Android Device Tracking Options

Third party integrations
1

So with Owntracks not being maintained and Zanzito no longer available in the Play Store what options do Android users have for device tracking?

I’m just looking for location and battery status.

Thanks

2

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mendhak.gpslogger been using this app ithiut issues for a couple months.

3

OwnTrack works just fine still but I definitely understand wanting updates for security.

GPS Logger is great: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/gpslogger/
That was updated in Dec of 2018.

If you want something a little more in your control, Traccar runs great but you do need to run the server yourself and for best results, have it exposed to the world. https://www.home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker.traccar/

I use Traccar along with NMAP and Pings https://www.home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker.ping/ and https://www.home-assistant.io/components/binary_sensor.ping/

1 Like
4

I use gpslogger
And
The life360 custom component by pnbruck

5

Last commit for android owntracks was 5 days ago, what makes you think it’s not being maintained?

6

Happy to be corrected on this. I thought when I switched from Owntracks to Zanzito it was for 2 reasons, Owntracks was terrible for accuracy and it was no longer being developed/supported on Android. But that was almost 2 years ago…

7

I haven’t set this up myself just yet, but have plans to use a combination of Tasker + Webhooks + MQTT. Granted this requires that you are a HA Cloud subscriber. Process flow would look something like this:

  • Tasker detects/pulls location change and posts to the HA Cloud webhook with JSON location/battery data
  • Webhook automation is triggered and action is to post to MQTT with JSON location/battery data to the topic of your MQTT JSON Device Tracker
8

very interesting you could explain me better

9

Does traccar give you battery status? All I could find was GPS reporting info.
I really like the idea of running my own server for the data.

10

I use traccar but I dont believe they can provide you with that info. I use it only as security

11

I do something similar in terms of the Tasker part. But you can simplify this and do it without a Webhook, HA Cloud, or MQTT if you want. I simplify have my phone make a call to the REST API to call the device_tracker.see service. I made a post about it here that goes into more detail: Device tracker from script?

12

Yessir it does.

source_type: gps 
latitude: REDACTED
longitude: REDACTED
gps_accuracy: 0 
tracker: traccar 
speed: 0 
battery_level: 72 
motion: false 
friendly_name: jakes pixel 3 xl

Is what mine shows and similar with my wife’s.

13

Interesting - I wasn’t aware of that service; thanks for sharing!

Unfortunately with my setup I won’t be able to leverage this as I have a two-factor authentication setup on my NGINX proxy that sits in front of HA. This is what drove my attraction to the HA Cloud webhook. For most others though this is definitely the way to go!

@Joten75 Don’t really have much more I can share since as I mentioned I haven’t set this up yet - just an idea at this point. But you can reference the docs to help paint the picture and see what config would be necessary:

14

The Google Maps component works well for presence detection, i have that and Owntracks and Google seems to update faster.

15

I have used OwnTracks quite well, but you can not use it accurately on its defaul “significant change” mode. You need to change it to Move Monitoring mode for accuracy. I have found it as accurate as your GPS can be. I have found OwnTracks to be updated regularly, so it is 100% still being maintained, at least for the Android app.
I did change to Life360 for accuracy and battery usage using Phill Bruckner’s (github pnbruckner) custom component and it works really well, but when using the “Places” within Life360, you can only set down to a 75mtr radius. You need to set up all your zones in HA rather than Life360 app.
Traccar is a great product, but it does need a subscription to utilise the functions that make presence tracking work well.
More recently I have been playing with MQTT and WiFi connections in combination with the GPS tracking, just to get that extra little bit of accuracy. GPS tracking is great for just lighting or air-con automations, as they can have a little bit of flexibility with accuracy, but for setting alarms and the like, I prefer bluetooth or WiFi presence tracking.