Subscribed because I'm looking for the same.

 

This was talked about on S2KI (S2000 site) in which they had found something reasonable.... i'll hop over there and see if i can dig it up.

- Andy

 

Found it! LMAO!!!

Had to dig back to a thread from December of 2012!

Looks like the unit is no longer availible, was the Garmin GTU-10

 

LoJack with Early Warning. When I was a dealership tech I was the certified LoJack installer. I no longer work for a dealer so I'm no longer a certified installer,but I still recommend Early Warning.

Must be somewhat small and run on batteries. Battery life can be as little as month. I don't care about changing them out once a month

Yes. Self-powered,non-replaceable lithium battery.

some have to be hard wired to the car battery (I keep my disconnected, and, this would be easy to disable it seems

No wiring to the battery or other vehicle electrical circuit.

I'd like it to send an alert to my phone when/if it moves and allow me to track the location

You get two small key fobs,if the fob isn't in the car and someone moves it LoJack will call,text,or email you. But they won't give you live tracking information.

No monthly subscriptions but I'll pay up to $200 if it works

No monthly fees. I don't remember the prices but it was well over $200 installed,but it does work and isn't your Supra and trailer worth the extra expense?

 

^ Thanks. I've researched LoJack. It's around $1,000 for anything worth while iirc. And it doesn't tell you where it is. I live in a rural area and it basically said that it does not work well in rural areas. This worried me a bit. So I need something that I can trace on my phone. Then I could follow the bastards if anything happened, then call the police and wait for them to show up etc.

It seems pretty simple. There has to be one out there

 

I've also researched this and most of the solutions are pretty one off custom made security solutions. The problem with GPS tracking is you need power and you need satellite service, and thus it lends itself to the subscription model, even if you use a separate battery. One solution i saw involved a separate battery + cell phone and it seemed like it needed a lot of "hand-holding" to make it work right. You'd have to monitor the charge of the battery and cell phone (which is hard to do if you really want to hide it somewhere).

I'm not sure lo jack works all that well because I've read that even the police need a special transponder to be able to find your car and it works proximity based. If they don't have one or can't read the signal, you could be out of luck in certain areas.

The conclusion I've come to is putting a "kill-switch" in the car in a spot only you know (and maybe your builder). This way, the car will not run when the kill-switch is activated. I'd couple this with some kind of loud alarm that could have an immobilizer (Viper) when the alarm is activated, to make it that much more difficult to start. So with both of these, whenever you park the car for an extended period of time, the kill switch should be engaged and with the alarm it will greatly lower the risk of someone stealing the car. Though disconnecting the power for storage itself would probably render the alarm useless, so the back up is the "kill-switch" option.

Interested to hear if anyone has found a good GPS solution.

 

Even with a kill switch, I imagine if someone wanted to steal my Supra while I have it parked for the winter, they'd probably just push it onto a trailer out at my shop and drive the trailer away and then they could find the issue at their leisure (or more likely: chop it up and sell parts).

I've also been looking for such a solution for some time (and I'm OK with paying a reasonable subscription charge), but have come up empty-handed.

 

That's true, but pushing a car up on a trailer would require more planning to steal. Also would be more visible to police. It's a question of deterrence. You just want to make it as hard to steal as possible. It's not really feasible to make it un-steal-able, especially if the thieves are willing to trailer the car to get it out of the area.

Story i heard from the last SIV was that one of the cars in a trailer was stolen, along with the trailer, but the thieves ended up dumping it cause they couldn't get the supra to start. That's a pretty decent outcome and lends credibility to the "kill-switch" in my eyes.

Problem with GPS is the same thing. Once the find it in the car, they'll disconnect the power and its useless. I think most people are just trying to stop amateur criminals trying to make a quick grab. If someone is planning on stealing your car like it's in Ocean's 11, then the best hope is just having a solid insurance policy. It sounds shitty, but most realistic option.

 

<Subscribed for mutual interest>

Side-note, I've heard from two law enforcement (I run a Colorado racing web forum), one was Colorado State Patrol, one was Denver PD. They both said they've had better luck tracking down OnStar vehicles than they have with LoJack. Does anyone know why this would be? Is the OnStar system and infrastructure so huge and time-proven, that LEO's prefer their interface with GM. Or does LoJack just have too little coverage outside of metropolitan areas?

If you have real info, please post up, it's an expensive proposition. Looking for something cheaper too, $1k is pretty rich. Already have a nice Alpine alarm, but want GPS tracking that has it's own power source and is hidden deep in the car.

 

Good information guys. Couple things that pertain to my situation, and maybe others as well:
- My Supra is in a nice enclosed race trailer (diamond plating, a/c, heat, tools etc). Therefore it's ready to be hooked up to a diesel truck and stolen. However, I do have the ball hitch locked but it would just take a hammer and a couple wacks to break the lock. I also disabled the electronic jack that raises and lowers the trailer. And, I removed the pin that locks up the brakes for when the trailer gets away. Basically the trailer brakes are locked up. So they'd need to bring a hammer, a fuse, and another trailer brake cord/piece thing to disable the brakes. They'd need to prepare
- I'd prefer something small I could hide really well under the car or in the car behind the plastics somewhere
- I have found 1-2 devices with great reviews on Amazon for around $200 but cost $25 a month for basic services and probably $50 for anything useful
- I do have insurance on my trailer and car obviously but I highly doubt I'd get what it's worth. And if I could it, if it was stripped, at least I could get it back and part out what's left

 

Yea, I know there's a point at which it would become useless, but as it stands, all you'd need is to break into the shop and have a winch. That's not exactly difficult.

I'd like to think a device that connects to the battery, but has its own back up that I can hide inside the car that will transmit the car's GPS location in the event it doesn't detect my FOB can't be that difficult.

I'm wondering if this is something to kickstarter. I have a hard time believing such a product doesn't already exist.

 

I'd like to think a device that connects to the battery, but has its own back up that I can hide inside the car that will transmit the car's GPS location in the event it doesn't detect my FOB can't be that difficult.

I'm wondering if this is something to kickstarter. I have a hard time believing such a product doesn't already exist.

Agree completely, this isn't some "Supra-specific magic device". There should be at least a half-dozen options (besides LoJack & OnStar) out there in various complexity and price-range, imo. Hopefully someone chimes up. I have to really dig and research this in my off-time, I'll report back.

 

I had zoomback lifetime and they discontinued it, they renamed the company to get rid of lifetime users, 400 dollars down the drain, now there is Spot tracker, 99 dollar unit + 99 dollars a year, i dont have it but it might be the best deal, i would love to find a no subscription service but i dont think its possible

 

Hidden cell phone with its own phone number and any of a variety of tracking apps. Hook it up to a secondary backup USB battery, which is hooked into +12v battery on the car. I'd trust that to be cheaper and more reliable for you to locate your car than going through a service like LoJack that depends on satellites. GPS satellite signals SUCK in parking garages, but cell signals (at least with Verizon) are strong enough damn near everywhere to send enough data for the app.

 

Bingo!

 

an idea..

http://www.instructables.com/id/Athena-The-Global-Car-Tracking-System/?ALLSTEPS

 

chi_weezy did you get my email? that is about the best self contained, self monitored unit that you can get. The unit will let you set up a perimeter and if the car leaves that perimeter the unit will notify you and you can track it via gps to within 3 feet of the location.

 

This sounds like a good opportunity for a Raspberry Pi project!

 

^ If it was an iPhone I could see that working. But most of the track phones aren't smart phones are they? A phone that didn't have a monthly bill and just ran on minutes would be ideal. Need to research if there's a phone like that. An iPhone with a monthly contract would be expensive

 

You're not using minutes. You're using data. Tracking apps don't use a lot of data.. but I'm still hanging onto my unlimited data plan from ~2004. Don't need an iPhone. Any Android smartphone will work.

 

cheap walmart smart phone is wired to a extra 12v source in by my ebrake and has life360 app always open that gps part works pretty well and i can set it up to notifiy me if the car leaves the rd. Also only cost 40 a month i know its not free but its cheap insurance. Probably over kill in my situation as i have camaras and alarm in my garage.

 

buy a child tracking watch... pay $10 a month... place watch in a hidden spot.... done....

 

YES lmao. This is the best idea. We all treat our supras like our babies anyways.

How would you keep it powered though?

 

I'm doing some research to find out how long the batteries on these watches last. It's seems the watches are about $99 and then you have to buy a SIM card for them. If you discover your car is missing, you text the watch and it sends you the location. I believe they charge through a usb so perhaps connecting it to an external battery pack would make it last quite a bit longer. Looks like the cost will be $10-$20 per month. The only thing it doesn't do (tmk) is send you an alert when the location changes

 

You'd just need to figure out how to charge via USB in your car. I assume the battery on the device would last at a minimum 8-12 hours. That would make sense from a child safety point of view.
So the hook up would be:

Car batter > USB charger > child tracking. If they thief disconnects your battery, the power in the device would stay on long enough for you to find the location. The hiccup would be if you dont realize your car is taken for 12+ hours and the device runs out of juice. But its likely that it may have a "last location @" feature.

 

^ Yep. I found this one. It's pretty cool. Plans as low as $10.99 per month. Plugs into your OBDII. However, I keep my battery disconnected so I can't use this but for other people who keep theirs connected this could be pretty cool. It's simple, relatively inexpensive and has great reviews

http://www.amazon.com/MasTrack-Vehi..._7?ie=UTF8&qid=1423610777&sr=8-7&keywords=Real+time+gps+tracker#customerReviews

 

Does the OBD2 port have power if you have an aftermarket ECU? It looks really easy to remove or find.

 

^ I'm not sure about the aftermarket ecu supplying power 24/7. That's a good question. And yes there's a chance a thief might look for something like this but I think it's doubful. But, say they take the car, then you don't notice for 1-2 days and by that time maybe they found it, you'd be screwed.

Also, those little gps watches only last 1-2 days. Maybe plugged in they'd last 2-4 days? But either way I need something to last a week at least. I'll keep looking

 

...One of the other things I was looking at, was one of my small/old tablets w/GPS. It appears that even without other network services, the GPS piece works. May be the same for other devices like an old smartphone. Basically, wire in the charger so that the device is constantly kept charged up. Even if the car's battery is removed, you have stand-by power... more than enuff to get that last GPS location.

In the car I'd let my son use, I used a cellular GPS tracking service that would tell you the speed. location, starts/stops, and even send text alerts when the car left the "zones" you set. It was about $20 a month a few years back.

 

My friend uses this service. He also caught is wife in the act. big brother https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IaAbldzIvc&feature=youtu.be

 

any thoughts of the Trackimo-TRK100 device? im planning to get one soon.

 

Figured I'd share my experience here. I'm super worried about my supra getting taken. My truck was stolen out of my driveway and my girlfriend's dad lives a few houses down and has an r33 in his garage that has been attempted at multiple times.

I did a TON of research and between costs, simplicity, features, and most of all, reviews, I decided to go with the trackmate (Dash 2.1 3G is what I got). Going to install it this week considering I leave for a week or so in about 3 days.

It does connect to the battery power, but should last for many weeks if it's disconnected. All the features you could want. Apps, geofencing, speed detection, etc etc.