6 ms·

By extension: it seems to have been a great year for bike thieves, in the UK at least. Anecdotally, bike theft is through the roof.

KraftKacke 6y ago
Business idea: Make something like the iPhone's snitching low power bluetooth thingy for bikes. I am sure bike owners will glad run an app which monitors the surrounding for stolen bluetooth beacons. Make it work so it can be barricaded in the seat tube or integrated into the frame, not easily removed or destroyed. Make stealing cheap bikes risky and troublesome. Nothing will protect a 5k$ sports bike.
- fredley 6y ago
  > not easily removed or destroyed So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all). Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    No, a lock is easy to remove/destroy. It's at most a minute with the right tool (angle grinder), and the bike itself is left unaffected. A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
    - usrusr 6y ago
      > The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike. Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?). What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.
    - Someone 6y ago
      I’m not that knowledgeable about what materials can be used to construct one, but doesn’t “embedded into the frame” mean “embedded in a Faraday cage”? Or could one use the frame as an antenna?
      - fizx 6y ago
        Bikes expensive enough to have a tracking device will largely be carbon fiber.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        Yes, you'd need to handle the antenna issue. As far as engineering problems go though that's not a particularly hard challenge. Phones and laptops with metal cases have no problem with this despite a lack of external antennas.
        Someone 6y ago
        Are you sure? Bicycle frames have to be a lot stronger than phones and laptops. That means greater wall thickness (I think ½ mm is on the lower side for steel bicycle tubing)
      - KraftKacke 6y ago
        Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I have the hope the frame itself may be used as antenna. Contrary to what the other commenter said, this is not attractive for carbon frame owners as I wasn't thinking GPS tracking, but low power, snitching networks (like Apple's stuff, where the stolen iPhone only needs to be seen by another iPhone; or like corona tracking). How often do you see a carbon bikes in the wild? A frame like that may also have other components worth destroying the frame over.
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  FYI an alternative is you can get tiny GPS trackers about the size of the top of your thumb for about the same price as the various Bluetooth LE options (about 20 Euros on Alibaba. Stick a SIM in them and put it on the bike, underneath the seat hidden etc and they are pretty decent, can last up to two weeks without recharging. Plus they are more likely to work and much much easier to track down your bike as you can use various apps to track in real time.
  - avn2109 6y ago
    What do I type into google to buy this? A bit of searching has not turned up anything similar to what you describe :( Lots of ads for Tile and similar (aka not GPS trackers).
    - patrickk 6y ago
      I wrote about bike GPS trackers here: https://ampedcycling.com/do-electric-bikes-have-gps-trackers/ https://ampedcycling.com/do-electric-bikes-have-gps-trackers... The Guardian bike tracker is one potential option. I would caution against a generic bluetooth tracker, I am not sure if you can integrate it with a SIM card easily.
    - secfirstmd 6y ago
      There's loads out there. For example on Aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001742170443.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.394545b3QMeUXZ&algo_pvid=bec7853e-18a0-4281-8e6a-cdfd50b20b6c&algo_expid=bec7853e-18a0-4281-8e6a-cdfd50b20b6c-16&btsid=2100bddf16103949478934261ea5b8&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001742170443.html?spm=a2...
- matsemann 6y ago
  My insurance on the bike is lower if I use a https://bikefinder.com/en/ https://bikefinder.com/en/ which is a device in the bike that tracks it (gps).
- Leherenn 6y ago
  Already exists. A friend has his expensive bike with this system stolen, he tracked it back a few months down the road when it was found by a receiver.
  - KraftKacke 6y ago
    I assume that's a different system with GMS/GPS systems. There is one manufacturer doing this, but it's not privacy friendly and not universal.

KraftKacke 6y ago

Business idea: Make something like the iPhone's snitching low power bluetooth thingy for bikes. I am sure bike owners will glad run an app which monitors the surrounding for stolen bluetooth beacons. Make it work so it can be barricaded in the seat tube or integrated into the frame, not easily removed or destroyed. Make stealing cheap bikes risky and troublesome. Nothing will protect a 5k$ sports bike.

fredley 6y ago
> not easily removed or destroyed So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all). Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  No, a lock is easy to remove/destroy. It's at most a minute with the right tool (angle grinder), and the bike itself is left unaffected. A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    > The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike. Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?). What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.
  - Someone 6y ago
    I’m not that knowledgeable about what materials can be used to construct one, but doesn’t “embedded into the frame” mean “embedded in a Faraday cage”? Or could one use the frame as an antenna?
    - fizx 6y ago
      Bikes expensive enough to have a tracking device will largely be carbon fiber.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Yes, you'd need to handle the antenna issue. As far as engineering problems go though that's not a particularly hard challenge. Phones and laptops with metal cases have no problem with this despite a lack of external antennas.
      - Someone 6y ago
        Are you sure? Bicycle frames have to be a lot stronger than phones and laptops. That means greater wall thickness (I think ½ mm is on the lower side for steel bicycle tubing)
    - KraftKacke 6y ago
      Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I have the hope the frame itself may be used as antenna. Contrary to what the other commenter said, this is not attractive for carbon frame owners as I wasn't thinking GPS tracking, but low power, snitching networks (like Apple's stuff, where the stolen iPhone only needs to be seen by another iPhone; or like corona tracking). How often do you see a carbon bikes in the wild? A frame like that may also have other components worth destroying the frame over.
secfirstmd 6y ago
FYI an alternative is you can get tiny GPS trackers about the size of the top of your thumb for about the same price as the various Bluetooth LE options (about 20 Euros on Alibaba. Stick a SIM in them and put it on the bike, underneath the seat hidden etc and they are pretty decent, can last up to two weeks without recharging. Plus they are more likely to work and much much easier to track down your bike as you can use various apps to track in real time.
- avn2109 6y ago
  What do I type into google to buy this? A bit of searching has not turned up anything similar to what you describe :( Lots of ads for Tile and similar (aka not GPS trackers).
  - patrickk 6y ago
    I wrote about bike GPS trackers here: https://ampedcycling.com/do-electric-bikes-have-gps-trackers/ https://ampedcycling.com/do-electric-bikes-have-gps-trackers... The Guardian bike tracker is one potential option. I would caution against a generic bluetooth tracker, I am not sure if you can integrate it with a SIM card easily.
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    There's loads out there. For example on Aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001742170443.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.394545b3QMeUXZ&algo_pvid=bec7853e-18a0-4281-8e6a-cdfd50b20b6c&algo_expid=bec7853e-18a0-4281-8e6a-cdfd50b20b6c-16&btsid=2100bddf16103949478934261ea5b8&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001742170443.html?spm=a2...
matsemann 6y ago
My insurance on the bike is lower if I use a https://bikefinder.com/en/ https://bikefinder.com/en/ which is a device in the bike that tracks it (gps).
Leherenn 6y ago
Already exists. A friend has his expensive bike with this system stolen, he tracked it back a few months down the road when it was found by a receiver.
- KraftKacke 6y ago
  I assume that's a different system with GMS/GPS systems. There is one manufacturer doing this, but it's not privacy friendly and not universal.