A family business on the Island is hoping to take a bite out of bike theft in Bermuda with its new high-tech GPS vehicle tracking system.Father and son duo Michael and Jevon Ray run Mijed Enterprises — the exclusive distributors of Tramigo — a GPS/GSM tracker made in Finland that tracks cars, bikes, boats, trailers and more — all to your smartphone, laptop or PC.Michael Ray says he discovered the device on an Australian website late last year and wanted to see if it could work here in Bermuda.“I brought in two from the States and the minute they got to Bermuda, we started testing them. When I turned it on, I couldn’t believe what I saw on the map because it has the whole Google Map satellite image of the Island. We just started driving around the Island just checking it out,” Michael said.“Over the last few months, we’ve been doing a lot of beta testing and found out that it works extremely well — just like it says. It tracks motorcycles, cars, boats, trailers, golf carts, children — my son even came up with a great slogan for it …”“ … It tracks anything that moves,” Jevon said.The Tramigo device costs $425 and will work with any smartphone, laptop or desktop computer.“The only thing you download on your smartphone is the app, which is plug and play,” Michael said.There are no annual fees associated with the device and no internet or computer are required. The device will even work with older flip phones.“On a flip phone or older phone, you’ll just get a text. But on a smartphone, you have access to the Google satellite map and all the good stuff,” Jevon explained.Marketed as “the ultimate guardian” of your bike or vehicle, the Tramigo’s built-in motion-sensor will notify you instantly when your bike is being rocked, sat on or moved.“The minute someone sits on your bike or rocks it or is harassing it, you’ll get a text message telling you that someone’s messing with your bike,” Michael said.“And the minute they steal your bike, you get a text saying your bike’s being stolen because it’s being moved,” Jevon said. “You can type in ‘find’ and then you can call the cops and say, ‘Look, my bike’s been stolen and I know where it is. I will call you when the bike stops’, and they can go get your bike right away,” Jevon said. “This will hopefully keep your bike protected and help you get your bike back not weeks down the line but right away,” he added.“We’ve only just started bringing them in so we’ve been testing them and working out the kinks,” Jevon said. “We didn’t want to bring them in and find out they don’t work well here. “We know it’s an economic recession and so people don’t want to spend money unnecessarily.”“The clients we’ve sold to so far have not had their bikes stolen,” Jevon said. “A few of those individuals had already had their bikes stolen and wish they had had one of these sooner.”The father-son team hope the new devices will cut down on the amount of bike theft on the Island.“That’s our hope. We don’t think it’s going to prevent theft completely, but we certainly think it’s going to put a dent on bike thefts,” Michael said. “The whole concept of it is not to let it be known that your vehicle has this in it. So if I’m a thief and I know this is available now, I’m kind of thinking twice now about taking a bike.“And the insurance companies are loving this,” Jevon added. “They like it because they don’t want to keep paying out for stolen bikes.”“We’re talking to some of the insurance companies and they’re very interested so hopefully we can help ‘take a bite out of crime’ as the saying goes.” Michael said.The company says the device has many other uses including fleet management.“A company could say, ‘you know, we think one of our drivers is going home and going to sleep or guys that work in the service industry for companies doing side work so they send you here, here and here, and the boss in the shop can bring up the system and say — what is he doing all the way over here? We don’t have any jobs over there’. So it’s good for fleet management.”Parents can even put a device in a child’s backpack and know when he or she arrives at their destination.“You can also put this in your child’s bedroom and let’s say there’s a babysitter and you don’t really know them that well. You can go out, call the SIM card number and you can literally listen in on the child’s surroundings,” Michael said.“Or elderly parents who maybe have dementia or Alzheimer’s, you can put this in their pocket. If they wander off or go missing, you can track them,” he added.It also has implications for the more dubious users.“If it moves you can track it,” Jevon said. “I find that women, when you tell them about this, their eyes light up and you can see them thinking, hmm …”“I had a gentlemen come in last week and he said, ‘what is that?’ When I told him what it was he said, ‘don’t sell one of those to my wife’,” Michael said.“Husband tells his wife he’s going somewhere, but the wife’s suspicious, so she buys one and he doesn’t know it’s in the car — she can put it under the seat, in the glove compartment, you can put it in the very back of the car and see where he’s going,” Michael said. “We’re not marketing it that way, but it certainly can be utilised that way,” he added.“Same scenario can work for children,” Jevon added. “My 16 year old gets a bike and tells me he’s doing this, this and this, but mommy and daddy really know if you’re being honest. The application is all up to the person that wants it.”The Tramigo can not only detect if a bike has been rocked or stolen — it can also alert you when the device’s battery is running low and if the vehicle it is in is speeding.“If your child comes in and tells you, ‘I wasn’t speeding!’ you can say I know for a fact you were — do not worry about how I know, but I know you were speeding right here doing x amount of speed,” Jevon said.“There’s also an additional feature you can add called the immobiliser. It’s an accessory that you hook up to the engine. Say you got a text saying the vehicle’s been stolen — if it’s got this feature hooked up to it, you can literally send a message that will disable the vehicle,” Jevon explained.“Everything’s computerised nowadays, cars, jet skis, boats, bikes — you hook this right up to your ignition — up to the computer — and you can lock it down. If my child is apparently driving drunk — I get an alert — I shut it down — just overrides the whole system,” he added.“It’s all about the application of the owner. At the end of the day, it’s all about how the owner wants to apply it. Your bike, your car, your boat, your husband — whatever. If it’s valuable, it’s movable and it concerns you, it can be tracked,” Jevon said.For more information on the Tramigo, call 234-6891 or e-mail mijed@myoffice.bm.