Big thanks to @MrMep for this app (you are the dev, right? haha)!
While I am as hass user, I am not using this as a bridge with hass (at least not yet). I currently have an old Android phone that I keep in my car and use with Tasker and a MQTT plugin to simply send GPS coords every so often. I pay $2/mo for a data plan for this, but I’ve found that Zanzito works so much better! I’m planning to grab a couple more old phones and setup this same thing for each vehicle I have (including my side by side) just so I know where everything is at. Currently, I have Mosquitto running for my mqtt broker, and I have a basic bash script running mosquitto_sub that outputs anything from the zanzito/# topic to a log file, and then Splunk is picking all that output up. Dumping a lot of the data as it’s stuff I don’t want, but in the end, I have exactly what I wanted!
Once I get my other devices setup with this app, I’ll be able to visualize all my vehicles on a map, as well as track outings for each of my vehicles as I want. Pretty awesome stuff, and it’s only going to cost me about $6-8/mo for 3 vehicles and a side by side, so excited!
Thanks again for an awesome app, and for the record, I will be putting these same vehicles in hass with device_tracker. Super awesome work, and I’ve bought the family license already too.
Thank you, very nice project you have going there!
I was wondering: how do you manage to keep the phones awaken and charged? Is there any issue with your car battery, any special advice?
I haven’t had the need to keep the phone awake for Zanzito to work, as I allow it to run in the background. I’ve had it on my primary phone (Pixel XL) for 3 days now and have been getting consistant and reliable data with very little impact to the battery (600s heart beat interval, 100m distance to push a change).
As far as my plan for keeping the phone charged in vehicles, well in my 2016 Kia Cadenza I have a USB port within the center console so I keep a phone in the bottom of the console with a short power cable. No power unless the car is running, so I’m relying on the battery of the phone for when the car isn’t running. With my previous setup (using Tasker), I would get about 3 days battery life, and there is a good chance I will run that car at least every 2 days (it’s our primary vehicle). I’ve also got it set to power on (if dead/off) once connected to power, so if the phone dies, it will power on once the car is started again. So I may have a gap in data, but that’s okay because it should just be sitting in the same spot.
Now I don’t have the same setup on other vehicles yet, and I’m undecided how I will do it on my 68’ Corvette (still restoring, so not a running vehicle yet; but will be a car that doesn’t get driven too much) and on my side-by-side. For the side-by-side, I’m considering a small solar panel on the roof just to keep the battery topped off when not running, and if I do this, I will likely wire in a USB port direct to battery so the phone is always powered.
At least, this is currently where I am with this project. I still need to pick up some spare phones, so gonna be a bit before I get other vehicles figured out. Originally I considered doing something with a ESP8266 board (or similar), but using an old Android phone is just so much easier.
