I stumbled onto Traccar via Home Assistant, which offers Traccar as a plugin. Ultimately I wanted a boolean sensor for whether I'm at home or not, and Traccar (as installed by the HA plugin) provided that to HA without configuration.
Thank you for the tip! Hass user here too. I was reluctant to use GPS based detection but traccar seems like good private solution. I still have to check whether I must spin my own instance or if the traccar server is running automatically on (my) Hass server.
I'm also looking into client-side geofencing, e.g. an app that reports an event to HA when a fence is crossed, compare to Traccar collecting all the locations and inferring the crossings. My goal is tiered presence detection.
Seems the server is 50 USD/month for 50 clients. Since it is FOSS, I suppose you can self-host?
This seems shady:
"* In addition to standard version available on the Google Play, Traccar Client for Android comes in a special hidden version. It includes modifications to make the app less visible to the phone’s owner. Name is changed from “Traccar Client” to “Device Settings”. Default Android settings icon is used as an app icon. After first start, the app removes itself from the launcher. To open it again dial 8722227 (TRACCAR)."
I highly doubt that's GDPR complaint. Then again, it is a Russian company who sell their server capacity in USDs.
They probably meant "user" here, and a lot of companies would want to be able to track their phones without the user deleting it. I think it's fine if the phone is company property.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a Russian company selling online in USD if they want to hit a higher market. As someone from Pakistan, I wouldn't price my SaaS in PKR either if my market includes people from outside the country.
> They probably meant "user" here, and a lot of companies would want to be able to track their phones without the user deleting it. I think it's fine if the phone is company property.
There is no reason to try and hide such an app, though. Phones that are company property will be under MDM which can ensure a given app is installed and prevent uninstallation.
These features, presumably, are to target the shady "spouse spying", domestic abuse and similar adversarial tracking markets.
Yeah, I can see how they'd be used like that and I don't condone it. At the same time, the optimist in me hopes they're trying to make it less obvious to the employees that the phone is being tracked. Like when you don't necessarily need a glowing red camera to remind workers that big brother is watching.
But I certainly see your point. I'm
just hoping they're a legitimate vehicle tracking solution that's letting you add an accompanying hard-to-remove client app on a spare phone to use as a easy vehicle tracker.
Please don't confuse your opinion with the laws of every sovereign nation. There are plenty of countries that prescribe stoning someone to death for offenses such as fornication, or homosexuality.
One legitimate use of such technology is a tracker on your own phone in case it gets stolen. Prey[0] used to disguise itself as a game a few years ago.
Wow, that escalated quickly. Please tone it down a little.
You described a different scenario. My comment was not related to installing such hidden software yourself on your own device, not meant to be used by anyone else.
My last comment wasn't meant to be, nor does it read to me as, hostile. I suppose I can write too matter-of-factly and text does come across as bland so I do apologize if it felt like I was being rude.
It is security through obscurity though. It is one thing to disallow a user to uninstall such an application. As you say, the user might not be the owner. You could even inform the user that the software is running. Even if they're not the owner of the phone that's probably a morally right thing to do. It is another level to rename the application as if its part of the OS. That's a malware tactic. Therefore, I don't believe they should provide such build.
As for the Russia/USD thing, it was worth mentioning as a heads up (and besides from the way I wrote it, you can read as if they don't target EU). It was meant in an informational way (and I like that they're open about where they're from). Whatever judgement you draw from it, is up to the reader.
Author of Traccar here. Pricing is for SaaS solution hosted on our servers. Software itself is completely free and open source.
As for GDPR compliance, users are in full control of their data. You can delete anything you want from the system. We do collect some anonymous aggregates statistics from servers, but that can easily be disabled in the configuration.
You collect "aggregate" statistics from the open source server by default?
Do you have a whitepaper describing your aggregation methods? I've seen a talk by some Google engineers who worked on Maps and they went to extensive efforts to anonymize drive segments. This is very difficult (there's a surprising amount of subtlety) and while I'm not doubting your company's abilities, publishing such a whitepaper would help dispel any misgivings people might get over knowing that you collect this by default.
It's your handset to do with as you please. Including violate laws, if that's how you roll. Apps that hide from 'common' users are not unusual for enterprise deployments.
yes, you can self host the server.
There are two client apps to "report back". Yes, it'd be highly creepy if it was installed without the phone owner's knowledge, but this is not always the use case (fleet cars using fleet phones)
I have an old Sanav CT-24. It sends HTTP requests with a NMEA protocol payload. It's been a long time since I used it. I created my first Rails application to receive its data back in 2005/6. It uses GPRS (yes) and falls back to SMS. I'm sure there are more modern models.
How does it look like? Can I say it's like Google Maps + moving pins (e.g. tracked vehicles) for the server-side, and SDK/client library for GPS devices?
Also, what Android/iOS got to do with this? A "viewer" (dashboard) for the server?
It does look like Google Maps with moving pins, but it has a lot of extra functionality like geofencing, various reports, notifications and more. You can also view history for one or multiple devices.
There are two mobile apps. One app is basically for tracking your phone (Traccar Client) and the other one is the viewer (Traccar Manager).
This looks pretty nice! Does anyone know of a device that uses data (not SMS) and that I can put in my car to track it in case of theft, but that won't kill my battery? I suppose I should wire it to only run when the car is on.
Many cheap gps trackers support "vibration wake up", they go to sleep after a while they've been still and wake up when you start the car. They run in sleep mode at least a week on an internal battery so charging them only whole the car is on is not a problem.
Traccar supports many protocols so you are usually able to buy a random tracker and reconfigure it to work with your traccar instance.
There are some Lorawan GPS demo boards you might use.
When I think of this space I have have four thoughts.
1. Ordinary users don't want their location data used by third parties. Which eliminates all of the commercial offerings.
2. They also don't want to pay $50/mo for someone to track them and then turn around and sell their data to everyone.
3. The three functions people want are a) Someone just drove off with my car detection. b) Where did the thieves leave my car. c) Is my car going to get a parking ticket at 6am tomorrow.
4. And what stops me. Spousal abusers and stalkers misusing the technology. You can solve 1, 2, 3 by a device that doesn't report it's location unless pinged remotely, it leaves a 'location box' like your driveway, or if someone tampers with it. I can't see how to solve #4. Maybe it doesn't matter because stalkers probably want a tracking device not a locator device.
I had it running in a couple of trucks as well as some smartphones for a small business. Generally a car mounted (under dash) gps will only contact the server when things have changed (ie there's a tiny geo fence).
I'm not sure why, but whenever I see a Raspberry Pi in something like this, I think "we didn't want to have to learn how to design a PCB". I don't think it makes sense to have HDMI/sound output, wifi, a GPU etc etc and pay the battery cost for these components without using them.
It also might have been more expensive to design and produce their own PCB with all these features, so if the Pi is cheaper, why not use it?
Also, there are a ton of information, tutorials and libraries available made for the Raspberry Pi. Now their customers can take advantage of all that too.
They should let the next submitter get the karma or change their ranking algo... I was not even awake at the time that I supposedly submitted that link.
