Ok, fairly huge refactor on this last version. After trying to write up a quick start guide as recommended by @user6566 I realized how engineery it was and not so customer usable.
I've buried things like the mobile app location/display settings under an advanced mode slide since most people shouldn't need to touch these. It's laid out now that if you follow the sections in the "Installation" block, you can get up and running with minimal effort (that's the goal!)
The rest of the sections are grouped in logical blocks. I've added a maintenance section that has a "reset settings to defaults" section. If you happened to mess with all the location and display settings, this will roll them back to the new install ones. You won't lose any regions, members, recorder or secondary hub setup, just the settings.
In the configure hub app section, there is a new slider that will trigger the phone to send back a higher accuracy location when it reports a ping or manual update (Android only). The goal is to keep the locations current and not stale.
Let me know if anything doesn't make sense, or if anything broken. It was mostly a screen shuffling exercise.
Thanks @lpakula! You are doing a great job!
I also decided to give it a try and it seems to work quite good. I have tested just few hours and most likely I haven't yet red all the messages from this topic to solve my issue.
Is it normal that location changes are not updating to android app side. I mean Hubitat Owntracks devices report their location and how far away from home they are..but at the same time I'm watching owntracks app and it shows that person with its thumbnail has updated 10min ago when the last update according hubitat was received 1min ago. EDIT: This is actually not related to your app at all. It is more of a owntracks thing and I'm guessing this is how it works. If I manually run update (arrow up) on owntracks android app the status and location is updated.
Is it possible to create an address attribute that could be used in automation rules? Owntracks Android app shows address.
Yes, that's "normal". I'll make a "how to" guide on how the OwnTracks works. The short answer: The Mobile App only gets an update when it sends a location to the Hubitat app. (It's on-demand). If you wanted to track someone on the mobile app, you'd have to either keep open and closing the app or click the send position button to get a refresh.
If you were moving at the same time (so your phone was sending locations) then it would would refresh automatically.
Currently no. The phone app does a reverse geocode to grab an address but doesn't send it (only displays it). You can create specific regions that you'd like to monitor (for me, I have 'work', 'home', 'kid's friends', etc. When a member enters those regions, that is sent back. Those regions are displayed in the "location" attribute. For example, if you had a 'home' and 'work' region:
You are at 'home' - location: Home
You are 5km from 'home' - location: 5.0km from Home
You arrived at 'work' - location: Work
Does that work? I can split the inRegions field out as just locations. It would be blank until you entered a region.
I have used Google's (effectively free) Reverse Goecoding API in another app to get the address from latitude and longitude. It works well.
What are the chances you'd provide this or another 3rd party reverse geocoding as an optional add-on? I'd be happy to help code if desired, as it seems this is the direction the community is heading post-Life360.
Yeah I'm just trying to figure out all the possibilities with this new app/alternative. I have been using life360 for many years (like many of us) and now as I'm slowly starting to think alternatives...and I'm thinking about all the possibilities too. I have been using life360 in my dashboards to show either the person location or the address (if the location is not saved).
Let's put it like this. Address information would be very useful but I also do understand that it would need some special things todo.. like @JustinL wrote.
I just got this app installed and configured and am working to support it in HD+. So far everything looks good - the only thing I can't figure out is the thumbnails.
I just have a single user setup in OwnTracks -- will my profile image show up in the map view or is it only for the other users / friends? I have the image in File Manager and the option enabled in the Hubitat app.
Also, is there any way I can get a thumbnail URL in the driver? Something like http://192.168.0.201/local/joe.jpg. That would let me display it in the dashboard like I do for the Life360 driver.
At this point only the latter - friends thumbnails. There were issues w/trying to get primary user thumbnails to display, so @lpakula had to remvoe that.
Your suggestion sounds great! I'd really appreciate it if we could go with this approach, as it would offer me more flexibility in WebCore. Alternatively, if others prefer, maybe we could have a toggle for activating separate regions?
Thanks a bunch for taking the time to consider this!
Trying to set this up on iphone. But keeps only show in phone app as "06" not tag.
I do not use iphone. Im setting this up for my daughter. I did get it setup on my android and shows first 3 letters of name on map and full first name on Friends in app. but not the iphone, nope...
Let me check into this. The phone already has this info, so the easiest way would be to send that out with the location packet. I'll spend some time on this and get it into my forked version, and open a pull request for the actual OwnTracks app.
