[Healeys] Vehicle Tracking Devises

[alfuller194 at gmail.com]

What are your goals for the tracker? Trip tracking? After-theft recovery? Other?  

 

What kind of upfront and/or ongoing costs are you willing to endure?

 

The answers to the above might make a difference in what you get.

 

I’ve used a Byonics TinyTrak <https://byonics.com/tinytrak4>  and had good results. As you can see from following the link it’s an APRS tracker, meaning it operates on the US amateur radio 2-meter band. As such, one does need an FCC amateur radio license to operate this unit. The lowest level (Technician) license will suffice and there is no longer a morse code requirement, in case you’re wondering. I studied for a couple of hours and passed the test with no issues, and a license is good for ten (10) years. Once you are licensed there are no ongoing fees to use the system. 

 

A nice feature of this unit is it stores or caches its data as you drive along, so if you are out and away from any repeaters it will still report a complete record of the trip. I used it in May to track my trip to California Healey Week, and was able to see my travels from Las Vegas to San Luis Obispo, CA, to and around the San Francisco Bay Area and back to Las Vegas over about ten (10) days. I’m pretty sure there were places driving across the desert where I was out of reach of any repeaters, but the data still showed up just fine.  I use https://aprs.fi to display the nearby stations and my track when one is available, but there are other websites that offer the same basic service.

 

Separate but related to using a 2-meter tracker is combining the tracker with a voice transceiver. Doing so would allow replacing CB line-of-sight radios with 2-meter radios that can utilize the wide-spread and free repeater network – greatly improving communications between cars traveling together.

 

On the other hand [away from the free APRS system], there are commercial services that will provide trackers that use cellular phones and/or private networks to transmit the data. Obviously, those come with a monthly fee.

 

-----------------------------------

All the best,

 

Al Fuller

 

From: Healeys <healeys-bounces at autox.team.net> On Behalf Of Warren Dietz
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2024 5:45 AM
To: banjojohn via Healeys <healeys at autox.team.net>
Subject: [Healeys] Vehicle Tracking Devises

 

Looking for a tracking device for the Healey. Any suggestions?

 

Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986>  for Windows

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://autox.team.net/pipermail/healeys/attachments/20240823/d7f436a6/attachment.htm>