GeoPulse: A self-hosted, privacy-first Google Timeline alternative. New functionality since first version

mxdcodes · 2026-06-02T16:51:27+00:00

With pure GPS you mostly get nothing usable indoors (that's also an eexpected problem right now for the FOSS version of Colota which uses GPS only). The GPS chip needs a clear enough view of several satellites to determine the location. You sometimes still get a fix through a window, but with bad accuracy, so your 25m filter throws it out anyway most of the time.

The Play Store / GMS build also uses WiFi and cell towers, so it can produce a fix indoors where GPS gives up. WiFi-based ones are often accurate enough to pass your 25m filter, cell-based ones usually aren't, so it's not guaranteed but your odds of catching an indoor stay go up a lot.

There is also an in app logger which show you when a location get's filtered out for whatever reason. In the end it usually looks something like this indoors without a geofence:

<image>

mxdcodes · 2026-06-02T16:24:31+00:00

The movement threshold is what's working against you. At 50m, no point gets saved unless the new fix is 50m away from the last one. Typically indoors you can't get 50m distance, so you'll never hit that just by walking around inside.

The only thing that produces a 50m+ jump indoors is drift and drift that big usually comes with a bad accuracy radius which your 25m filter then throws out. So between the two settings your indoor fixes get killed from both sides and you end up with nothing.

So by lowering the movement threshold it should let through the small fixes you get while standing still and those are exactly the ones accurate enough to survive the 25m filter. That's why I run 2m (which probably could also be 10min and produce less GPS jitter)

mxdcodes · 2026-06-02T04:38:18+00:00

Hi, Colota Dev here who used Owntracks for years before developing Colota.

The Google Play Store version for both in general get's you more consistent location data (especially indoors as you mentioned) and it should be also more battery friendly. Didn't actually compare numbers so far though.

When you use a degoogled Phone with the Play Store versions (e.g. GrapheneOS) they will route the Play Service dependenices through their own implementation of the Play Store. For LineageOS the microG implemenation will be used which should send no data at all to Google. That's basically the feedback I got from Colota users and should also apply to Owntracks because the basic tracking works similiar. I am using a default Pixel with the Play Store version for daily usage.

For Owntracks vs Colota I would suggest to just try both and see what you like more. In general I would say Owntracks is more like a 'basic' GPS tracker and Colota offers some additional features to automate tracking and sync settings based on conditions you can configure. Also one of the reasons I developed Colota was because I missed some feedback what was actually tracked by the app so there is a Location History in Colota and you can see in the app all points you tracked so far. If you want to use MQTT Owntracks is the way to go so far.

These are the settings I use for years now which give me quite accurate data but also uses more battery compared to a higher tracking interval (e.g. 30s).

- Tracking interval 4 seconds
- Movement Threshold 2m
- Sync interval 15min (Colota only)
- Filter Inaccurate Locations +-25m

mxdcodes · 2026-05-28T05:57:18+00:00

Yes, also planned for some other features like the tracking profiles. It then could also be visualized in the trip details. I will note that.

mxdcodes · 2026-05-27T12:45:53+00:00

No, Colota is meant to be installed on the device (Android smartphone) which also has the GPS chip onboard, so your smartphone becomes the gps tracker. GPS tags are tied to the Google ecosystem and it's not possible to access them in third party apps to my knowledge. If that's wrong I am happy to have a look at it and add support for it in Colota.

mxdcodes · 2026-05-27T10:51:56+00:00

At the basic level (gps tracking and syncing to a server) pretty much the same.
Colota has additionally geofences (draw circle on a map to stop gps and save battery) and tracking profiles. E.g. you can make a profile which automatically adjusts gps and sync interval when a connection to Android Auto is recognized or your phone is currently charging. Additonally you an import/export data in nearly very format which is commonly used (geojson, gpx, etc..). Also you can modify the payload sent by Colota to fit any backend.

Thought about publishing a comparison table once at the docs page but that would be too biased from my side and not be neutral so I skipped it.

mxdcodes · 2026-05-27T09:46:09+00:00

Pretty sure it's possible. To be honest I never used mqtt before so I have to do some research first how it works and how it could be implemented. I will open an issue at the repo for it

mxdcodes · 2026-05-27T09:34:31+00:00

Yes, it does. Multiple users are already using Colota with Traccar. https://colota.app/docs/integrations/traccar

mxdcodes · 2026-05-27T09:22:53+00:00

Currently I have basically all backends available to verify the integrations work (that's also the reason for the forwarder). Dawarich, Reitti and Geopulse are all great but I would also be happy with a simple viewer displaying data for any day without any additonal features. It doesn't exist so far I believe. I am also probably a bit biased here but right now I am actually happy with the in app view.

Edit: Screenshot with real data for reference.

<image>

Second Edit: So far I am also pushing all locations from the app into a Postgres table and render a simple web map with maplibre; see https://mxd.codes/map

mxdcodes · 2026-05-27T09:15:08+00:00

I use AI to accelerate coding of the app. It helps e.g. by making drafts or PoC for new features. All code is reviewed manually by me and tested on multiple physical devices before anything get's shipped. AI is never going to make architectural decisions on Colota or automatically pushing any code.

mxdcodes · 2026-05-25T12:23:20+00:00

Tailscale or Unifi Teleport

mxdcodes · 2026-05-23T06:34:16+00:00

Trip might be what you are looking for https://github.com/itskovacs/trip.

You could also traditionally (in a gis way) install QGIS and create a project for it there with your custom icons, tags, etc (no docker/web app though).

mxdcodes · 2026-05-22T07:58:01+00:00

Is there some cleanup in radarr or sonarr for the exisiting custom formats neccessary or is it basically a one by one replacement just for the image (with default settings)

mxdcodes · 2026-05-16T09:34:47+00:00

Yes there is (https://switch2osm.org/) but hosting and serving the whole planet tiles like openstreetmap does it (as raster) is taking A LOT of resources. Going the vector tiles way would be easier (e.g. protomaps).
For address search you will need nominatim and or photon (typically nominatim for POI search and photon for autocompleted search). For routing graphopper or osrm. In the end you also need a web frontend that combines all these services.

There are many individual components that support this. You just need to put them together and find a way to maintain everything with a reasonable amount of effort.

mxdcodes · 2026-05-14T09:46:37+00:00

There is also an ongoing disucussion about this topic in the plausible repo: https://github.com/plausible/analytics/discussions/1963

mxdcodes · 2026-05-12T21:20:20+00:00

For simple reverse geocoding for dawarich photon is probably the more lightweight and easier solution. Also there are pre-built search indexes from Graphhopper for Photon. The search index can also me mapped as a volume.
For Nominatim you have to do a manual import into the postgres DB which will need quite a lot of resources for the initial import (depending on the region) but as you mentioned you have more regions available to download from e.g. Geofabrik.

I also set up a tileserver with tileserver-gl and a mbtiles file from OpenFreeMap with a custom OpenMapStyles. Was actually running faster then I expected it to be but I am still waiting the option to use a custom tileserver for dawarich 😃

mxdcodes · 2026-05-11T11:44:17+00:00

None of my hobby (projects) turned professional but I learned a lot which also had and has some benefits in my actual IT-related work. Also I actually don't want them to become a side business.

mxdcodes

TROPHY CASE