Chiping a bike

richardjallen

On the London to Canterbury sportive I met someone who claimed his bike had a detector chip in it and if stolen it could be located.

Is this possible? If so where do you get them?!

delcol

hazzard a guess now so someone please correct me if i am wrong here.

it will be a data tag he was on about it a tiny microchip that you place in the frame (usually down the seat tube) it sticks in with some kind of resin i think it holds your details name adress ect and can be read by a scaner that most police forces have most big shops sell it wiggle leasure lakes are 2 off the top of my head,. its aimed at getting your bike back should it get stolen....

does anyone know if there is any kind of tracking device out there for bike,. ie like a tracker you get on your car..

bryanm

delcol wrote:

does anyone know if there is any kind of tracking device out there for bike,. ie like a tracker you get on your car..

Lack of power source is probably your issue with that one. Would be good though.

cntl

There's a tracker fitted under the seat in this trailer of 'The Bike Crime Wave'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WeEq_SxNRc

John

CaptainCropper

Before buying a Datatag, ring 3 random police stations round the country and ask if they have (and use) an up to date Datatag scanner.

Personally I think the manufacturers and the home office are going to have to work together to reduce bike theft via identification. A very thin tape with serial number applied to the frame before laquering would be one step in the right direction. If the tape is applied to all major frame components at the manufacturing stage, it would be a pig to remove and still retain the original paint job, bikes with hookey paint jobs could be looked at more closely by buyers as would bikes with sanding marks.

Not difficult but a potential profit killer for pushbilke manufacturers.

richardjallen

I think the guy I spoke to probably had a Datatag and tt was inside the frame. But he had been led to believe, by the shop, that its location could be pinpointed in a similar fashion to a GPS unit. I was sceptical at the time but did not make a fuss about it.

adifiddler

There are ways to power tracking devises and bugs and the like without an attached tracking device but that is way too advanced for bike security and it is normally employed on static targets, if it is a roving target then there has to be mobile units deployed and within range to power the devise and record the data, i suspect there was not a plane and a fleet of blacked out range rovers following his every.

In the old days before tracker i used microdots on my bikes, i dont know if this is still available. I also engraved my BB case with house number and postcode.

Datatag is a good system but you can also register the bike on the Retainamark database, this normally costs about £12 but many police forces have a deal for under £3 and this has been agreed with many bike shops on the polices advice. My experience though is to contact the police first to see which shops are in the scheme as a well known bike shop in Portsmouth did not tell me about and quoted me the £12 price i said no to that and went to the police station and asked if they did it, they said no but the bike shop does so i went back and said that they do indeed do it and they looked sheepish and said it a service that is only available to bikes they sale my to which my reply was I am going to take this up with the chief inspector as that was not the case. They did my bike for free.

It is also worth registering your bike with https://www.immobilise.com/home.ikml