Hi all! My first thread here about my own mod so please be gentle as English is not my first language.

So first of all, I got this crap mail in my post a few months ago about "Oh we see that you have bought a new car. Do you want to buy this overpriced GPS/3G thingy for tracking and pay us a ridiculous monthly fee?". Being a geek I thought to my self: "Hell no, I can do that myself". And then I realized I really can do this myself!

My material:
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini
Sony Ericsson Car Charger AN300
A cheap cash card with unlimited data traffic.
And a Mazda RX-8 of course. Mine being red and awesome.

So lets get started.
The center console as seen from the back seat:

I unscrewed 5 screws from 3 different places.



And the ones in the back that you will see further down.
After this o lifted up the middle console only a few centimeters. Or about one inch for you US guys. (Get with the metric system, even NASA uses it!).

And after this i pried the cable through the hole for the power. As such:


More in the next post since Ive attached 5 files already...

 

So the cable wound up in the back.


The installed result in the "front":

And of course the phone:

And a picture of the 3G actually doing its magic and showing me where the car is with google maps:

 

So then I pry out the back end and make a small hole with a 10mm drill:

Result:

Cable sticking out at the back:

Result:

So now I have a hidden phone thats charging when Im driving. That I can get hold of if I really need to. Without a screwdriver. :-)
With enough battery to go for a few days if my car goes missing. And I can track it with my other phone.
YAY! Mission accomplished.

Sorry for the crappy pictures. Dark garage and only a phone to take pictures with. Hopefully someone can get inspired and do it themselfs. :-)

More pictures on demand if something is unclear.

 

Do you pay monthly for the second phone? When I used to use prepaid phones a long time ago they had to be renewed every so often. Cool idea!

 

I preloaded it with 100 Swedish kronor. Roughly 15 USD. The good thing is that we get unlimited data traffic for maximum 1 Swedish krona a day. So this will last me 100 days hopefully. Compared to the US we have really good prices on call/data for our phones.

 

Cool Idea! But there has to be some other dedicated type device that lets the end user track the car? I might use this not for theft but for spying on family. My kid will be driving in about 4 years and I am already worried about him taking the 8 for a fast joy ride before he gets a license

 

Nice installation. I assume you use Latitude to keep track of position. Do you know how often Latitude updates? I have not really figured it out on my Android phone since it seems to be a bit sporadic about updates.

How is the reception boxed in like that? Is it using triangulation to pinpoint or can you get a GPS signal in?

Would it be possible to attach a wire (working like an antenna) to help reception?

Great work though!

 

Latitude seems to update about every 20 minutes.
Triangulation using 3G is what I get now but there is a connector for GPS antenna that I will investigate later on.

 

Any android cell phone can track it using Latitude (google maps).

 

you could also hardwire the charger directly to the 12 volt power line used in the outlet in the compartment, probably have to buy a chepo fuse just in case. this way the whole thing is hideing...

 

Great idea. Goes to show what crap products like "Lowjack" are. Charging people $600 for something that uses radio signals.

 

Great write up!
Since you are using an Android phone, you can also use GPS Tracker by InstaMapper.

Check out www.instamapper.com

You can configure it to update as often every 5 seconds (it will only update that often when you log into your live tracking page, otherwise it will only update every 30 seconds).

It also features SMS activation so it will only start tracking when you want it to.

The best part.. it's FREE :P

I've though about doing something like this, but mobile rates in Canada are kind of ridiculous.