FEATURE: Android device tracking

[AndrewC]

It is not currently in the short term plans but we do consider all suggestions when planning future features.

Regards,
Andrew

GpsGate Support

[GRACO]

Would be a nice idea to be able to modify the "_Ping" parameter.
Server or app is sending _Ping every minute. Not sure how much data consumption you will get per month just for pings.

best regards!

[AndrewC]

With normal use it will likely be around 300 - 700KB per month. This is quite trivial compared to even basic position tracking scenarios.

One problem that we had is that if you do not send some sort of signal between the server and device very frequently, lots of cell phone networks routers will simply "forget" the link between the server and the device.

When this happens the device and the server are both not aware that the link has been lost until the next scheduled time when a command is due to be sent and cannot get through. From the server perspective, if the device happens to not be moving for a while and making a new connection suddenly it now can't get notifications, commands or polled for its location until it happens to want to send another message. ...But you would have just increased the time until it should poll the server with the ping setting.
It's not practically possible for servers to initiate connections (without all sorts of unreliable workarounds) on a device using a commercial mobile phone network.

70 seconds is the longest time we could find that didn't lead to silent disconnection issues on any network tested.

That being said in the current build the pinging time is very short as an experiment to give clients quicker feedback about when a connection has been lost. We will likely increase this somewhat in the next update which means that during normal use many less pings will be sent. Pings are only sent in the absence of position data, if you are frequently uploading trackpoints they aren't needed. They are just a connection "keep alive".

We need to maintain the connection in periods of non-movement as a very common use case of the app is to start movement on a device user by sending a dispatch notice to them while they are idle.

Regards,
Andrew

GpsGate Support

[GRACO]

I understand.
and is there a way to poll position? we only see the _sendnotification command.
Some motion detection rules or something similar will be a nice feature, to prevent sending position every 1 min when stationary, or prevent using GPS when stationary.

Best regards!

[Alon]

Hi,
I presented this solution to a potential client who asked two things that make sense to me:
1. having indication on the battery level of the phone. this should be treated, I think, the same as the internal battery voltage of a GPS unit.
2. To be able to take pictures through the phone's camera - same as the Camera Plugin you have for some tracker devices.
What do you think?

[karlboss]

Hi,

Has anyone already tested the unbranded version of GpsGate Tracker Android app on a double SIM phone or tablet?
I am wondering if the double SIM (IMEI) will cause issues for registration...
Thanks,

Karl

[AndrewC]

@GRACO
This is something that was in the beta version of the client but was removed after feedback that partners wanted to see updates while stationary to have reassurance that the device had actually not moved rather than had been suppressed in some way. Would this feature be useful as an option?

@Alon
The battery level is sent by the Android client to the GpsGate server. Both the battery percentage and the internal voltage of the device is communicated. Map these values in the device mapper to gain access to them for your needs. There have been a few requests for camera functionality. Would this be useful to others?

@karlboss
Dual sim is not officially supported, but the IMEI is taken from the primary sim card slot. As long as you make sure that the IMEI in the GpsGate Server device matches the number displayed in the settings page of the app, things should work.

Regards,
Andrew

GpsGate Support

[piter197]

Hi,

I think camera feature will be useful, usually salesman will take picture of new/potential customer place and/or add some notes (for example send sample product, etc).


Best Regards,
piter197

[Alon]

Hi Andrew,
1. What's the meaning of Battery Voltage in a mobile and even though it is mapped, my device seems not to send it. I have LG G3.
2. What should be the output set for the Accuracy input? I've tried HDOP but I got "30" and then "103.5" and so on. I think it should be more in the surrounds of "1", no?

Thanks

[AndrewC]

@Alon
The battery voltage is a signal that quite literally sends the battery voltage of the device's battery (if it is made available by the device) to the server when the device broadcasts a change in it's value. It is not guaranteed to be made available by a device so not all devices will send it. It is there for very low level use cases and is low priority so will never cause network traffic by itself.

Battery percentage is required to be broadcast by Android on every device and will likely be the value that tracking partners will be most interested in. It gives you an easy measurement of how much power a device has left before it shuts down.

The accuracy signal sent by Android is the margin of error in metres of the location fix. As the position can be calculated with GPS, WiFi triangulation, cell tower triangulation or a mixture of different sources this provides a way of having a consistent measure of how accurate a position update is.

For example, your accuracy of 30, means that your location is accurate to within 30 meters.

Regards,
Andrew

GpsGate Support

[GRACO]

Hello AndrewC! ...
For example, to track your kids.

You can set track recorder every 1 hour, and in some way, "save" battery if the app automatically turn off the GPS. I can use poll position only when I need to check where are the kids.

Best regards!

[AndrewC]

@GRACO
Currently the app is very transparent about when location information is both being tracked and being uploaded to the server.

We don't want to add functionality that could potentially allow a person's phone to be tracked whilst implying to them in the UI (GPS Tracking unchecked) that it is not. To this end we will make some adjustments in a future release that should reduce battery consumption while a user has the GPS Tracking checkbox ticked. It will try to be a lot smarter about resting the GPS while it is probably not needed which should allow you to track devices without needing to worry about draining the battery badly if they do not move around a lot.

Regards,
Andrew

GpsGate Support

[AndrewC]

We currently have a new build of GpsGate Tracker for Android available in beta that features among other things:

Battery saving features that stop tracking while the device is stillIcon indications of tracking and connectivity in the notification barGarmin Android device supportNetworking reliability improvements for bad data connectionsGpsGate Server CellID plugin support

If you would like to be invited to our GpsGate Tracker for Android beta community and receive beta release updates please email a request to support http://gpsgate.com/contact_us

As always, these updates are in a beta state and are intended for testing new features before they are available for general release and officially supported.

Regards,
Andrew

GpsGate Support

[webo]

I ran into an issue with the Android client lately and I'm not sure what caused it.

This morning, I came to find that my phone with GPSgate had a yellow status "Pending" and I rebooted the phone and the status in the web tracker became green (the two checkboxes in the app were green the whole time)

Then, after 30 or so minutes when I came back, I noticed the status was yellow again (yet the checkboxes were still green). I then opened GPS Status and stopped the tracking and restarted from the notification drawer.

Soon enough, the status became yellow again.

I've now force closed the application and restarted it and noticed the location icon appear in the top notification bar with the clock (which wasn't showing today and might be why the status kept going yellow)

It seems like at some point, the Android service that is responsible for obtaining the location stops but the GPSgate app background service does not restart it.

[webo]

I've also had issues with the app suddenly disconnecting from the server, requiring that it be manually re-connected by the operator (which is not something we usually have the luxury of doing)

Is there a flag that can be set so that if the app gets disconnected, it continues to try to reconnect?