En Inglés.

Village development worked within the concept Smart Villages in Veberöd, among other things, protecting bicycles from theft together with the bicycle manufacturer Degavi AB, The Police and Future by Lund. The intention was to find ways to stop bike thefts by providing the bikes with sensors. The sensors transmitted signals via Telia's NB-IoT network which was already installed in the village.

In the test project, five bikes were fitted with sensors. When the bike moved with the associated mobile phone nearby, nothing happened — but should the bike move without the phone being in place, an app delivered an alarm to the mobile phone.

“A notification is sent to the mobile that the bike is in motion,” Jan Malmgren of Smarta Byar told us in a 2019 interview. The owner will be asked if the phone is on loan or if it has been stolen. If it is stolen, you can choose to send the case to the police via mobile phone. If the police were to find a stolen bike, there should also be a function that allows them to read out who is the owner.

The first alarm about a stolen bike came in October 2019 and by one incident it was Jan Malmgren's bike that was stolen. Jan was having dinner with some friends when he heard a pounding from his mobile phone.

“Your bike is now on Skolgatan, Skolgatan, Dörrödsvägen... I was constantly told where the bike was. Of course, I took the opportunity to post it on the village's Facebook page so that the village could participate and follow where the bike was. Finally it ended up on Maltgatan and that's where I found it when me and my friends took the car there,” Jan Malmgren told me.

The first real alarm thus showed that the system works — but also gave Jan Malmgren new thoughts on how the system against bicycle theft can be developed.

“Since I was constantly updating via Facebook where my bike was, it could be that the bike thieves caught their eyes because they were being observed,” Jan said. In addition, I realized that we have a unique opportunity — as soon as a bike is stolen, we can post an update and a whole village can keep an eye on the bike.

Many of the villagers are connected to the village's digital communication platform veberod.nu through its website, Facebook page and app, and thus information about the village can be disseminated while it is easy to listen to what the villagers think about the new solutions.

“We want to create a theft-proof village where it simply shouldn't be profitable to steal bikes,” Jan Malmgren told me. Our project is both a form of product development but also an opportunity to test what the villagers think.

“We are positive that with the help of technological developments we can prevent bicycle theft, which is Lund's most common crime,” said Joakim Nyberg, municipal police officer in Lund in a 2019 interview. This can help us work crime prevention because you may not want to steal bikes equipped with this technology. Med

with the help of sensors we will be able to find stolen bicycles and perhaps over time also other objects.

The project showed that anti-theft of bicycles using sensors is a possibility.

“In the project, we put together a working product in the form of an app,” Jan Malmgren said. What remains is to solve how to successfully hide the antenna of the sensor, for example, in the frame of the bicycle or in a bell.

‍

Facts Subproject Bicycle Tracking and Theft Protection

The project is a sub-project of the SOM project is part of the Strategic Innovation Programme for the Internet of Things, IoT Sweden, which is funded by Vinnova. Anders Trana at Future by Lund was the project manager for the entire project. The project started on 1 September 2017 and ran until December 2020.

Project Time: 01/10/2018 - 31/12/2019

Project Manager: Jan Malmgren, Village Development

Project partners: Village Development, DeGavi, Municipal Police Lund, Lund Municipality, Border Police, Telia