A few months ago I bought a Datatool Snitcher for my Hornet and I though I would share my experience:
I live an an apartment on the 5th floor of a conversion. The block has 2 garages in the basement where I can park my bike.
I have lived here for 5 years and in that time have had 2 bicycles and 1 CG125 nicked. Basically the entrance security consists of roller shutters and people tend to drive off before they are shut allowing the local scallies to stoop under the closing grille.
I also had my first CG125 nicked from outside a supermarket shortly after buying it.
Anyway I wanted a security device that would notify me if someone was trying to touch or nick my bike. Living on the 5th floor I would never hear an alarm and it would be quite easy for a thief to hide is someone entered the garage unaware they were there.
Anyway after searching around I came across the Snitcher which seemed just what I was looking for. It basically works by sending a text message to a number you program when your bike is moved.
Not knowing about bike security I took a little bit of time to install the device, trying to find the right place to connect the wires although after speaking to Datatool they were most helpful. It then took a little while longer to initialise the Snitcher again with the help of Datatool who sent initialisation texts for me.
I have found that the sensor is quite sensitive although there are 2 levels of sensitivity. I have not found this to be a problem in reality as it just means I get a text if I try to fill up say a bit more aggressively than usual. The benefit of this is that if someone tries to shuffle my bike to make some space I get notified straight away. There is no more than the usual delay in the text being delivered which means that I can normally investigate a notification before anyone has had a chance to disappear not that this has happened very often.
Although you are charged for a text everytime the rates are very good @5p and you even get free ones when topping up - something I have only done when I installed it when I added £10.
Overall @~£100 I would highly recommend this if you don’t sleep with your bike next to your bed and are worried aboutsomeone grabbing it.
You could even add mobile tracking to the sim and add a more acccurae tracker such as http://www.loc8tor.co.uk/
If anyone is interested I am happy to meet up to give a demo.
Does anyone make a radio based alarm system, that would notify you of motion or other activity? That would also be good, depending how much attention you pay to messages on your phone.
Then you have to tote the radio reciever along with you, of course.
I’ve just bought my first bike and have been looking to get one of these snitchers, but after the expense of the bike, helmet, clothing, locks etc I’m wiped out. GSXRAng / SheWoolf, if you’re not going to use it I’ll buy it off you? I’ll send you a PM (if I can work out how)…
I tell you, if I was getting this much stick for being a fwb I’d have taken it out by now and had a ride to BM just to shut everybody mac*p up :P:cool:
