your item.
Professional thieves are very aware of tracking devices and how they work, and go looking for them, so they can disable and/or remove them. You need to power tracking devices, so that means little batteries that go flat, or wiring that can be traced, or big, easily seen batteries, that can be disconnected/removed.
Someone, somewhere, has to come up with a good cheap tracking system, but it doesn't exist yet. It needs to be small, it needs to have low power requirements so it can be powered by a small battery for a long time - and it needs to have simple tracking software that you can monitor yourself.
There is only system at present that may offer you a cheap solution. Google "APRS in Australia" and see if that could work for you.
APRS is an amateur radio network with a detection/tracking system that some people have used to track stolen items.
The system has great potential because it's run by amateurs, is worldwide, and doesn't required a dedicated employee of a tracking company to sit in front of a screen 24/7.
However, it still requires a powered radio-signal-producing source that thieves can find and disable.
Anyone who comes up with a good cheap, difficult to disable, relatively foolproof system will be on a winner. I can recall being in a fibreglass boat builder/repairers factory many years ago, and the walls of his (large) office were lined with pics of many stunning-looking boats (and many of them, very large boats, too).
I asked him if they were pics of his repairs or builds, and he grimly remarked - "No. Every one of those boats is stolen, and the Police send me pics virtually every week, of stolen craft, so I can alert them if they show up here. Very few are ever recovered. If you go boating with someone, do you ask if his boat is stolen??"
Cheers - Ron.
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