If you’re the sort of person who resents not being able to get away from their damn phone, or who sees its monitoring of you as an infringement of your rights, move on.
The rest of you might be interested in this: a small, discreet device that you can slip into or onto anything that you want to keep tabs on. We’re talking bikes here, and wouldn’t encourage anyone you slip it into their partner’s pocket so they can catch them out – or to make sure they’re not about to return home unannounced, and get caught themselves – because that could make Christmas awkward.
That said, it does work between consenting adults, potentially providing peace of mind on cold wet nights for the tracker and an open garage door and a cup of something steaming or strong waiting on the trackee’s return. And it’s ideal for traders who loan bikes out.
It works on mobile technology rather than just GPS – so doesn’t lose signal if you
pop into a shop – using an embedded SIM that triangulates its position from public and private information sources. That does introduce a level of discipline – and a cost – because while it comes with 200 geolocation reports, you’ll need to top those up when you’ve worked through them. It’s not a device to monitor something or someone in realtime.
It needs no registration/credit card, is recharged via USB, a single phone can monitor multiple trackers and each tracker measures 55x65x22mm – a little bigger than a matchbox.
Urban Tracker Device
Zodiac 782080 £84.69
zodiac.nl