Crowdsourcing a solution to bike theft in Dublin City alongside theft prevention via remote sensors: Technical Report for Bike Pro App

Problem addressed? An average of 14 bikes stolen every day in Dublin (Dublin Cycling Campaign) this is a real issue for cyclists. More often than not the bike is never seen again. When a person has their bike stolen they will most likely report it to the police, An officer will file a report and for the majority of cases that is where the issue will end. Police are too busy with what they deem to be more serious crime to invest much time in a bike theft. Therefore, broader thinking is required to address this issue. My solution is to leverage the growing trends of crowd sourcing and mobile applications. Crowd sourcing the bike riding community to help one another find stolen bikes. Initially this project will be focused on bikes but further iterations of the application could easily be expanded to include other high value items such as cars. Three key feature of the application will be 1. Notifying a user if there is unauthorized movement of their bike. This will take place through an external sensor placed on the bike which will communicate with the user’s phone 2. Being able to browse a shared database of bikes listed as stolen by users and having the ability to report a suspected sighting of a stolen bike, which will notify the original owner and relevant authority’s. 3. Being able to scan the immediate area for bikes that have been registered as stolen and are using the sensors. Should bikes listed as stolen be found by the system all relevant information will be displayed to the user along with an approximate distance to the stolen bike. This is triangulated via the signal strength of the Bluetooth sensor on the bike. The user can then contact the original owner through the app and let them know they have a legitimate sighting of their stolen bike confirmed through the sensor technology. The technology used to implement this solution will include an application built on the android platform, using googles cloud hosted firebase database, google maps API integration and remote sensors. These sensors contain a micro-computer powered by an ARM chip. The sensors include motion and temperature scanners along with NFC compatibility. The sensors transmit signals through a 2.4GHz frequency of Bluetooth with a range of up to 70m. The application will facilitate users to help one another locate their stolen bikes. Also provide a means to prevent theft occurring via the remote sensors