What do you use? I’m looking for as many of the following as possible:
- included battery, preferably rechargeable from the motorcycle’s own battery, meaning
- negligible idle consumption
- EU coverage, supporting 3-4 constellations
- 4G+, i provide the e/SIM (i.e. no included plan unless it’s grrrreat and cheap af)
- small form factor (for a naked bike)
- privacy-respecting app (preferably not relying on AWS, Google Maps, etc) and/or website
- motion-detection/geofencing
- cheap of course
I had a cheap one from eBay but the chinese-quality app would sometimes lag hours behind - not useful for an eurotrip.
If you are into the apple ecosystem I can highly recommend AirTags. They work amazingly well, dont require a data plan and the battery lasts around 2 years. I have one in my bike.
Nope. Do they track using any GNSS network or are they solely GSM/UMTS?
AirTags are entirely passive in their tracking and are essentiell bluetooth LE beacons. If they get in the range of an Apple device (eg iPhone) with active Bluetooth, the Apple device reports it’s own position together with the ID of the AirTag to Apple.
Since they announce their presence actively to function, they are stupid easy to find by the thieves by using a detector app and they only work in the first place if there are enough phones around to keep the position semi updated