Motorcycle anti theft

I’ve recently had my motorcycle stolen. Now I’m trying to figure out an alarm for when they try to steal it again from my front yard. Since we don’t have a terminator yet to shoot and “hurt” (cough) them, I came up with the following:

A pressure sensor beneath one of the tiles where I put the side stand of my bike on. When this sensor no longer detects pressure, the bike has been moved and then, when armed, my house lights up, sirens start yelling, police is warned, whatever.

Now I need help building such a sensor. I’ve found pressure mats, used in stores to detect customers entering stores, but that is oversized. Smaller ones don’t have a on/off (connect or not) output, so they don’t work with binary sensors. At least not that I could find easily.

Any help is appreciated, as are other (easier) solutions.

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Perhaps a Aqara motion sensor. It will trigger alarm/flows on movement (like window sensors).
If you have ZigBee network at this place, you could try to place such a sensor at/in your motorcycle.

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What would the connection have to be?
Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wifi…?
What signal is the strongest and most reliable where you park your bike?

Another approach:
You could connect a Aqara vibration sensor to it when Zigbee signal is ok there.
That way it always works, not depending on which tile you park…

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As we say in The Netherlands: 2 souls, 1 thought…
:slight_smile:

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All signals are fine at the parking spot. I tried a Fibaro motion sensor, which also has a sabotage alarm. So basically a vibration sensor, because it was inside my bike. The problem was that reconnecting to the zwave network wasn’t reliable.
Maybe zigbee is more reliable that way? There are zigbee presence sensors, so that should work. I’ll give it a try. I’ll have to buy one, so the test results can take a while. Maybe someone can test this?

Anyway, the unreliable reconnecting was the reason why I was looking for a solution which is always connecte de. Thanks

If you’re part of the Apple ecosphere, you could consider using an Airtag hidden on your bike. It may not prevent your bike from getting stolen, but might help in recovering it.

GPS-Tracker !

So you and the police can track your motorcycle via GPS, even if you don’t notice the theft.

Disadvantage of the airtag: apple build in an algorith to prevent airtags to be used for tracking.
If an unknown airtag moves along with your iphone you get a message “airtag found moving with you”

So if the thief also has (or stole) an iphone, he will be alerted of the tracker

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True, and at some point it also starts beeping (although there are solutions for that :wink: ).

Where I live people walk by at night trying to open parked cars, and apparently mine is easy to get into because I regularly find it messed up in de morning. Of course there’s not much of value to be found besides a half roll of mints and a shopping trolley token, but I would still like to catch these scoundrels in the act. So I fitted Aqara Zigbee Occupancy sensors and Vibration sensors in the car cabin and on the cargo hatch, to use with Heimdall on my Homey which sits inside on the windowsill at approximately four meters distance. To spot any problems with the system (for example a battery running empty) I get a notification every time any sensor is tripped, even if it’s by me. Turns out, it’s not 100% reliable even at this short range. I have now expanded the system with 433MHz “KlikAanKlikUit” motion detectors.

Another possibility would be a Shelly motion detector. It reacts to movement and vibrations with over 100 settings. Thanks to the connection via WiFi, it probably has the best range.

Or a Fibaro Binary Sensor. You could place it in your house and connect a wire between the sensor and your bike. If the circuit is broken, start the alarm.

I have a Tile Pro 2018 in my car that is registered in the Beacon - An app for presence detection using BLE beacons (2020 version is not supported) app. That way I can see if my car is there. You should hide it though, in case some one leaves the beacon and takes the bike.

Putting a smart doorbell with a camera there will also work preventive I think. You can also put an alarm on people detection at night.

I like the binary sensor idea. You could combine it with your trickle charger. When the charger wire gets disconnected from the motorbike, sound the house alarm.

Only if you use a charger. I have never ever charged my motorcycle battery, I’m driving it to charge the battery.

Other point of consideration, if they want to steel your bike they will do it anyways is the hard truth nowadays. Doesn’t take away the fun of tinkering with a project this and making it more difficult for them

My goal is to get alerted when they try to steal my bike. GPS or other tracking is probably useless, because bikes are placed inside a truck, which will block most signals. And the damage is already done.

I believe that any thief will run if my Sonos speakers are sounding an alarm at 100% volume (the sirens you hear in movies when the self destruct button is pushed :innocent:) and spotlights are aimed at him/them. And since I always use my bike for transportation, there will also be a maniac with a baseball bat running out of my front door in blind fury. Because if my bike is at home, I am too.

I’ll start with the aqara motion sensor. Since it also detects tilting, it should be perfect for this situation. It will all depend on wetter or not it reliably reconnects to the zigbee network once I get home. I have three zigbee devices with router function five meters away from the parking spot.

The next thing I’ll try will be a pressure sensor for the side stand, combined with a binairy sensor. I’ll let you guys know the outcome. Meanwhile other suggestions are very welcome. Preferably a solution that takes no extra effort when parking the bike. Thanks for all the help so far.

I think you can use the Aqara water detector as “base” . When you shortcut the two screws in the botten it will be activate. The only thing is you can’t connect your pressure mat directly. You need a relays between the mat and sensor to “reverse” the signal. Otherwise the battery in the sensor will be very quick empty…

The Aqara window/door sensor is much better suited for this (it only “wakes up” when a change of state is detected, regardless of what that state is), although it would require a bit of soldering.

Agree, and you can invert the alarm state in device settings.

Tests so far with the Aqara motion sensor deliver good results. It takes up to 30 minutes for the sensor to automatically reconnect to the zigbee network. But the reset button on the sensor can be pushed to wake the device up and reconnect immediately. It seems very reliable so far.
Just have to figure out how to not set off the alarm when I return home with my bike.