Experimenting With Traccar

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Traccar is an open source fleet management solution that allows you to track vehicles and devices via a self-hosted server without using Google, Apple, Garmin, Suunto or other brands. If you setup your own server you can track as many vehicles as you like, and even track their live movements.

## Options

I did not use it as a vehicle tracker. I used it as a personal GPS tracker, as I went for my daily walk yesterday afternoon. The tracker allows you to set how often it refreshes based on time in seconds, distance travelled in meters, or course changes in degrees.

## Granular tracking

If you're tracking a drive from Switzerland to Spain or from Lausanne to Geneva you might set it to refresh every 5 minutes or every 5 kilometres. If you're going for a bike ride you might set it to note every 100 meters, and if you're walking then you might set it for every two hundred metres. It will then track your walk, bike ride or other using your mobile phone.

## The Server

The server is light. It uses OpenStreetMap and other mapping solutions. As you add mobile phones or other devices they are displayed on this map and can update whenever the device sends a new location. In my case I installed the traccer client apps on an android phone and an iPhone. I use a local machine for a server via homeassistant.local:8082 to connect. It should be available via TailScale if I activate the TailScale VPN on my mobile devices but I haven't bothered because they will time out and I will lose the link eventually.

## Mobile Buffering

With the mobile Traccar client there is the option to buffer data, to be uploaded once a connection is re-established. If you shut down the app will persist. It only shows the most recent updates so if you go for a one and a half hour walk but see a few minutes of data this is normal. When the buffer is sent to the server once you are on the home wifi network the data is available.

## The Daily Walk

The walk or route you just travelled will be displayed as a set of beads connected together by a string. Occasionally you will see the GPS leap as you pass under a bridge or as the signal to telecom towers is lost but on the whole you get a comprehensive track of your journey.

## Fine Tuning

As I mentioned earlier tracking is granular. With Suunto, Garmin and other solutions you can choose between fine, battery saver and other options. With this app you can choose to be precise down to the meter, the degree, or the minute. Usually my devices tend to be within three meters so that's as precise as you really need to get.

## Reports

The Web interface has reports where you can see route, events, trips, stops, summary, chart and replay, as well as scheduled reports and statistics. The most interesting option for me was replay because it shows you a map based representation of the trip.

## Contrast to Google Maps

According to traccar I traveled six and a half kilometres but according to Google Maps - Timeline I walked 8.2 kilometres. Map traces are similar. Google Maps is more accurate.

## A Google Latitude Replacement

Traccar is designed as a fleet management tool. It is useful for the post office, deicing crews and more. It is not designed to be used as a walking app. If you are worried about Google or Apple having access to your location data this is an interesting alternative. Your data goes straight from your phone to your server, once you're home, and not before. You keep control of it.

Some people want Google to delete map data, and I want them to stop threatening to destroy it. Map data is useful. Quite a few years ago I receieved a speeding fine, but thanks to Google Maps I could see that it wasn't me driving the car. I paid the fine, with a clear conscience that my own driving was not the problem.

In this scenario Traccar is great. Any time you drive you have a track of where you were at a specific time. It's easy to clear your conscience.

## Battery Use

On an iPhone with a battery health of 80 percent Traccar used about 8 percent of battery despite running for 19hr24 in the background. The app is battery friendly

## And Finally

I thought that Traccar could potentially replace fitness trackers but it can't. It doesn't give enough control for that to be possible. It's a fleet and mobile phone tracker. It makes it easy to see where a car or phone is in close to real time, but not much more.

The Replay is a nice feature, to see where you have been on a specific day. The chart functions are nice but they would be more useful if we could say "show data from time A to Time B, rather than for the entire day. it's hard to reach these charts when they show an entire day of data.

This could be a Google Latitude replacement, rather than a GPS watch replacement. I use the term Google Latitude, as a legacy name.