lee81

Been a while since I've checked in on this thread, but a while back I packaged all the source code up and provided comprehensive instructions on how to compile the source code. So if you have basic to intermediate level programming, you should be able to compile (and tweak/update as required), for newer model phones. I used this succesfully for 1-2 years, main problem was when I went on holiday for a few weeks, my car battery would go flat if I forgot to disconnect it all. gps_tracker_src_141109.zip

Sold!

Price drop $7500 (firm). If no interest soon I'll be handing over to car yard to sell by consignment.

bump - had roadworthy inspection this afternoon, car now has safety certificate

Price drop $8500

Price drop, $9000. I've posted up on carsales (has additional details there as well), just search for license plate '625JZH' (in the keyword field). It is the factory color, though undercoat starting to appear on spoiler where connects to boot . Even so it does brush up nice - I was dead keen on this colour when buying as it looks great. Now located in Annerley

Moving overseas in a few months, so selling my fairly light use Skyline R33. Purchased as fresh Japan import with 104'000 on the clock in early 2007, has 122'000 now, mainly from weekend use on highways. Have original RACQ and Carmen imports condition reports from when I purchased, has since had a few services with Dan from ERD. Six cylinder manual, 2.5L (RB25), build date: 9/1993. Only modification is a turbo timer. I will arrange roadworthy prior to sale. The air conditioning stopped working towards the end of last summer. I went to fix it, but was quoted $600-$750, so figure will leave that for new owner to decide. Report came back there is leak under the dash. Has mid range speakers installed (running through 600W amp), nothing amazing, but better than your stock setup. Optionally I'll throw in GPS security tracking hardware, just pop in a sim card and you're set - get a notification via SMS if your car starts moving, telling you precisely where it is. I'm still trying to settle on a fair price, so you're welcome to PM offers, but if they're considerably lower I'll have to wait until I've had it on the market a bit longer before deciding. Can add additional pics on request. There are a couple of light scratches on the paintwork (think cat claws), might be possible to buff them out, but just want to give people the heads up on condition. Can't make it out too well in the picture, but where the spoiler meets the window the paint is thinning out (can see the white undercoat coming through). Has always been under cover or garaged for the time I've owned it. Located near Brisbane CBD

Subwoofer sold. Offers for amp?

For sale are some audio components I've had in storage for quite some time now, but expect to be moving overseas in a few months - so all have to go! Pickup only from New Farm, Queensland - as they're all very heavy (and I can't be bothered posting the cheapie alpine amp). Except for the active inline crossovers, I can post those (paypal), but still prefer pickup! Have a second shiva sub available for pickup from Perth, Western Australia (that I left there when moving to Brisbane). PM or phone 0439639394 Autotek XS 900.2 ('stealth') 2 channel amp. $280 Purpose built to have a small profile, hence being part of the Autotek 'stealth' series of amplifiers. Imported from US as wanted a high current amp (meaning can handle a 1ohm load, per channel). Manual states 'Do not use less than 2ohm in bridge mode' and 'Do not use speakers in parallel for less than 1ohm load per channel'. Power rating listed as: - 175 Watts X 2 Channels @ 4 Ohms - 350 Watts X 2 Channels @ 2 Ohms - 450 Watts X 2 Channels @ 1 Ohm - 700 Watts X 1 Channel @ 4 Ohms Bridged - 900 Watts X 1 @ 2 Ohms Bridged Fuse is rated at 60A, which should give you an idea of true RMS output. Other specs: - Built in high (75..750hz) and low (40hz..150hz) filters, 12db/octave - Subsonic filter 30hz (-3db) - Dimensions 10.5"W x 2.3"H x 18.3"L I'm open to offers on this one, as while I paid plenty for it when purchased some time back, I think prices have come right down. So bear with me, make an offer if you like, but I'll need to give it some time for advertising to circulate before I accept. If you can provide references to sales of similar second hand items, I'm all ears. This amp was purchased after poring over god knows how many reviews, trying to find quality amplifier for the right price. It was marketed as competition grade (whatever that means lol). Great condition but has some tiny scratch marks which you can make out in photo. Adire audio shiva 12" subwoofer. $60 12" subwoofer rated at 600W max (one way xmax of 15.1mm). Dual voice coil (8ohm), wire in parallel for 4ohm. Think continuous power handling is in 300W range. Not a pretty sub, but rates highly (has excellent low frequency response). If you google 'adire audio shiva review', you'll see the feedback is top notch. These can work for home cinema as well, since each coil is 8ohm. Alpine 3542 160W RMS 2 channel amp. $20 I wanted a cheap but decent amp, so purchased this second hand. It was cheap because it's so beaten up looking (I wouldn't treat my amp like that!). Works fine though, grab a bargain! Output Power at 14.4V: 2 x 60W @ 4 ohms (0.08% THD) 2 x 80W @ 2 ohms (0.3% THD) 1 x 160W @ 4 ohms bridged (0.3% THD) S/N Ratio: 105dB Fuse: 30A Dimensions: 8.6" x 7.1" x 2" (21.9cm x 18.1cm x 5.1cm) Harrison Labs FMOD inline active low pass crossover circuit (70hz). $10 ea Amp doesn't have an electronic crossover built in? These crossovers are placed inline, where the RCA feeds into the amplifier, to give you a low pass crossover. Have two available. - Crossover point 70hz - 12db/octave

Hi good to hear it seems to have gone smoothly, were than any bits of the install guide that had you confused (felt needed more detail?). The BT339 should work fine, I'll be interested to hear how it goes. As an update, a little after 3 months I got the dreaded "GPS tracker offline" from my car . There's not much I can do for the BT338/Motorola L6 combo, I can only hope newer models fix this problem. In the meantime I'm content to reboot the GPS unit every 3 months after getting this notification . The most important thing is that it never goes offline without you knowing about it, which is what happens currently. Yeah it wouldn't take much to parse the speed information sent out by the unit, I'll note it down and add this for next release. I'm pretty sure the iphone cannot run java applications, unfortunately this is the only platform I know how to compile on mobile phones. I recall the iphone can be left in bluetooth discoverable mode, so at least it can be used as an arming device no problems. The GPSRemote application is *really* basic, it simply sends an SMS message on a specific port (for example, sends sms to number '0123456789:1111'). If you can find out how to get the iphone to send messages on a port, I can give you details on how to use it to perform remote queries. Maybe the default message client allows this, I just know the Motorola won't allow you the use the : character in the phone number field.

I think the only difference is how the unit arms (via polling bluetooth) - the GPS GSM unit sounds great though. In truth, if I had found such a unit about 12 months ago when I first started toying with this project, I probably would have just grabbed one of those . I only developed the software because I couldn't find something that didn't have an annual monitoring fee. However the price can't be beaten, the Motorola phones are cheap ($40-$50 second hand these days), so total cost would be in the order of $120-$130. I was also having a look to see if there exist bluetooth activated power relays (so you could perform remote commands on your car). Sounds like the device mentioned in previous post might have that covered, would be excellent if the price is right.

Well after a long 8 months of testing, I believe I've finally ironed out all the bugs. I've also added a pretty cool feature, viewing real time tracking data over google maps. I also found that exetel has a postpaid mobile SIM plan with no ongoing costs (same plan has cheap pay on demand GPRS internet). This means you can have GPS tracking in your car with *no* annual fees whatsoever, you only pay when you actively request the location, or the car is sending you alerts . Attached is the zip file containing everything you need to get up and running. Also contains a detailed user guide, which details all features and how to use them. New features include: - View location of your car in real time, using google maps. Only cost incurred is cost of GPRS data usage, for data sent from mobile phone to your computer (which is minimal, just a few hundred bytes per minute). You can test this feature using emulation mode, to preview how it works. - Battery low warning sent via SMS - Most parameters configurable (such as 'stolen' alert distance thresholds, battery warning levels) Now I need to mention that soak tests (running for prolonged periods of time) are ongoing. So as noted in the documentation, I haven't tested as much as I'd like. There is a chance bugs exist in the hardware I've recommended that will cause the tracker to drop out after a few months. I can fix software bugs, but not hardware bugs.. At worst, it means the tracker will go offline, but it will send you an SMS letting you know it's no longer active - you then need to manually power cycle the GPS unit to get it running again. I've been running the tracker continously since 30-July, so that's 8 weeks of continous operation - I'm hopeful it will continue running this way indefinitely. Any questions let me know! Cheers gps_tracker_240808.zip

What are the costs involved with the ezy2c? I couldn't find any prices, but it looks to be pretty close to what I've been trying to achieve. If the geo-fencing is automatic (i.e. fixed radius about the area it was armed), it would be great if the price is right. There are a bunch of new products coming to the market, but they all seem to have in common high ongoing fees . I would be fine with forking out $400-$500 for a tracker unit *if* I didn't have to fork out for a so called 'monitoring' fee.

Well I've had the opportunity for a lot of testing since my earlier posts, unfortunately the testing cycle is long. It takes several weeks to test stability fixes, as that's how long it takes for stability issues to crop up. I suspect they are hardware related (I don't think mobile phone java applications were designed to run for weeks/months on end). It's my intention to post the software on the forum at the point I've had it running for several months uninterrupted, but still getting to that point. Right now there is just one issue remaining. After about a week or more, the phone stops receiving data from the GPS unit. There is nothing to indicate a problem has occurred, it's just as if the GPS unit stops sending out information. When the tracker application detects no new data is coming from the GPS, it now sends a message telling you it's offline (so you will always know it's stopped working). At this point you can manually go and restart phone and GPS unit, to get it working again (obviously tedious, and needs to be fixed). If data stops coming through, the most obvious workaround is to disconnect and reconnect from within the tracker software, but this doesn't work (it's as though the phone or GPS bluetooth hardware has locked up, requiring a hard reset). Note GPS comms offline is not to be confused with GPS being unable to get satellite fix. If the GPS unit is under cover (unable to get a position from satellites), it still transmits bluetooth data to phone; you won't get 'offline' notifications just because GPS unit is in an undercover carpark etc (which is normal), only if GPS unit stops communicating altogether. I've had it running continuously for just over a month in my car, without this problem showing up. However I left my car for two weeks without giving it a drive, and the car battery went flat - so I'm not sure how long it would have gone for. Someone running the same version of software reported the issue within a week or two, so there's still some fixes required. It might be a case of trying different hardware (phone and/or GPS unit), but I haven't got around to that stage yet. If the software revision I just finished still exhibits the bluetooth connection dropout, I'll start testing with different hardware to confirm whether or not that's the problem (out of ideas from the software side). Some other notes: - Have observed 'bad' GPS readings coming through (suspect a single corrupt reading comes through, in between good data). Not sure if software or hardware, but latest software performs filtering to prevent these bad readings from raising false alarms. - Regularly leave car for a week without driving, and car battery remains OK with tracker installed. Took somewhere between 8-12 days to drain my car battery dead flat - so power consumption of phone and GPS unit is moderate. - I mentioned in my first post the BT-338 turns off after 10 minutes once external power disconnected, even if external power is then reconnected. Need to clarify it only turns off if external power remains disconnected (if you reconnect external power it will stay on). Will be testing shortly with Holux M-1000, which has a slide (on/off) power switch; shouldn't have any auto-shutdown issues with this model. To answer your question Trav, I haven't looked into any hardware programming (PIC/microcontroller). By removing the need for the bluetooth between phone and GPS, it would save on hardware costs, power usage, and improve stability - but this kind of thing is beyond my abilities .

I've asked the question on a GPS forum (which GPS wouldn't suffer from this shutdown problem), but never got any feedback . There's definitely a model out there that doesn't have auto-shutdown, I believe it has a toggle on/off switch (so remains either on or off), but it's slightly more expensive, and I don't know about the sensitivity. I have my doubts about the most recent GlobalSat model as well, I suspect it would have the same issue, GlobalSat haven't replied to my enquiry about the problem . It's going to be a case of trial and error, when I set it up for a mate I'll use a different model, and see if it's any different.. It's happening because of the 10 minute auto-shutdown when no bluetooth active (power saving), it's just bugged because it's not detecting the bluetooth connection as active if you establish bluetooth connection *before* fixed power is cut. If you connect to GPS after power is cut, it won't shut down (until battery runs out). Car charger for the GPS, the BT-338 unit comes with the car charger. Phone as you mentioned uses its own car charger. I think it's 5V as you've stated, definitely don't wire 12V directly to either device .

There are two mobile phones, one is installed in the car, and communicates with the bluetooth GPS receiver. The mobile installed in the car also attempts to detect if the users personal mobile phone is in range (scanning for bluetooth presence), so it's when this bluetooth link from mobile to mobile goes out of range, it knows the owner is no longer in or around the car - so if the car starts moving, it's being moved without authorization and the owner will be notified.

If it didn't have ongoing monitoring costs (when you're not using it, I mean), that would be pretty cool, I couldn't find anything free of (or with low) subscription costs when I looked (definitely may have missed some). For me this was very important, I wouldn't be happy with high annual fees. Part of this is because my car just isn't worth enough to justify high ongoing security costs - at around $12k, even the $1k once off expense on security is a bit difficult to justify for someone like me (*cough* tightarse) . Honestly I think around $400-600 for hardware and $50/annum would be around my comfort zone, and if I'd found such a package, I would have run with it. Agreed it's a royal pain to pull the phone out, and I didn't want to have to do this. As it is the recharge is $10 automatic recharge when credit level drops below $10, so not a problem - though this could be an issue for other prepaid plans. I dont' know of any competitive non-prepaid plans (that would cost anywhere near $20/year), but if anyone knows of any, please post the details.

First time I've heard of geofencing, but having looked it up.. no it doesn't support geofencing . Not that it looks like it'd be hard to integrate, just as it stands the functionality is really basic - car moves, owner not in proximity of car, send SMS (little more complex than this, but that's what it boils down to).

Hi, For the last few months I've been working on a low cost DIY GPS Tracking solution. I'm at the stage where I have it working in my own car, though there are a few issues I still need to address (surrounding ease of use). In summary, for around $150 (*using some second hand components) and $20/year, you can have a satellite GPS tracking solution, that will automatically ping your mobile phone when your car starts moving, and will reply with GPS co-ordinates when you send a request through via SMS (if want to manually request position). A more detailed rundown is as follows: - A mobile phone and bluetooth GPS receiver are installed covertly in car (wired to battery power). - The mobile phone has a java application on it that continously polls the GPS receiver, and processes the result to determine whether the position has changed (among other things) - In a typical scenario, the first GPS fix that comes through becomes the 'armed' position, as soon as the current GPS position moves > a threshold distance from the armed position, the car is known to be on the move, and an alert is posted - Before sending the alert to your own mobile phone (as an SMS containing GPS co-ordinates), it tests whether a predetermined bluetooth device can be detected. This bluetooth device should be set to be your own mobile phone (but could be another device). If the tracker detects your 'disarm device' in this manner, it can discard the alert - effectively when your mobile phone is in range of the car, it disables the tracker alerts from being sent. If the disarm device is not detected, then an SMS is sent out with co-ordinate information (on a predefined interval, every 8 minutes for example). This kind of auto-arming can give the user peace of mind (you can never accidentally forget to arm). - Optionally you can send an SMS to the tracker with your own mobile, requesting a position reply, where it will SMS you back the latest GPS fix data. Unfortunately you need to use a special java application to send these SMS requests to the tracker, as the SMS must be sent on a special port (eg. this cannot be done using your normal SMS sending interface). Issues / considerations - You must have a bluetooth device available in order to use the auto-arming (alternatively can send an arm / disarm request via SMS), which is always in discoverable mode. Only some mobile phones remain in discoverable mode (as it's not ideal for phone security). If your mobile doesn't remain in discoverable mode, it cannot be detected by the tracker. I'm still looking for better arming options than this (a cheap bluetooth device that remains in discoverable mode, that you can plug into car power to activate when you get in car, would be nice). My own mobile phone doesn't remain in discoverable mode (by default), I've had to write software to force it to stay in discoverable mode.. There are ways to detect a phone not in discoverable mode (attempt to open connection to a known bluetooth device, for example) - unfortunately there are stability issues when trying to disconnect GPS in order to connect to phone, when done repeatedly - eventually the GPS receiver I've been using will stop working. You cannot have two bluetooth connections open at a time (on any cheap phones I've seen), so this is not an option (keeping GPS connection open, *and* attempting to open connection on the disarm bluetooth device). - You need a mobile phone SIM for the mobile phone installed in the car. iSim (by Optus) has the cheapest prepaid plan I could find, shouldn't cost more than $20 annually ($10 min recharge with 6 month expiry). - Right now the java software I've written has a lot of fixed settings, so I need to compile a new app if want to change various settings. As time goes on this will become user configurable (without me having to compile new versions). - A mobile phone will not allow java software running on it to automatically send an SMS, you will find it will prompt the user "do you want to allow the program to send etc", which prevents the alert from being sent. There are good reasons for this (to prevent dodgy software from automatically SMS'ing numbers). To overcome this you need to do a special installation on the phone to bypass the security - it's easy to do, but I only know how to do it for motorola phones. - GPS devices work best in open sky, the signal degrades as things get in the way between it and the tracking satellites (this includes car roof etc). The latest SirfIII GPS chipset is sensitive enough to work indoors, can't comment on other chipsets. You may have to take steps to keep GPS tracker (size of matchbox) from being under too many layers of metal etc. - If you cut the power supply (charger) to the GPS receiver, it will automatically switch to internal battery power (which can last for days). However there is a bug in the BT-338 receiver, which means it will automatically shut down within 10 minutes, even if power is restored . So I'm on the lookout for a better model without this problem, no doubt there is a different model that doesn't have this problem, but it's *probably* not an issue, in general. Costs - Bluetooth GPS Tracking device, $60-$80 new off ebay (prefer SirfIII chipset). Have used GlobalSat BT-338 GPS receiver. - Mobile phone supporting bluetooth API (JSR-82). I've used a motorola L6, as it's the cheapest phone I can find with this API. I wouldn't count on the java tracking software working on other phones (couldn't say until I tried), so to be on the safe side, need to stick to this exact model. Prices range from $120 (new) to $50 (used), easily found on ebay. If you're really on a budget can use the damaged phones (speaker/mic not working), can pick these up for around $20 off ebay if you're lucky enough to come across one . - SIM card, suggest iSim.com.au, costs $20, then $10 recharge every 6 months Anyway I've had this system live in my car for about a month now (initial trials), and has been working great. I've got mild concerns that after extended periods the java application on the phone will crash (after months of operation), but this is yet to be determined, in theory it should be fine. I'm looking for people interested in getting this set up in their own car, guinea cops, if you will . Seriously though, it does work, and it's pretty cheap solution for this kind of technology. The fact commercial GPS tracking solutions charge $300+ anually for monitoring is utter rubbish, when it can be done automatically (I'm still at a loss as to why there is a monitoring fee..). I'm willing to provide all software (free of course) and help people get it set up (if they have any complications, questions), but I can't promise to be upgrading software with new features / to support different phone models - depends on if I have time, and if I can be arsed. You'll need to do all the leg work finding the appropriate hardware as described above (strongly recommend ebay for this). Any comments, suggestions are welcome (encouraged). Also if you know of any equivalent systems let me know, as this is the reason I developed it, as I couldn't find something that could provide this functionality. If you're interested in setting this up in your car, PM me. This is new software, so please don't expect it to be bulletproof - it's still in prototype phase. I've not had any issues so far, but I don't want people to stake their car security on it functioning as described , so best at this stage as an additional layer of security / hobby project etc. For anyone who doesn't know, the GPS receiver will pin your location down to around 10 metre accuracy. Cheers

Thanks for the advice, that's 5/5 recommendations against (having asked friends).. damnit! . So I'll have to look at some others, I might consider it if there's a significant drop in price, but otherwise I'll keep looking. Unforunately I'm keen on getting dark blue paintwork, and there's not nearly as many of those around as white/red/black models. I rang the inspector, he said while there is seepage he doesn't consider it a major issue to fix (causing long term drama), should just be a case of replacing the seals. Compression test had been done ('power balance' check as they list it), and results came out normal. His primary concern was rust, mostly surface rust, and one particular area around boot where it was getting a bit deep. I'm more concerned about engine condition, which he considers ok, seems it's more cosmetic issues with rust, suspects it has not been garaged (and that resale value will suffer if rust continues), as has more rust than a usual import.

Sorry should have included that, it's an R33

Hi, I think I've already arrived at an answer for this one, but I thought I'd double check that I'm not being too harsh on this car . In the market for a skyline, had an RACQ inspection on a 1993 GTS-T, 102'000 km (offered for $13'000). I guess I'm interested to see if the condition report is out of the ordinary or not for a skyline of this age, I'm inclined to believe it's no good (advice from friends) - I'll ring the inspector to verify my decision, and check if a compression test had been done while I'm at it. Just painful thinking ahead to how many such checks I may need to go through before I get a clean bill of health, as they're reasonably expensive . Anyway report was as follows (in summary car was rated to be in reasonable condition, with some items requiring attention). Main concern is seepage from differential. Defects requiring attention - Oil seepage differential centre, rear of gearbox - No evidence of rear steer operating - Plug missing spare tyre well (and spare tyre not present) Other items noted - Fluid seepage rear of clutch master cylinder - Oil seepage lower engine - Oil seepage air conditioning compressor - Surface rust left sill panel seam - Left door lock surround loose - Scuff marks lower section from bumper bar - Bottom of left rear guard damaged, surface rust on same - Surface rust noted under boot areas, heavy rust left rear inner sill panel - Sill panels / floor frames dented - Pads worn, monitor - Sections of exhaust system corroding, front shields, muffler in particular - Outer tie rod ends dust boots leaking grease - Front struts dust boots broken/loose Any feedback would be appreciated! On a side note, can anyone recommend a Jap performance workshop that carries out pre-sale inspections? Thanks, Jade.