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Prevention is better than cure when it comes to caravan theft, but a tracking device hidden inside the van is an easy way to pinpoint its location if the worst happens.
We wrote about Garmin’s pint-sized GTU 10 GPS tracking device last month, but iTrack Protect has an alternative that, while not quite as accurate as GPS-based location, is a good deal cheaper.
iTrack Protect is intended as a people location service and it uses a mobile phone and GSM phone mast triangulation to pinpoint someone. GSM-only location is reckoned to be accurate to within 150 yards in urban areas and to within 12 miles in rural areas, where phone masts tend to be much further apart.
The service does support mobile phones with built-in GPS though, and this can increase accuracy to around 11 yards — although this relies upon a phone having line-of-sight to a satellite, while GSM positioning only needs a mobile phone signal.
At £5.99 for the single user service, iTrack Protect is obviously ideal for simple caravan tracking — as long as you’re happy to leave a mobile phone connected to the van battery, of course. The GSM tracking service won’t incur any call charges either, so an old phone with a PAYG SIM stashed in the van is enough to use it.
