GPS Tracking For Your Jeep

OldButStillJeeping

Old School Jeep TJ Tinker
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Southern california
If you're like me, you've put countless hours and spent crazy money on parts for your Jeep.
I starting using a GPS tracker in my Jeep, RV, and Polaris RZR.
It certainly gives me peace of mind knowing where my junk is. And if you hide it well enuf, the police will be able to recover it within a day.
These are relatively cheap, considering that just a winch on your Jeep maybe cost you $800 or more. Lots more.
I use a unit called Trak-4. There are others like it, and some may be better. But I'm just giving you fellow jeepers a heads up if you haven't looked into it.
These cost about $50, and about $80 for a year's monitoring.
It's not 'real time', but scheduled tracking via GPS or cell. So you can't track your kids driving habits. But it's a lot cheaper than ones that are real time.
I'm not affiliated with Trak-4, I'm just throwing this out there.
 
I'm going this route as well on my red LJ and have been eying up the SPOT. My insurance will give me a considerable discount which nearly pays for the yearly tracking fee too — I need to check what the discount will be on my wife's khaki TJ and if it's economical I'll add it on it too. We live far enough from any crime that it's not really worth it to me on a DD (I can leave my car running while I'm in the store and not worry about it.). I did hear a story this past week about how police in more dangerous areas may have higher priories than recovering a stolen vehicle so your actual recovery results may vary.
 
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We have used Spot gen3s for work in the past, primarily as a man-down device for employees that work alone in remote locations, did the job well from the feedback I heard.
 
I'm going this route as well on my red LJ and have been eying up the SPOT. My insurance will give me a considerable discount which nearly pays for the yearly tracking fee too — I need to check what the discount will be on my wife's khaki TJ and if it's economical I'll add it on it too. We live far enough from any crime that it's not really worth it to me on a DD (I can leave my car running while I'm in the store and not worry about it.). I did hear a story this past week about how police in more dangerous areas may have higher priories than recovering a stolen vehicle so your actual recovery results may vary.
We have used Spot gen3s for work in the past, primarily as a man-down device for employees that work alone in remote locations, did the job well from the feedback I heard.
 
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Ham Radio has APRS, it automatically tracks your progress via and this can be viewed real time on the web. If you are interested it is a free service after you purchase the hardware.
 
Well, I didn't need a real time device. Or a 911 real time tracker for loved ones tracking my progress or for rescue or personal blogs.
Which for that type of insurance, a device like Spot or Garmins InReach do great.
Conversely, I needed a device that will tell me where my assets are, a few times daily.
My RV, Jeep, and other items are sometimes at other properties that I don't go to for a couple weeks or longer at a time. And the Trak-4 or similar are cheap insurance.
They don't feed off of your vehicles battery, and don't require a power feed. But you will need to monitor the power level of each unit and charge it as required. Charging periods depend on your ping setting. And the power level is displayed at each ping. Temperature is as well.
I can check the location 4 times a day, because I have my assets ping in 6 hr intervals.
I wanted the price of mind that if I showed up at the location that I haven't been to in 3 weeks, my assets were still there.
 
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If my asset has moved, it will notify me. Because you can set a GeoFence on each unit.
I can then reset the ping interval to 15 minutes. Notify the cops. Track it, find it retrieve it.
Cops don't pay much attention to stolen vehicles, is true. Unless they check a plate, or you have LoJak or similar. But if your can tell them.
" I'm looking at it right now and I'm on the corner of Sycamore and Holly streets". You'll get your jeep back.
 
true story here about gps tracking. Roughly 15 yrs ago when it was first coming out for company vehicles I had it installed in the vans I had. well one day an employee disappears with the truck.Well my real time tracking wasn't working great so I called the dispatch and it became a scene like out of Miami vice . your heading right for him ,he just made a left ,make a right etc. well I finally caught up when he ditched the truck about 4 hrs later the police arrive as I didn't want to enter the truck as who knows what he did. when we do open the truck all the tools are gone but the pawn shop ticket is there ( that's another story as $650 cash was needed to get back my stolen tools). another time an employees wife called the emergency number at like 3 am asking where is her husband, well by this time the real time was working so I logged on and saw the truck was parked all night where he said he would be just wasn't his home
 
The Mastrack uses a cell phone radio from what I understand, if they jam the signal, they jam their cellphones and that gets a lot of attention...quick now days.
 
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If my asset has moved, it will notify me. Because you can set a GeoFence on each unit.
I can then reset the ping interval to 15 minutes. Notify the cops. Track it, find it retrieve it.
Cops don't pay much attention to stolen vehicles, is true. Unless they check a plate, or you have LoJak or similar. But if your can tell them.
" I'm looking at it right now and I'm on the corner of Sycamore and Holly streets". You'll get your jeep back.
I wouldn't count on that response too much. There was a lady on another site who told the story of her JK getting stolen with real time GPS on it and she was tracking it from here in SoCal towards the Mexico border. She had the tracking up on her computer and the cops on the phone. They would not send anyone out to chase it down.

It is fairly easy to understand from their side though. How do they know it is your vehicle? How do they know you are the owner? How do they know you are not calling them to disrupt the life of your recently estranged spouse or boy/girlfriend that you installed a tracker on? How do they know you aren't a gang banger and your initiation is to get a cop to follow you to some place where they can be ambushed?

In short, I suspect it would be phenomenally difficult to get them to initiate a live pursuit of a stolen vehicle based on a phone call. In other words, it is a stolen vehicle, happens thousands of times a day and that is why we have insurance. I don't agree with the outcome, but I can understand it.
 
I have a hidden kill switch but the GPS tracking is a great idea.
I would not depend on a hidden kill switch for security. Good car thieves make it a point to know where most of them are. I've installed one of the few I trust but there again, it wouldn't take a good thief long to find and disable it. They only slow down the casual crime of opportunity, little else.

I designed one with a magnet on a contact switch that goes to a latching relay. The polarity of the activation magnet on the key chain has to be such that it pushes the magnet on the lever of the contact switch away to send power and latch the relay until it gets a start attempt from the ignition. If you cycle the key back to off, you get to do it again. That is about as tricky as my skills get and even then, I wouldn't trust my vehicle to it.
 
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true story here about gps tracking. Roughly 15 yrs ago when it was first coming out for company vehicles I had it installed in the vans I had. well one day an employee disappears with the truck.Well my real time tracking wasn't working great so I called the dispatch and it became a scene like out of Miami vice . your heading right for him ,he just made a left ,make a right etc. well I finally caught up when he ditched the truck about 4 hrs later the police arrive as I didn't want to enter the truck as who knows what he did. when we do open the truck all the tools are gone but the pawn shop ticket is there ( that's another story as $650 cash was needed to get back my stolen tools). another time an employees wife called the emergency number at like 3 am asking where is her husband, well by this time the real time was working so I logged on and saw the truck was parked all night where he said he would be just wasn't his home
Before real time GPS tracking was available, they installed Lojack on all of the ambulances and had monitors in dispatch to help with routing to calls. Once the EMT staff figured out all you had to do was unscrew the coax to the tracker and you could run home for lunch in the unit and not be tracked, it became a battle of creative places to hide the tracker. People are just miserable.
 
The last classic VW I bought had Lojack on it. Lojack - like microchipping your dog - is for life. And follows the car. Not the owner. Once the owner had paid the original fee. It transferred over to me. And then to whomever I sold the car too. And so on. I never had to use it. But it was a nice piece of mind. I don't know what the cost is though.

I own a PI firm. And developed the first employee trackers in our business back in the late 90's. It was passive though and after the fact. But it separated the men from the boys. Meaning the guys that actually worked. And the ones that would bill hours for antique shopping or just sleeping in their cars or never leaving home at all. Also proved to our clients that we were actually out on surveillance.

If I put an active tracker on my vehicle. I'd have no problem tracking it down. And then pointing LE to its whereabouts.
 
I would not depend on a hidden kill switch for security. Good car thieves make it a point to know where most of them are. I've installed one of the few I trust but there again, it wouldn't take a good thief long to find and disable it. They only slow down the casual crime of opportunity, little else.

I designed one with a magnet on a contact switch that goes to a latching relay. The polarity of the activation magnet on the key chain has to be such that it pushes the magnet on the lever of the contact switch away to send power and latch the relay until it gets a start attempt from the ignition. If you cycle the key back to off, you get to do it again. That is about as tricky as my skills get and even then, I wouldn't trust my vehicle to it.

I'm sure your system is more thought out than commercial ones, but your post reminded me of the ORO switch.

https://www.quadratec.com/products/15001_1000.htm