Spybike

Wrath Rob

Interesting idea, £100 for GPS tracking and SMS notification of theft.

iPete

Is there a carbon version yet?

mudcow007

i wonder how long the battery will last....

unless you charge it as you pedal along.

problem with motorbike trackers is that they run the battery down when the bike isnt moving

DrLex

mudcow007 wrote:

i wonder how long the battery will last....

unless you charge it as you pedal along.

problem with motorbike trackers is that they run the battery down when the bike isnt moving

According to the blurb, up to 3 months, with a text being sent to you on low voltage trigger event.

Interesting device at a reasonable price.

daviesee

How long will it take for thieves to learn to throw away top caps?
As long as the other screws are tensioned properly, you don't even need one.

jonny_trousers

Very cool. Even if this one's not the answer, it shows that workable, affordable trackers are on the way.

rick_chasey

One off price?

rubertoe

Something more hidden would be a better answer - assuming that most bikes now are addapting external type BB's it might be better to have something hidden away in there, as is mentioned its easy to throw away a top cap. - no so easy to remove cranks or BB.

mudcow007

rubertoe wrote:

Something more hidden would be a better answer - assuming that most bikes now are addapting external type BB's it might be better to have something hidden away in there, as is mentioned its easy to throw away a top cap. - no so easy to remove cranks or BB.

how sealed are bb's in the shell?

i reckon being at the bottom of the bike all the crud an crap that hits the bottom of the bike is asking for trouble

bompington

Problem solved - for the thieves, that is...

DrLex

bompington wrote:

Problem solved - for the thieves, that is...

Ha! I have the third one down in that picture. Provides amusing fun in quiet carriages & coaches, but of limited effect in open spaces.

EKE_38BPM

DrLex wrote:

bompington wrote:

Problem solved - for the thieves, that is...

Ha! I have the third one down in that picture. Provides amusing fun in quiet carriages & coaches, but of limited effect in open spaces.

I want one. I think I'd use it more than I use my phone!

tgotb

EKE_38BPM wrote:

DrLex wrote:

bompington wrote:

Problem solved - for the thieves, that is...

Ha! I have the third one down in that picture. Provides amusing fun in quiet carriages & coaches, but of limited effect in open spaces.

I want one. I think I'd use it more than I use my phone!

A "friend" of mine has one; he used to carry it with him all the time when he commuted by train. Used sparingly (only when phone users being genuinely obnoxious/inconsiderate) it provided a lot of satisfaction and entertainment :-)

Roastie

DrLex wrote:

bompington wrote:

Problem solved - for the thieves, that is...

Ha! I have the third one down in that picture. Provides amusing fun in quiet carriages & coaches, but of limited effect in open spaces.

As a regular quiet carriage user, I could do with one of those! Nothing worse than someone having a long, involved phone call when you're trying to work or catch some zees.

DrLex

Roastie wrote:

As a regular quiet carriage user, I could do with one of those! Nothing worse than someone having a long, involved phone call when you're trying to work or catch some zees.

I bought it from dealextreme for £20 a few years ago and have lent it to friends who have had similar issues. Not sure I'd spend £60 as per bompington's link.
No doubt thanks to legal issues, DX have rebranded them as 'signal generators' - here's the guts of one like mine. £16 but may make you look like an OMFGTERRARIST!!!11! if you are spotted operating it on the train

veronese68

They should just fit one to quiet carriages. That would make sense.

tgotb

Veronese68 wrote:

They should just fit one to quiet carriages. That would make sense.

Right up to the point someone needs to make an emergency call. Also stops people accessing the web, which is a bit unnecessary...

veronese68

TGOTB wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

They should just fit one to quiet carriages. That would make sense.

Right up to the point someone needs to make an emergency call. Also stops people accessing the web, which is a bit unnecessary...

True, hadn't considered web access. For emergency use they could have a switch fitted or something. The extra time taken would be minimal compered to the problem of getting to someone on a train. I very much doubt it would happen anyway.

the_cyclist_of_catan

It's not a case of "legal issues"; those jammers are flat-out illegal to use. Having lost a car to a car-jacker, I'd be in favour of shooting anyone using one, because they are a lot like flick-knives; there is almost no legitimate use for one. Though there's no reason at all why quiet carriages in trains couldn't be fitted with one which "fired up" intermittently for a short time; web browsing would be barely affected, but calls would drop out (save for the legislative nightmare it would cause - because they are very illegal to use). Fortunately, although they are probably becoming commonplace in the toolkit of the car-jacker, I don't think that bike thieves are likely to carry them as a matter of routine (at least while bike GPS trackers are so rare).

As to the Spybike/Spylamp, I've had a Spybike for about six months, and a new Spylamp2.0 for about six days. I've been posting in one of the MTB sections my experiences with the Spybike (in a nutshell, there are lots of points at which things have gone wrong, leading me to think that it's a bit like Linux was five years ago; it probably offers something to some people, but wasn't "mass-market" or mature enough for anyone who was looking for "plug and play" simplicity. At one stage I did consider whether someone might be following me around with a jammer!) The Spylamp2.0 has been a lot better - and I've got better at anticipating things which *I* can get wrong (like letting my SIM card run out of credit). I want to check out a couple more things about it before wholeheartedly endorsing it (such as "might it work in the back of a bike thief's van?"), but so far I'm thinking that it is worth the money; it's not much more expensive than a good D-lock (which you need to use anyway), it's a lot cheaper than the annual cost of insurance on a bike, and I feel that it really does improve the chances of getting it back if it's nicked (as well as providing peace of mind in the meantime).

What I have struggled with is finding a mobile phone SIM deal that suits it; contracts are Right Out (generally starting at a tenner a month), and lots of Pay As You Go SIMs seem to "time out" if they're not either topped up or used to make a call. Hopefully the SIM I just got from Ovivo will be ideal - a Pay As You Go SIM which *automatically* includes some free texts and data each month whether I top it up or not. And the Spybike/Spylamp needs to be able to send and receive texts and data, but only pretty infrequently - so a normal contract is OTT, and a SIM card which suddenly stops working because you didn't put a tenner on it last month (*cough* O2) is both expensive and largely useless in a device which really must work to be worth having.

Drfabulous0

A jammer in the quiet carriage shouldn't affect web access because trains have WiFi. They should be fitted as standard in all cars.

rjsterry

Drfabulous0 wrote:

A jammer in the quiet carriage shouldn't affect web access because trains have WiFi. They should be fitted as standard in all cars.

Which trains are these? The last few I've travelled on don't even have power sockets in the carriage.

rolf_f

TGOTB wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

They should just fit one to quiet carriages. That would make sense.

Right up to the point someone needs to make an emergency call. Also stops people accessing the web, which is a bit unnecessary...

People don't need to make emergency calls even if they think they do. If they must make a call, there's probably nothing stopping them from getting out of their seat and moving to another carriage to make their call.

The main problem with this technology in quiet carriages is that it doesn't solve the iPod problem. Personally, I think there should be a law in quiet coaches that scissors are an acceptable solution for earphone cables.

rjsterry wrote:

Drfabulous0 wrote:

A jammer in the quiet carriage shouldn't affect web access because trains have WiFi. They should be fitted as standard in all cars.

Which trains are these? The last few I've travelled on don't even have power sockets in the carriage.

Cross Country, Virgin, East Coast, Great Western etc. Most long distance trains have power sockets.

pangolin

I had a great experience on the last long train journey I was on (only 2 hours to Norwich). There was a guy at the other end of the carriage (not a quiet carriage) playing games on his tablet on full volume. I was surprised, but could only just hear it as it was the other end, so not a problem for me.

After a while a guy opposite him (guy 1) got annoyed and asked him to turn the sound off. His (guy 2) response? "I don't know how to". So guy 1 says "Well then stop using it". Guy 2 invites guy 1 to show him how to turn the sound down. He does so and all is well.

Few stops later guy 1 gets off. Sound goes back on. How inconsiderate can some people be!

The Cyclist of Catan wrote:

It's not a case of "legal issues"; those jammers are flat-out illegal to use. Having lost a car to a car-jacker, I'd be in favour of shooting anyone using one, because they are a lot like flick-knives; there is almost no legitimate use for one.

There's no reason for them to carry a knife / jammer, so I would be happy to shoot them. Think you might need to reconsider your logic on that one a bit coc.

rjsterry

Rolf F wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

They should just fit one to quiet carriages. That would make sense.

Right up to the point someone needs to make an emergency call. Also stops people accessing the web, which is a bit unnecessary...

People don't need to make emergency calls even if they think they do. If they must make a call, there's probably nothing stopping them from getting out of their seat and moving to another carriage to make their call.

The main problem with this technology in quiet carriages is that it doesn't solve the iPod problem. Personally, I think there should be a law in quiet coaches that scissors are an acceptable solution for earphone cables.

rjsterry wrote:

Drfabulous0 wrote:

A jammer in the quiet carriage shouldn't affect web access because trains have WiFi. They should be fitted as standard in all cars.

Which trains are these? The last few I've travelled on don't even have power sockets in the carriage.

Cross Country, Virgin, East Coast, Great Western etc. Most long distance trains have power sockets.

FGW have sockets on their HST sets, but not on their smaller DMUs*. Never come across Wifi on a train - only ever in some stations.


*may have outed myself as a bit of a train geek, but in my defence, my brother works in the industry.

pangolin

I have seen wifi on trains, the ones to Norwich have it. Not free though so never use it.

mudcow007

Drfabulous0 wrote:

A jammer in the quiet carriage shouldn't affect web access because trains have WiFi. They should be fitted as standard in all cars.

but how does that wifi connect to the tinterweb.....

unless these "signal generators" are low powered so wont be blocked the gsm signal to the train wifi connection

rolf_f

rjsterry wrote:

FGW have sockets on their HST sets, but not on their smaller DMUs*. Never come across Wifi on a train - only ever in some stations.

I used to have great fun with the GNER wifi when they first made it free. On trips from Leeds to London, I sometimes managed to connect up by Peterborough . Then, for a brief while, it worked well; and then they started charging for it again so I didn't bother.

wgwarburton

Drfabulous0 wrote:

A jammer in the quiet carriage shouldn't affect web access because trains have WiFi. They should be fitted as standard in all cars.

Trains have limited wifi. In my experience it's oversubscribed or expensive, sometimes both.

Cheers,
W.

daniel_b

I like the look of that a lot.

As a bonus, assuming if you had a multitool you could extract a sim, you could carry an old lump of a phone around for emergencues, running out of innertubes for example, and use the onboard sim to make the call.

ad_snow

Rolf F wrote:

Cross Country, Virgin, East Coast, Great Western etc. Most long distance trains have power sockets.

CrossCountry services from Nottingham to Cardiff do not have sockets of wifi. Which is really annoying as I'm on that train twice a week right now and my phone or laptop (or both) often dies when I spend the entire journey on them.

greg66_tri_v2.0

Wrath Rob wrote:

Interesting idea, £100 for GPS tracking and SMS notification of theft.

Having trouble figuring out how this is installed. It says it can be used on a carbon steerer, but my carbon steerers either have a bung or an al sleeve epoxied into them and a star nut sitting inside the steerer where the stem clamps. How is there space for this thing?