UKC

A quick browse seems to be showing everything from £80 - £700.

No idea where to start or if they are even worth getting? Any advice?

Answer probably depends on why you might need one:

• Expensive, desirable and easily stolen vehicle?
• Tracking employee / spouse?
• Forgetting where you parked the vehicle?

Most stuff from eBay in the £10-£100 price seems to involve a chipset from TKSTAR with a GPS and GSM modem. More expensive models have a better build quality, bigger battery and sometimes more features. With all of them you insert a SIM card, hide it in the vehicle and connect some power. It can then be configured in a variety of ways. Simplest is to simply text you a location when you phone it. Other options are continuous tracking. Scheduled tracking. Tracking when it’s outside of a certain area. 

More expensive devices might also include some sort of subscription, managed service, theft insurance, installation etc. 

Cezza

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/gps_dog_tracking_devices-694512...

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/gps_dog_tracking_devices-694512...

Do you have an irreplaceable vehicle?  If not, unless it make your insurance cheaper than the cost I wouldn't bother.

I'm told that the sim card data use is typically between £5 and £10 a month  so factor that in to the ebay choice. I just had them fit to my vans by Ram Tracking. £10 per van per month. Free install but I signed to a 48 month contract. At the same time I had them put one on my motorbike. 

The wife is much happier because if I'm late back she can see I'm on the move rather then laying in a ditch. 

Though if that was all somebody wanted from the tracker, it could be achieved just as well in most cases by a free app on their phone.

Depends on your reporting rate and reporting mechanism.

Using GPRS, my tracker sends about 200 bytes per report. So that's 5000 reports per MB. That will give you one report every 9 minutes, and use 1MB per month. With my expensive GiffGaff PAYG SIM, that's 15p.

I bought a tk103 for about £20 and wired it myself. Costs about £10 in credit a year to run. Sends me a text message if the alarm goes off. Texts me its location if I call it. Simple, cheap and reliable so far (2.5yrs)

Thank you for the advice.

It is purely down to car value, not work related or forgetfulness. Others have also said not to bother as if it gets stolen it is covered on insurance. However if I can get a cheapish one to do the job then it is peace of mind.

Not owning a car, I'm not very familiar with car insurance. But I'm going to guess that if your car gets stolen, your insurance premium will go up. And you may not get a replacement car that is as good as your current. And you will have a lot of hassle. Admittedly, recovering a stolen car probably won't be trouble-free...

So, if you can add a cheap tracker that might lead to the recovery of your car, then it might be worth it.

The one thing I'd suggest you need to be aware of is the battery drain. Assuming you want the device powered when the car is parked. Even though the power it takes is pretty low, it is still a load on the battery, and, if left idle for a long time, could flatten your battery.

You also need to find somewhere to conceal the tracker where it can still see the sky (satellites), and communicate via GSM. I've seen plastic bumper voids suggested, but I think you'd need fairly good waterproofing for that location.

Yes if that was all that was wanted but there are a few buts. I would have to remember to start the app, I would need to use the battery draining GPS function on my phone, my phone only connects to 1 network but the tracker does multiple. 

I also want it for theft recovery too, I stand a much better chance of getting it back if its tracked. 

That's interesting. When I was looking for a tracker I contacted a few of the cheap ebay guys and they all told me between £5 and £10 a month for data, maybe they don't actually know what they are selling. 

Mine is perfect for me though, multi network sim, updates every 30 seconds, the Web portal shows all my vans plus my bike in the office. I do wonder how we managed to run service engineers without tracking because its far easier with.