I'll post this in the Pub as it's really only idle curiosity for now. I'm working (the term is of course relative) on telematics on commercial vehicles. These can:
1. Tell you where the vehicle is.
2. Give you speed and a host of vehicle data about if the doors are open and so forth.
3. Let you read some of the vehicle diagnostics remotely.
4. Transfer scanned documents from cab to office.
5. Trigger payments such as tolls.
6. Lets the person in the office route the vehicle round traffic.
7. Has a translation function so an English dispatcher can tell a Polish driver where to go.
8. Has a distress signal.
All you need is a vehicle with a lot of CAN info (becoming common), a black box with a mobile phone signal and some software.
To me the black box should be phone shaped, rather like a phone and the phone shaped phone should be gathering the CAN signals and sending them. The box on the bike should be fag packet sized and only a CAN hub.
When this can be done, would there be an application for overlanders? Let the folks at home know the bike is at X and the ignition is on. Possibly make getting photos to or documents from a cloud easier as it's data only. Let your mechanic tell you which bit you should try and fix with epoxy and baleing wire. You could set an alarm that phones home if the bike isn't keyed on for so many hours or days.
The current services are subscription and in the 10-pounds per month range. The hardware is mid hundreds of pounds but my thoughs on phone plus box make it cheaper.
Is this something you would want or is it intrusive?
Lights blue touch paper and retires
Andy