GET SMS alert as your vehicle get STOLEN

Henceforth, bike and car thieves can run but not hide. And vehicle owners, apprehensive of ever-increasing thefts of cars and bikes in the city and their prized possessions going missing for ever, can heave a sigh of relief. All they need to do is instal a device, the size of a mobile phone with a sim, inside their vehicle.
    The moment their vehicle is stolen or tampered with, the device will send them an SMS alert. Thereafter, the thief and his movements will be like iridescent squiggles on a radar and can be tracked live on a mapbased platform such as Google Earth. With about 7,000 vehicles reported stolen every year, it makes the police’s task much easier and, what’s more, the device is affordably priced.
    The device, called ‘Tcop’, has been developed by iTrans Technologies (India) Pvt Ltd, located on Bannerghatta Road. In bikes, the device can be fitted beneath the seat or near the battery. In cars, it can be placed inside the glove box. It has a set of wires and one wire is connected to the battery. It draws a small amount of power from the battery and doesn’t require recharging.

    “It works on the GSM infrastructure of Vodafone. The product will be just the size of a mobile phone and it is not a GPS device. The product will have a sim card inside it,” explained Mallesh Reddy, chairman of iTrack technology Ltd. “The owner has to register once and an SMS will be sent to the owner’s mobile. The owner will have two options. Either he can opt for SMS tracking or he can opt for internet tracking on map-based platform like Google Earth,” he added.
TRACKING LIVE 

If a bike is stolen, the owner can send an SMS to the device which triggers a siren in the bike, thus attracting attention of passersby and disorienting the bike thief. The technology also enables the owner to retrace the route taken by the bike thief in the past 72 hours. The SMS will have details like location, time and speed of the bike, thus tracking the bike continuously and help secure it without much difficulty. The device’s cost ranges from Rs 1,500 to 6,000 and a buyer will have to spend an additional Rs 100 for a pre-paid card to get SMSes for an entire year. “Bike and car thefts are increasing nowadays. In Bangalore itself, stats reveal 5,851 cases of bike thefts. Four-wheeler thefts are supposed to be just one-fourth of the two-wheeler thefts in India. The need to secure and track mobile assets has gained importance,” Reddy contends. An encouraging sign is that even insurance companies give a discount on premium for vehicles fitted with an anti-theft device. Reddy revealed that his company has already got the patent for the product.
    The city police are yet to formally try out this device but they are definitely thrilled. “There are about 25 lakh two-wheelers in the city and they form a majority of the vehicles stolen. Tracing these vehicles is a physically tough task; that is where we are looking at technological intervention,” a top police official said.