Bikefinder, A Tracker That Will Find Your Bike

Bikefinder is a GPS, GSM and Bluetooth tracker that can be hidden inside your bike’s handlebars.

Bicycle theft is on the rise and the chance of recovering your bike if it is stolen is very low, especially if you haven’t registered or reported it. Apparently it’s quite common for police to recover bikes, but be unable to reunite them with their owners. This is something I came across in a previous job where we refurbished old bikes. We would receive twenty or thirty bikes from rail companies that had been abandoned at their stations. Many were obviously stolen, but with no form of identification, they were passed on to our charity. Could the Bikefinder tracker be the solution to the problem of reuniting bike and owner after a theft?

The company was started back in 2015 in Stavanger in Norway. The founders came up with the Bikefinder after having their bikes stolen. Like many countries this is a rising problem in Norway, especially with many commuters now owning eBikes. Locking up an expensive eBike with a cheap lock is never a good idea.

So how to prevent your bike from being stolen and if it is how do you find it again? The Bikefinder solution is to hide a tracker on your bike. Their chosen hiding spot is your handlebars, easy to access for installation and charging. The tracker will fit bars with an internal diameter of 15-23mm and includes an adaptor for anything bigger. Weighing in at 52g, Bikefinder is flexible enough to fit road or flat bars.

Once installed Bikefinder uses GPS, GSM, Bluetooth technology and a pre-installed sim card to triangulate and communicate your bike’s position. All of which information can be viewed via the app. The battery has an eight week life and will alert you via the app when it gets below 40% charge.

But if the worst does happen, then the app is where all the action is. Once your bike is moved you will receive an alert, hopefully giving you enough time to stop the theft. If not you can report the theft and Bikefinder’s team will guide you through the process of tracking and retrieving your bike. How good is it at tracking your bike? Well there are a couple of stories on their site from people who managed to recover their bikes, below is a video of one of them.

And it’s not just individuals buying them. After losing one of their bikes – stolen off the roof of a team car during the Critérium du Dauphiné – World Tour team Jumbo-Visma have fitted their rider’s bikes with Bikefinder’s trackers.

And if your bike can’t for any reason be traced, Bikefinder have partnered with Sundays, a bicycle insurance firm. Sundays will cover your bike, wherever you take it and even cover damage caused by attempted thefts. So that’s an extra level of reassurance. The Bikefinder retails at £170 and you will also need to pay a subscription for the tracking service, this starts from £2.99/month.

I’ll be trying the Bikefinder out soon and will let you know how I get on.

Bikefinder