After having two bikes stolen at once, I bought Tile trackers for a bunch of my possessions and hid one on my new bike. The tracking in Seattle is good in places with a lot of people around, pretty coarse in other areas, but I'm hoping that it will at least give me a direction to head in if this bike is ever stolen. I'm wondering whether anyone has a recommendation for a bike GPS tracker though. The ones I see generally look too obvious, have expensive subscriptions, need charging every day, etc.
There are covers for the Apple AirTags that look like regular seatpost-mounted reflectors. I haven't looked to see if they exist for other trackers, but that's the route I would go.
Don't the anti-stalking features of AirTags make them poorly suited to anti-theft uses? If I were a professional bike thief I'd have an iphone just to get notified when I've stolen a bike with an airtag on it
The AirTag will beep if it's been separated from its owner for long enough, so presumably the thief would be able to find it relatively quickly once that happens.
Its only real use, I think, is to find something that's been lost. They report their presence to all iPhones - including that of a thief. They do that to protect against use by stalkers.
Its still useful for its original purpose - especially if your phone has the UWB stuff so you can play the "warmer, warmer" game. Just one less trick up its sleeve.
You can mutilate the tag to disable the speaker. It won't disable the alert on others' phones (including the thief), but it may be a blessing more than a curse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32159861
I bought two Boomerang bike trackers a while back as well as upgraded to their 4G version the "V2". Unfortunately they aren't great at stuff like arming, disarming, etc... You can arm/disarm using bluetooth using Bluefruit, but the app can only do so through the 4G network it attaches to which can be iffy sometimes. The battery is okay, but not amazing, I have to charge it pretty often.
The things are pretty obvious and are intentionally so. They have an audible alarm that goes off if they sense movement and send a notification to your phone if they can connect to 4G (Iffy). I guess some Canadian city tried to run a bait bike program using them but no one would touch the bikes with an alarm. Personally I prefer to deter than to have to hunt down the thieves and retrieve.
By far the best way to prevent theft is to register your bicycle and encourage others to do so as well. I use Project 529: https://project529.com/garage
Police tend to not enforce bicycle theft, mostly because proving ownership is not usually possible due to lack of VIN numbers and registration. Having proof of ownership like photos, Project 529 stickers, and such is a great way to help police stop bike theft.
FWIW LAPD told me to use Bike Index after mine was stolen. So if that’s the system they are cross-referencing with then that’s the one I’m going to use.
Either is fine to be honest, when you report the bike stolen you can provide the data from either site to prove ownership so if they see it they can get a conviction and maybe even return the bike.
I’m very pleased with my Boomerang - I haven’t tested the alarm function out of consideration for my neighbors but it’s got the battery life I found lacking in smaller trackers. I hope the next iteration has wireless charging or a more robust waterproof port cover.
From experience tracking down a different GPS module and stolen bike: If you tell the kids who answer the door your bike was lost and there’s a reward for whoever found it, things go more smoothly than getting the cops involved.
Bikes are incredibly personal. Even if someone writes you a check for 100% of the supposed cash value, it takes an incredible amount of effort to replace, customize, and fine tune a new bike. And losing one is a major emotional hit, to be honest.
Maybe for the adventure cyclist. The urban cyclist has long been about the $100 duct tape seat disposable bike, knowing theft is not a matter of if but when.
