From the USA, a GPS system to find stolen bikes.

Every day in Italy and all over the world thousands of bicycles are stolen. Although you surely usually lock your bike up, thieves are always wise enough to carry with them specific tools to break chains and open padlocks with ease, even when the bike is tied to a stable and apparently safe support.

According to estimates by the U.S. National Bike Registry each year in the United States alone, bikes are stolen for $ 200 million. From today on, however, regular users of this convenient means of transport will be safer. A new system has been launched on the market to defend against theft. It’s called Bicycle SpyBike Covert GPS Tracker and, as the name suggests, it is a system for the geolocation of your bike once it has been stolen.

Discrete, hardly detectable at first sight, it is hidden inside the trunk of the vehicle, at the top, close to the handlebar. Obviously, although this is an effective tool to find your bike, it’s always good to tie it anyway with a chain.

The device is activated by a supplied electronic key-ring. If the bike is stolen before the device is put into operation, a vibration sensor will activate the tracking system, which will send you an SMS alert and will start loading the coordinates every 20 seconds until the end of vibration (ie until the bike is being ridden). The unit will then turn back on when the sensor will perceive new moves.

You can track the location of the vehicle through a dedicated website and then, if necessary, transmit the coordinates to the police. If you forgot to start the unit before the bike was stolen, you can remotely turn it on by sending a text message, even if you do not bring the key-ring with youself. The system automatically checks its messages every six hours. So, it will begin to monitor as soos as it detects your message.

The tracking service is free, but users have to equip the the unit with a SIM card, which will be billed for data loading. Actually, the costs, at least in the United Kingdom, are very low.

The SpyBike uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery that can run for months between charges. When the battery is low, the system sends an SMS alert. There are, however, some limitations, because the device, which relies on GPS technologies, will cease to effectively function if the bike is located within a building or anywhere there is not a clear view of the sky. In this case, the unit will switch to GSM mode. The manufacturer, in this regard, states that it has an accuracy of about 650 feet (200 m), which may be totally useless in a building or environment as dense as the center of a city.