Personal car tracking - Is it possible?

[Byff]

Failing anything avaible on the open market, how can we design a system to track our cars.

Following on from the stolen griff thread, there is a post that mentions gps tracking soft/hardware.

www.thespystore.com/gps-usa.htm

The one that's for real time tracking seems ideal, but it looks like it will need an always on mobile link.

It would be better if this system was operated the other way round, so you dialled in to update the vehicles location. I trust my wife/daughter/son so I don't need 24 hr logging on my car, but if it suddenly disappears off the drive, I want to know where the bugger is. That way I can wait till its stopped and parked up (I don't like police chases, the target vehicle usually crashes) then romp in recover it and administer some good old fashioned traditional punishment.

So...does anyone know of such a system available off the shelf or is anyone clever enough to design one? I'd imagine with the level of I.T. related bods on here, we could come up with something.

I was thinking laptop, mobile phone interface and GPS card mounted in the boot and drawing power from seperate dual charge battery. Might be bulky and expensive to buy but I think it would be worth it.



>>> Edited by Byff on Saturday 2nd November 14:02

[marki]

A friend of mine who has a 360 spider has a system fitted to his car that he can access from his mobile phone , it transmit back if the engine is running the speed its travelling at and the map co ordinates for the car , so the future is here .

[Strick]

The guy that does my alarm work told me a while ago of something new on the market. Basically its a tracking device which you can access on your PC, therefore tracking it yourself.

[Byff]

marki said: A friend of mine who has a 360 spider has a system fitted to his car that he can access from his mobile phone , it transmit back if the engine is running the speed its travelling at and the map co ordinates for the car , so the future is here .

That sounds pretty ideal to me. Any ideas who sells it and what its called?

[getcarter]

Saw a TV thing about this... so it does exist (If only I could remember the name!). It also lets the owner shut the engine management system the next time the car is stationary - so the car permanebtly stalls.

I'm sure you'll hear lots about it in the next month or so, as it's just hit the market

Steve

[joust]

I was sent a link about this - but can't find it - oh well - a quick google gives

www.trakm8.com/index.html

Google is all seeing all powerful