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Share live location with family

Senemmar shared this question 9 years ago
Answered

Hi,

I want to see my family location on the map with Locus.

Is it possible?

Replies (23)

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im not sure


is this similar to https://getsatisfaction.com/locus/top... ?

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it`s both: sending own points and receiving buddy points at the same time in a very simple package with a very simplistic user interface. the current thing is way too complex for 98% of locus users (just an estimation). so effectively, locus does not have buddy tracking.


it`s similiar to the dashboard issue: locus had these xml custom screens for years. nobody ever used them so there was effectively no dashboard until menion wrapped it up in a (mostly) simple UI.


if you want easy buddy tracking that is actually being noticed by more than a handful of geeks, you must not bother users with network links or accounts or servers or whatever.


users will not read documentation.


users will not find random wikis and follow their instructions, regardless how pretty you make them.


users will not try to find random people on random forums and email them for random accounts on random servers.


what users WILL DO is fill out a SINGLE item on a settings page:


Buddy Tracking: "enter the same password as your buddies here to appear on each others maps".

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that convinced me, +1.

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>users will not read documentation.


what a pity ;)


back to topic:


who should sponsoring the server/traffic and install/support for this great push service? ...regardless how excessive it is.


btw.


This topic is on my personal top5 wishlist too - for quite some time. :)


and so i also vote

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the server would be provided by menion / asamm in the long run obviously. i dont think it needs a lot of support (no accounts, no user interaction) nor a lot of traffic. it simply keeps a few points in a database and responds to very short http queries with short answers:


h t t p s : / / w w w .asamm.com/buddytracker.php?id=bikebuddies123&name=joeloc&lat=123&lon=456&alt=789&time=20130702-133059


result could be in kml format (for testing and/or direct googlemapping/earthing) and contain the last transmitted waypoints of whoever used "bikebuddies123" during the last 24 hours or so.

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if you omit the name paramter (ie only use id=bikebuddies123), you would still get the resulting kml file with all recent positions. your own position would simply not be updated. locus could then query friends even if your own gps is currently off.


to keep server side things dead simple, the result file could only contain the very last position for each name. no need to store multiple points per user really.

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btw, i just realized that "buddy tracking" is more or less a copy of what google latitude does. so instead of implementing a custom version (even a simple one), maybe it would be more "androidish" to just support latitude in locus?


https://developers.google.com/latitud...

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latitude seems to suck a lot regarding position updates though. people write custom apps to fix its problems: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...


so maybe locus very own simple buddy tracking might be preferable after all.

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Without having a look at Latitudes Terms of Use, I guess it would be illegal to use it anway... ;)

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on the contrary. google wants apps to use latitude, thats why they provide an API.

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They provide an API for route calculation too, but it`s not allowed to use it in paid apps...

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Instead of speculation, we could just read the terms of service: https://developers.google.com/latitud...

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I would prefer a separate system, because I use Latitude more private with always updating my position for special people.


I would like to use live tracking with/without secret for geocaching purposes to find other geocachers nearby... I think c:geo or neon... already support something like that, but I`m not using them because I think Locus is better ;-)

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Any news on simple buddy tracking maybe?


I will have need for it in a few weeks: A friend and I will be doing a "combined" trip, me on a mountainbike and he on foot for two months. We will basically travel the same mountain ranges but mostly take different paths, trying to meet up as often as possible.


We also have to save battery power wherever possible. So basically, Locus will most likely be in a mode where the GPS is only enabled when you actually turn on the display (ie no track recording, just for orientation).


Live Tracking should in this case not interfere with that power saving by keeping the GPS on all the time. Maybe an option "only send position updates when the GPS is already enabled" might be useful?

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I`m dreaming about some centralised, secure, encrypted latitude-like feature for Locus. By encrypted I mean, that even the server will know know the position of the users. Users will exchange their positions with their own public/private key pairs. That should be the secure future! Or maybe you would like to be sniffed by NSA constantly?

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Are you kidding? Theres no point in encrypting your position at all if you use Android or any other mobile phone really. Your provider always knows where you are and so will the authorities if they want to.


I am very much for privacy and everything, but some things just wont help.

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It would help hiding you from menion though :).

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No. I`m not kidding.

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Any news on simple buddy tracking? It`s still in no ways mummy-compatible :-). I have heard rumors that it was being worked on in summer but apparently that was wrong?


"Mummy-Compatible" means that I could for example "create homescreen link" for a buddy. It would start locus, center on the buddy and follow it, all automatically.

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I still keep this idea in mind and will for sure do something about it. Rumors were correct, one guy already started to work on it, but seems to be really slow work in his case :). So sorry, but this year it will for sure not be complete

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poor mummy :/

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btw... if you`d meanwhile implement the simple one man-hour job


https://getsatisfaction.com/locus/top... ,


we could build our own buddy tracking, including the possibility of actually FINDING the buddy in the first place :-).

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This could be done easily by Tasker integration.

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