Skytag vehicle tracking

I know that Skytag have a special offer in one of the monthly mags at the moment (can't remember which one).

This morning I received an e-mail notification from them, Defender recovered in 12 minutes in Greater Manchester, which is a pretty good result.

i think its Land rover owner international. i think you get the kit and 3 months trackin for £89+4.95 postage and after that it's £79.99 a year

Just been reading the article myself. Page 8 in Land Rover Owner International, December Issue. Skytag-gps.co.uk

It says choose the £249 Bundle, using the code 'Lro10' in the vouchers section of the checkout. £89 + £4.95 P&P.

Worth a look and worth a read.

Big Blue 90 SWB said:

Just been reading the article myself. Page 8 in Land Rover Owner International, December Issue. Skytag-gps.co.uk

It says choose the £249 Bundle, using the code 'Lro10' in the vouchers section of the checkout. £89 + £4.95 P&P.

Worth a look and worth a read.

Click to expand...

It is, but we've opted for a Visionaire unit because you can track this yourself real-time (no crime-number e.t.c needed). Just ring the police, with location, heading, speed e.t.c and your sorted. This also has a motion sensor that will text or email you if it's lifted onto a low-loader or dragged away instead of been broken into. Worth a look. We'll be reviewing it shortly.

Mine does everything Skytag's does... as well as allowing real time tracking from a web site, disabling the vehicle, tilt detection and so on...

Prices are negotiable to some extent and I'm happy to develop one off sensors or triggers when required.

Apart from that little bit of SPAM!

When you look out for a tracker there are a few things you should consider carefully. These do vary from device to device and can make a substancial difference to the device's performance.

Work out what you really want from the device before you start shopping. Sounds stupid I know, but there are so many different services available that it is easy to get bogged down... Do you want it for simple after theft recovery, if so then you won't need the minute by minute reportsand all the extra cash that will add to the price.

Do you want to be able to take action on the vehicle like disabling the engine, killing the fuel supply, triggering alarms, firing a spike through the driver's seat - or do you simply want positions.

Make sure that the device will operate on different networks. some devices work OK in UK but fail miserably... Rusty Rhinos took ours down through the Sahara twice and I was surprised just how good the coverage was.

Find out which GPS decoder is built into the unit... the more channels the better and more reliable the fix.

Is the device robustly built into a metal case or a piece of japanese plastic...(there are more and more chinese/japanese devices coming onto the market at a price of about £50; but the quality is reflected in the price.

I could go on, but I hope these thoughts are useful.

Without trying to vye for business... I would be happy to answer any queries about these systems... I personally believe that when they are properly installed they are a fantastic security measure.

Hi Ryder,

Good post and informative website, what are your thoughts on ensuring the tracking system stays active if the vehicle is nicked given the use of jammers etc and also that there isn't many places to hide such kit in a landy!?

Hiding the kit in the landy is a tough one. We've found the simplest thing to do is make it look nothing like a tracker... or place it somewhere where it will not be disturbed. It is fit and forget so it can go anywhere.

If you are overlanding around the Sahara it is important to fit it somehwre where it can be quickly removed... or it has little chance of detection... the Algerians don't like GPS much!

Tackling the problem of GSM Jammers:

Firstly the Jammer is likely to be used during the initial theft in case a tracker is present. Hence as soon as the jammer is released the position will be relayed. Don't fall into the trap of thinking thatthe device is rendered useless simply because it is out of touch for a while... it isn't. It can still record its position, read GPS and relate that informtaion back as soon as GSM is available.

The second way of dealing with Jammers is a little more expensive. It concernes using either a sat phone or a radio system for transmission where GSM fails.

As always the rule applies that if a thief really wants your vehiclebadly enough they will get it...

Also don't forget that a great many functions that the more expensive units are capable of, can be configured to operate without a GSM command. I frequently set my motor to disable the ignition if it is moved more than 100 metres... instant theft deterrant with no GSM requirement.

I guess it's really down to figuring out your own best requirements and then having the company re-write their software to suit. (Sounds silly... but they WILL sometimes do it.)

Sounds like you have a lot of your bases covered! I've been looking at building my own GPS tracker and linking it to a mini ITX pc similar to the ones I used to build for the boy racers and charge them a fortune!

Suppose the ultimate killer is a shipping container? We use AVL heavily in my line of work with a primary radio bearer (Airwave) and GPRS fallback which gives excellent results.

TM

I have worked extensively on trying to solve the shipping container issue. There is a way to do it but it is expensive and so i have not developed it any further. Using a radio bearer rather than simple GSM is a great solution to what can be a bit of an issue. Why would you need to link your tracker to a mini ITX? Surely any on board PC would do the job quite happily. I regularly access my own tracker with my phone using its on board browser.

The mini ITX was more of an onboard pc, used for satnav, mp3 playback, internet access, voip, and controlling switches for various outputs.

There are probably cheaper standalone units to do the switching side of things now and there's no way I'd put any of that in a landy!

The radio bearers come down to signal etc as always, but we use a digital system provided to the emergency services so is spot on really.

Have bookmarked your website for a later date....
Thanks for the information so far.

Thanks for the interest in the site... we try to be as informative as possible; if you think of anything that is missing please let me know.

The only advantage to having a unit to do the switching is that it can be done remotely. If you don't need this then aless expensive unit is best in my opinion.

Are you involved with shipping containers? Mentioned the container issue earlier and it is one that I keep revisiting but can not afford to complete development of unless my business takes an upward turn!

I do think that we have one advantage though. Mainly for overlanding trips... we can provide a bespoke page for integrating into a blog or web site that allows visitors to follow progress. We really only developed the page when Rusty Rhinos asked us to provide tracking for their Algeria trip last year; but I suspect it might become popular with landy groups.

Ha, nope, i know nothing about shipping containers - except that is probably where my Series 3 ended up 6 years ago!

I think the best thing to do would be to absolutely ensure that your GPS gizmos remain uncompromised so when the landy drives out of the container it pops back on the map...


I work for the ambulance service and have had a lot to do with the implementation of our new radio system so AVL etc is all second nature to me.
I do some web development work also, and have been looking here for ideas to see if anything can be done to help with the problem of landy thefts, but coming up short of ideas. Anyway, if you get stuck with any of your website development drop me a line!

Cheers,
Nick

Cheers Nick... but the wife is a webby and I write software in asp, vb6 and c# so between us we seem to do ok.

However; I too am trying to find ways to combat the thieves who target landys; more so than other vehicles and I have had a few ideas... I mentioned the use of a modified trembler on another thread a few minutes ago.

I do have the germ of an idea that might be the magic wand so to speak but I need to price the components first.

Ryder said:

Cheers Nick... but the wife is a webby and I write software in asp, vb6 and c# so between us we seem to do ok.

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Super, I might give you a shout then! I only do it for a hobby at the minute but find the stuff that can be achieved with CMS - especially Joomla - is brilliant! VB is good stuff too.

I'd be interested to see what you come up with in the future.

Nick

TheMiddle said:

Super, I might give you a shout then! I only do it for a hobby at the minute but find the stuff that can be achieved with CMS - especially Joomla - is brilliant! VB is good stuff too.

I'd be interested to see what you come up with in the future.

Nick

Click to expand...

Watch this space! It's all down to finance!

TheMiddle said:

Super, I might give you a shout then! I only do it for a hobby at the minute but find the stuff that can be achieved with CMS - especially Joomla - is brilliant! VB is good stuff too.

I'd be interested to see what you come up with in the future.

Nick

Click to expand...

Joomla is a terrible CMS, it's so clunky and just a pain the in the neck. I'm a full-time designer and between this and IE would probably top myself. Check out Wordpress, it's infinitely customizable, there's thousands of tutorials on how to do pretty much anything with it, the PHP is much better formatted so you can jump and edit functions, add new ones and there's a plugin for everything.

Really? I find it ok! I'll check out Wordpress though.
I think i saw your name on the Holmefirth laning thread so maybe see you in Dec?

Nick

TheMiddle said:

Really? I find it ok! I'll check out Wordpress though.
I think i saw your name on the Holmefirth laning thread so maybe see you in Dec?

Nick

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Yh sounds good, btw, check out Net.Tuts, they have some awesome tutorials for getting going with WP: Wordpress | Nettuts+ Trust me you wont look back. It's saved me thousands of hours already.