posted 08-12-2010 03:13 PM ET (US)        

Given that many recent smart phones have the facility to be tracked it seems to me not unreasonable to take a phone with a cheap post paid account and permanently wire and conceal it on board

I know that there are many proprietary systems available but the ability to recycle an old phone rather than sell or exchange it, or even buy an old model seems a reasonably cheap way to go about it

Apart from the cost of the mobile and a post paid account most phones require a service account for this facility but I would estimate initial set up for phone etc to be under 200USD and 30-60 a year to maintain

Of course there would be a drain on you battery(s) but I would think a mobile would take a fair amount of time to drain your main battery and the phone would continue to function 2-5 days even if the thief removed the boat battery

posted 08-12-2010 11:34 PM ET (US)            

Nokia, windows mobiles, Iphones and others actually have GPS and triangulation capabilities. They can be setup to be tracked via google maps. The application is really intended to find your misplaced phone.

But as you suggest you could use any phone and get an account with a company that will triangulate and find your phone and boat.

posted 08-13-2010 12:46 AM ET (US)            

http://www.overtons.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?i=720620& pdesc=Cobra_C_pod_Cellular_GPS_Tracking_System&aID=601F13&merchID=4006

http://www.yachtingmagazine.com/electronics/systems/cobra-marine-c-pod

posted 08-13-2010 09:47 AM ET (US)            

Very nice but quite expensive I was suggesting trying to do it with an old or secondhand phone

This is how the find iPhone application looks

http://s707.photobucket.com/albums/ww76/SJUAE/Stern%20and%20misc/ ?action=view¤t=Picture-4.jpg

With an Iphone although the application is free you do need a MobileMe account which costs 69USD a year but that includes email and other feature. Other smart phones offer much cheaper alternatives.

posted 08-27-2010 10:31 AM ET (US)            

My company recently purchases a rather expensive wireless web-cam online. We also had to purchase a 2 year committement to a data plan with a cell provider. The camera was to be used to monitor a field experiment "real time". Things went pretty well for a few months but the unit finally died. All attempts to contact the manufacturer were unsucessful.

In a last ditch effort to try and salvage it, we disassembled the water proof housing. Inside we found an old nokia cell phone with it's camera pointing out the plexiglass window of the enclosure. The phone was wired to a large 4-volt battery which was connected to an external charging port.

While I must admit - it was a rather ingenious solution; I question the manufacturers decision not to at least disguise the cell phone as something else given what they charged us for it. We also had a good laugh at ourselves when we discovered we could have done the exact same thing using a free online video feed service and one of the 100 or so used cell phones we have lying around around for much less than the grand we invested in this one.

Ll.