By Andrew Liszewski
Forget about LoJack or other stolen car retrieval services. If your vehicle gets swiped, odds are you wouldn’t mind having a few words with the person who’s responsible. And that’s just one of the many uses I can think of for the Portatrak vehicle tracker. (Please note: OhGizmo! does not endorse the use of vigilante justice, unless your car was actually really cool.)
The less than subtle device is basically a quad band GSM phone bundled with GPS hardware. When the vehicle being tracked is ‘on the move’ you automatically get an updated position via email every 15 minutes. While the message basically consists of longitude and latitude numbers, there’s also a link to a website that provides street level satellite views of the location, as well as a history of where it’s been. When it detects the vehicle is stationary, the Portatrak will go into a sleep mode to conserve power, but will automatically start back up when the car starts to move again. A set of 4 AA batteries will keep the tracker working for about 9 days of continuous monitoring, but that could be even longer depending on how often it goes into its sleep mode. And given its size, the device is probably more easily hidden on large objects like a vehicle, but there’s nothing stopping you from stashing it in someone’s bag or other places.
You can find the Portatrak at Spycatcher for just over $1,300.
[ Portatrak ]
