Front deck garnish area size and/or photos

[mohammad]

Hello all,

I am interested in installing a gps tracker spot trace, Dimensions: 1x2x2.7 inches where the windshield wiper motor is as the cover is plastic and it would have a clear view of the sky.

Does anyone have any photos/video of the "Front deck garnish" being removed from the mirage?

Does anyone have any idea if it will fit? i really dont want to have to waste my time removing the wiper arms and all those plastic clips to find out.

[BillAce]

I can't say for sure but I would think there is room outside of the wipe arms.
I developed very small tracking devices years ago and tested them in buildings, vehicles and obstructed areas. One application was placing it under the vehicle with magnets for covert tracking. There was no trouble with gps location or cell signal. If it doesn't work well when obstructed and requires a clear view of the sky it can't be expected to give accurate location data when the car is stolen and taken into a building or secluded area.
I'd put it on top of my dash and make sure it works before mounting it. Above the radio in the dash seems like a good location to me for final install since there's room, 12v and glass above it.

[Fummins]

Hello all,

I am interested in installing a gps tracker spot trace, Dimensions: 1x2x2.7 inches where the windshield wiper motor is as the cover is plastic and it would have a clear view of the sky.

Does anyone have any photos/video of the "Front deck garnish" being removed from the mirage?

Does anyone have any idea if it will fit? i really dont want to have to waste my time removing the wiper arms and all those plastic clips to find out.

Does it actually need to have a clear view of the sky? The hard wired ones I use just say this side up, the instructions say to mount as close to the top of dash as possible. The other kind that I use in some non-Mirage's just plug into the obdII port under the dash and work fine. They use a sim card that I assume has a data plan. It's slightly smaller than what you plan to use at 2.3x1.8x.91 inches.
I'll see if I can get a pic of one of these with the wiper cowl(front deck garish) removed.

[Wallythacker]

So what kind of phone plan do people go with when using these things? I can't see $50/month for a data plan just to maybe recover your ride if it gets swiped. @$700/yr with taxes in 4 years that's probably the depreciation doubled kind of loss. And there are still no guarantees you will recover your car in one piece. Are there specialized $10/mo data plans for this type of thing?

Are Mirages high on the list of desirable cars to steal? I haven't read anything like that.

[Fummins]

So what kind of phone plan do people go with when using these things? I can't see $50/month for a data plan just to maybe recover your ride if it gets swiped. @$700/yr with taxes in 4 years that's probably the depreciation doubled kind of loss. And there are still no guarantees you will recover your car in one piece. Are there specialized $10/mo data plans for this type of thing?

Are Mirages high on the list of desirable cars to steal? I haven't read anything like that.

I don't believe there's a big demand for stolen Mirages. They use transponder keys so are pretty difficult to steal, unless you have a programmer that can do mirage keys? Or a tow truck or just want to push it away, I guess it wouldn't be hard lol. I've been able to program nissan keys but chickened out with the Mirages.

I believe the trackers that are used at work are under some service contract by the local gps tracker company. They came with a sim car already installed. Either a telus or bell sim, I can't remember which. I don't know what it cost's to use their service, the ones we use are meant for commercial use=too pricey for practical personal use.
They use trackers mainly to track and plan pickups and deliveries not stolen vehicles. Though they did come in handy a couple times to help locate a stolen truck twice in the same day lol.

[mohammad]

So what kind of phone plan do people go with when using these things? I can't see $50/month for a data plan just to maybe recover your ride if it gets swiped. @$700/yr with taxes in 4 years that's probably the depreciation doubled kind of loss. And there are still no guarantees you will recover your car in one piece. Are there specialized $10/mo data plans for this type of thing?

Are Mirages high on the list of desirable cars to steal? I haven't read anything like that.

The base plan for the spot trace is 10 usd/month. Alternatively Bell Canada offers 12 months free then $5 per month for this samsung gps tracker: https://www.bell.ca/mobility/product...things-tracker

[BillAce]

I didn't see a mention of gps location. That may be cellular signal tracking which would be a smaller device with better battery life. It would also be less accurate

[mohammad]

I didn't see a mention of gps location. That may be cellular signal tracking which would be a smaller device with better battery life. It would also be less accurate

Im not sure what you are talking about, cell signal triangulation does not exist for us normal people its only for the police and the cool kids. The Samsung tracker linked above certainly uses gps and it should have accuracy similar to a crappy cell phone.

[BillAce]

Cell triangulation exists on every connection to a cell tower with every device. The cell network gets that information and can share it with law enforcement. It exists and its standard information.
I did not see anywhere in Samsung specs where GPS or AGPS are mentioned. What I did see is this seems like a very basic asset tracker that limits the geofences, live tracking capability and location requests. It has a lot of features to conserve battery life like timers instead of adding a 10 cent accelerometer. It looks more like their home hub device with a cell radio and a data plan. Imagine the scenario, oh man my Mirage was stolen. I have a tracker and can pinpoint its location. They're on the interstate heading East. My 10 minutes of live tracking are up I'll get another ping in 10 minutes. All without anything that indicates the accuracy of the location data.

[Fummins]

I dunno? The gps on my cell phone works great without cell service. I assumed the trackers i install in vehicles use gps to track and cell service to send the beep boops and location to the website? I’m no engineer but I did stay at a holiday inn express….