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Comment by vosper | Hacker News Reader

This really is perfect timing - I'm about to embark on a worldwide travel adventure, and one of the things I want to track is my location.

Does anyone have any experience using OwnTracks?

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I've used it a bit on Android. It's important to note that OwnTracks only takes care of publishing your location to an MQTT server (and also subscribing to and displaying other published locations). If you want to save historical location data, and display it on a map, you'll need to hook up some more software, likely this: https://github.com/owntracks/recorder

As far as the Android app goes, I had no complaints. I didn't notice any significant battery drain issues or anything like that.

Thanks for the link. Do you happen to know what the behaviour is when there's no network connection? I'm going to be going to a lot of countries, and I doubt I'll have a SIM card everywhere (plus I'll be off-the-grid hiking and exploring a bunch).

From the booklet (http://owntracks.org/booklet/guide/whathow/):

> When the device determines that it's moved a significant distance, it contacts a server via 3G or WiFi (hopefully one of those is available, but we queue messages many thousands on the app until connectivity can be established) and says "hey, I'm here", whereby "here" is specified with a bit more precision.

[According to the documentation:][1]

[1]: http://owntracks.org/booklet/guide/whathow/

I think that'll be a problem. Since you'd be recording your historical data off of the MQTT server, and your phone wont be updating the MQTT server, you'd have gaps in your data. Sounds like you want to record data right on your phone. Some other commenters have mentioned possible alternatives that probably would work better for you.

Fellow traveller here - going to try it in my solo bike tour from Lisbon to Istanbul that starts in a few days, let me know if there is any aspect of the software that you want reviewed

I'm most interested in presentation on the travel blog I'm working on (getting the most recent location onto a Google Map) and generating a track of where I've been - I thought it'd be fun to be able to plot the major waypoints on a globe.

I'm not really interested in every single movement - eg going out to get ice cream - but more moves between cities, towns etc... I guess if it's sending all the events to a server I can work that out for myself somehow...

What are you planning to use the data for?

You can use owntracks-recorder to keep the data and ocat to get them out again. I'm just playing with that right now to generate a page for my blog showing the cities I've traveled to each year in real-time.

Also check my "dwaler" arduino based project https://www.koenschmeets.nl/projects/dwaler/

I didn't see a link to the code, do you mind sharing?

https://github.com/vespakoen/dwaler

Thanks

That's pretty cool! What does the hardware look like?

hope this works: https://goo.gl/photos/jiZYZZYkxhFVSj7u8

Oh, is that a GPS/compass shield? I have to get one of those.

Yeah it's a GPS module, it reports an "angle" and I guess it calculates that by comparing the previous position to the current one. Not very accurate while standing still but works pretty well while on the move.

I have been messing around with OwnTracks logging GPS to a Mosquitto server on DigitalOcean.

I logged the process I used to get it all setup here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-setu...

Don't try to add a Let's Encrypt certificate, you need to add the CA anyway. Just use OwnTracks' own generateCA.sh script and you'll be up and running in a minute. Stick the CA and p12 file in your phone and you're done.

Here's my modified script that produces the p12 file in the end:

https://www.pastery.net/ytyqrj/

Run it with:

./generate-CA.sh <your mosquitto hostname>

./generate-CA.sh client <your username>

Have been using Where have I been for the past year and it works flawlessly. Most important is that I can export all locations as CSV which I convert to KML and all is good.

Will give OwnTracks a try but privacy wise Where Have I Been also is phone only.

Thanks, Where Have I Been looks really interesting. It might be better, even, since I just want a record of my location to process after the fact.

I've been using it for a few days, I like it a lot. The new version is also much better, but it's not on the play store yet.

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