Wayne Truchsess in the US had a relative whose Sony PS3 was stolen, and decided to modify his own console with a wide array of "extras" - which can be used to track the position of the console using an accelerometer, GPS module and a GSM board.
Now if Wayne's PS3 goes for an unexpected journey, the accelerometer will trigger an Arduino board - which polls the GPS and starts sending the position data as an SMS text message. The data can then be plotted on Google Maps to determine the position of the console:
Although this seems like a lot of effort for a piece of consumer electronics, the additional Arduino-based hardware in itself is an excellent example of solving a problem and could be fitted to other items such as vehicles or other expensive large items that could be targeted by thieves.
When considering such a project, you can save space with the Arduino hardware by using the Freetronics LeoStick - one of the smallest Arduino-compatible boards on the market today:
as well as our AM3X accelerometer module:
However for more information and design instructions, check out Wayne's descriptive article and sketch download here.
