This just popped into my email inbox:

It’s a wee device that you bolt to your bike that lets you track its whereabouts and send an alarm and whatnot if it gets nicked. Seems like interesting technology/

I’m just curious to see if it’s something folk on here think they would use?

yes but no.

i see it as needing to be near a wifi or bt phone to work. if it was gsm id be interested. + its big

Has anyone ever got a bike back using a tracker?

i see it as needing to be near a wifi or bt phone to work.

Is that how the NB-IoT network works? I’d kind of assumed it was a cool 5G kinda thing.

Its a narrow band system run by Vodaphone (& others).

You don’t need wi-fi or ‘bt phone’ (what ever that is)

Hmm, link posts video. Oh well, probably worth watching if you’re interested in a bike tracker –

If somebody is robbing your bike, won’t the GPS tracker under the saddle be the first thing they remove, shortly before they cut through your lock with a portable angle grinder?

Has anyone ever got a bike back using a tracker?

Load of people have had their Van-moofs returned to them.

I can see how this thingie would be an extra layer of defence, but I wouldn’t put much hope in finding the bike if it has actually been nicked through the alarm going off.

seems reasonable.

“lets you track its whereabouts”

No it’s not. It’s a box that lets someone else track its whereabouts and, if they are still in business, they might decide to let you follow as well. After first sharing with whoever gives them the most money.

“Has anyone ever got a bike back using a tracker?”

Yes. Lots of times. But the trackers cost 5 times more than the bikes they were fixed to and it needed a team of 4 or 5 to do it properly (when I was a sergeant in a proactive crime unit a few years ago)

These trackers sound great and if your bike is stolen and is taken somewhere with very few adjacent properties around it then you can, with some degree of certainty pinpoint its location.

If however your bike is stolen by somebody who doesn’t live in a remote farmhouse but lives in a block of flats or an inner city housing estate, it starts to get much harder to do so.