this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Alternative to Life360? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

I want to set up location sharing for my family/friends, but

  • without having a closed source app having access to my location/sensors all the time
  • be able to choose when I want to share

Any recommendations?

Edit for those who find this later: I ended up choosing Traccar suggested by @[email protected], but big thanks to everyone who brought some ideas to the table! I'll leave my configs here.

My Docker Compose file

My traccar.xml

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Some I've heard mentioned include

  • OwnTracks
  • Home assistant with nabu casa

I haven't explored either

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I've been using OwnTracks for a while and it works really well.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Not sure if this will help, but find my device on F-Droid is awesome. You can use generic SMS and send "fmd locate" or you can use third party apps such as signal. This makes it so it'll only trigger whenever you receive that text message rather it running 24/7

It allows you to setup a trusted set of contacts who can then send you a text message "fmd locate", and it'll reply with an openstreetmaps link showing where you are. It's not real time tho

And you can disable it simply by turning off your location

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Oh this is cool! It reminds me of aeGis from CyanogenMod back in the day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

How do you use Signal?

Edit: oh with notifications. Neat.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

After Google Latitude shut down, I went with OwnTracks logging into the light-weight php-owntracks-recorder.

I’ve since migrated that to Traccar (normally used for car fleet management) on server-side and am still using OwnTracks to push the location updates from my iPhone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

OwnTracks setup was a bit confusing to me and I never got it working. traccar looks pretty nice though, I'll check it out!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm using OwnTracks in HTTP mode as I couldn't be bothered with MQTT. For that, you only need the HTTP(S) endpoint/URL to log to, optionally user credentials and then it's a "TrackerID", "UserID" and "DeviceID" so the receiving server knows who's talking.

Side note: Traccar uses different ports to receive different protocols. For OwnTracks protocol, the correct port is 5144.

My OwnTracks configuration is basically like this:

  • TrackerID: 1
  • DeviceID: Phone
  • UserID: mb
  • URL: https://mytraccarserver.com:5144 (the port itself is HTTP-only IIRC, but I've mapped Traefik Proxy in front of it which handles HTTPS)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I tried both MQTT and just the plain HTTP variant, and I couldn't get either to work. I've fully settled on the latter you mentioned, Traccar. it's pretty much what I've wanted: self-hosted, easy to set up, beautiful web interface. Thanks for the suggestions!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

My family has moved to https://www.zood.xyz/ and it has been pretty solid. https://github.com/zood/ is the github repo for it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

are they even actively developing it? repo seems abandoned

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

I would use this but unfortunately it is Android-only.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was trying out Locus and seem pretty good. But looks like its not maintained anymore. ☹️

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Damnit, I just learned about locus a month or so ago.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Didn't see it mentioned here but check out Keep Alive.

https://f-droid.org/packages/io.keepalive.android/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

There's an osmand telegram plugin. Someone may want to rewrite it for matrix?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Maybe some DIY solution with the Termux API and a web server?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I'm also using Traccar. Found this yesterday and was going to give it a try. It's called Dawarich.