Even with the highly sophisticated security systems built into most cars these days, it hasn’t entirely discouraged thievery just yet. Cases of stolen cars are still on the rise, and it further puts pressure on owners to find new ways of keeping track of their precious vehicles. If you need a cheap and easy way to learn where your car is going or what’s happening, perhaps Amatrac’s AM-T22 might be it.
Being a little OBD dongle-type device, you can hook it up directly and leave it powered by your car. It then pairs to a mobile app, where you could monitor the status of your car. For example, whether the ignition has been turned on without you being anywhere near it. Or, perhaps it’s on the move, despite you being far, far away. It’s as simple as plug and play, with no complex setup or installation needed.
Small, But Mightily Capable
Compared to a lot of other OBD-type dongles and devices, the Amatrac AM-T22 is relatively compact. Nevertheless, if a thief knows what they’re looking for, they could fairly easily find and remove it from your car. So, you’ll probably have to do a bit of work at keeping it as well hidden as possible. In some cars, it’s easier said than done.
In some cars like the Mustang as an example, the OBD port does stick out like a sore thumb. To help mitigate this issue, they built a capacitor into the AM-T22. This means that even upon removal, there’s still a bit of charge in the device left. This should be enough to alert you when the device has been removed. And while a sliver of electric charge remains, the AM-T22 will continue to keep pinging your tracker’s location.
Using The App
Speaking of, everything else beyond plugging the AM-T22 in will be interfaced through Amatrac’s mobile app. The application itself is pretty well-designed and has a slick and intuitive UI coded on top of it. The main screen of Amatrac’s app shows a map, with a pin on where your car is right now. You could then set additional settings, such as creating a geofence around our vehicle.
The app will thus warn you if your car’s been moved out of a geofenced area. It’ll then give you live updates on a car’s actions and movement. Even when the engine isn’t running, Amatrac’s AM-T22 is nonetheless capable of keeping track of your car and its condition. In doing so, it’ll let you know where your car is going. Or, perhaps when your car is being towed or forcefully removed.
Beaming Over 2G
But how is the Amatrac AM-T22 beaming all this location and telemetry data back to you? Within the AM-T22, you’ll have to insert your own SIM card for it to transmit updates back to the app. In our case, we’ve used a giffgaff pay-as-you-go SIM card. Once the AM-T22 finds something of note, it’ll pass it once more onto you at just 2G speeds. Essentially, simply sending small bytes of data every so often.
All you need to do is make sure that you’ve sufficiently topped up your mobile plan. Just £10 or so is more than enough to keep the AM-T22’s data plan up and running for a long while. Given the price and low running cost, Amatrac’s AM-T22 is a fantastically cheap way to keep track of your car. Not merely just for theft, but perhaps to see how your teenagers are driving your car, or if you’re sharing your car with friends.
