Tracking location of my mobile devices

Dear all,
I would like to save/track location of my mobile devices. Till this september I was doing this with "Apple Find My" node. In September Apple changed something on their end and it is not working anymore.
Now I would like to find a bypass. I was thinking of using Google Maps location
Does anyone have an experience with it?
I was checking this: How to get Google Maps location attributes? - Third party integrations / Node-RED - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io), but I don't understand it 100%. I need some guidance here.
Thank you in advance!

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Take a look at Owntracks

I've just taken a look. It looks nice. I am a bit worried about battery usage, but I will give it a try. Just wanted to configure Webhook relay, but the service is not working. Anyone else experiencing that?

Used to use it, but no longer have it installed, so can't check the settings. But one of the Features is:

Automatic publishes at configurable maximum intervals under the condition that the devices moved the specified number of meters. Publishes may occur earlier if a new location is avaiable.

So battery could be conserved.

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I use Owntracks for a very similar use-case. It works fantastic, there's a bunch of things you can do on top of it...

By the time I set up the whole thing, I posted this explaining how to expose a local node-red instance free and secure. The use case was allowing owntracks app to report back where the mobile is:

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My experience with Owntracks is incorrect positions, request position don't work...
reported bugs but after 2 months no update came out, basically a very bad software ....

Interesting comment. Just curious: How much time takes you (on average) correcting a bug that someone using your open source code reports?

I've decided to test owntrack. I was following this tutorial: Fast & simple location tracking with Node-RED and OwnTracks - DEV Community :woman_technologist::man_technologist:
I successfully see location received to webhook relay:


But I don't get any message on output of Webhook relax in nodered, although it is stating, it is connected:

Any idea, what am I doing wrong?

I found an error. Name of the webhook relay needs to be 100% the same as bucket. After I corrected it, I immediately started receiving messages.

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I configured owntracks in a way, they are fulfilling my expectations. But now I have some questions regarding applications itself is anyone has some more experience about it:

  1. Application is sending location to server only when it is running in the background.
  2. Does that mean I have to turn it on after each restart of the phone? Is there any way, to start it automatically in the background?
  3. As I understand "Significant" mode is ok, because it is not sending location, if locations is not changed. Is it possible to configure the parameters of the the modes?

I guess you're using http mode; I use mqtt which is less verbose and consumes less battery. I'd recommend you give it a try.

Anyhow, your questions depend on the phone you're using (Android vs iPhone) and are answered on their docs:
https://owntracks.org/booklet/guide/scenarios/

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