Intergration of Traccar.org

[Adam Harden]

Hello everyone.

I was wondering if there would ever be an option to integrate into Traccar.org's gps locating system?

I for one hate OpenGTS as it's very hard to get up and running for us non-java people. Every other service seems to have been discontinued.

What I am doing is setting up TicketsCAD with Traccar for monitoring volunteers across our state (soon to be nation wide). We use TicketsCAD with IamResponding and being able to see their location without jumping systems would be great.

Thanks!

Adam Harden

[AndyH]

Adam.

We'll take a look. Brief look says that you can use a MySQL dbase which makes it promising but no guarantees.

Cheers
Andy

[Adam Harden]

Sounds great! If you want to take a peek at my server, you're more than welcome to.

I did get Traccar working with MySQL, and all on a windows machine. So that's a plus. 

Thanks guys.

This sure beats working with Spillman (that's what I am used to as I am an officer on a volunteer fire department)!

[Arnie Shore]

A look at their server discussion forum says that there's an unpublished API.  (Publishing such wd be great, since that's the mechanism we use to get at other tracking services.)  Or, you might look at the server code to see if it's visible.

We can monitor to see when  that changes.  -- AS

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Source CAD" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open-source-c...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to open-so...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/open-source-cad.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Arnie Shore]

WRT OpenGTS, there's a savvy user or more here, IIRC.  You may want to raise that flag, since the traccar route doesn't appear to be a near-term solution.  -- AS

--

[Kevin Bednar]

Last time I set it up, OGTS takes a little work to get up and running, but once that's done it works quite well.

Kevin

[Adam Harden]

I for the life of me can't get OTGS working with mobile devices. I have the server running, but can't seem to get devices to work with it. I also can't get it hooked to TicketsCAD as it throws me an error 67 when I try to test it ( I don't know what error 67 means, but seeing as I can't get my mobile devices to connect to it, I didn't bother posting that error here as I am sure it's the server that's not working).

[Kevin Bednar]

Testing with the Tickets integration won't matter, since you don't have the devices talking to OGTS properly. If you want to contact me off list I'll see if I can help.

Kevin

[Chris Beresford M0TVA]

Andy,

A facility to configure locations from a table would be really good - if you like, a configurable version of the Xastir interface. I'm about to implement another DMR radio tracking system which can output to a MS SQL DB table.

Cheers

Chris

[Arnie Shore]

Adam, that 67 alert appears when you're doing exactly what?

And I assume there's no application error reported in the Station Log for the day that error surfaces. -- AS

[Adam Harden]

The alert appears when I am on the config screen for OGTS, entering my server URL and login information. When I run the test, I get the error - data error 67. That error does not show up in the station log.

[Arnie Shore]

That test script is reporting that the ogts server has not come back with a valid string.  I.e., you have some work to do.  -- AS

--

[Kevin Bednar]

Which is more than likely because the field tracking units/OGTS server aren't communicating properly and there is no valid tracks to report back.

Kevin

[Adam Harden]

Yeah, I figured I had something messed up on the OGTS server. 

I actually found someone who modified Traccar to really enhance the web interface and they even changed the mySQL tables around. It really enhanced Traccar, so I think if it can be added in a future version, I will continue to use Traccar over OGTS. You can see my screenshot of the interface. It comes with it's own installer for your server, so run the installer, open the ports, and done.

http://traccar.litvak.su/index.html

So whatever they figured out, they were able to manipulate the interface and mySQL tables.

[Arnie Shore]

Access to the server API  will be a far cleaner implementation, as compared  to diddling with additional databases and map systems.

-- AS

--

[Adam Harden]

Yeah that makes sense. I did some digging in their forums and found this:

Most of the API is already available on GitHub master branch, so you can use it if you want. Unfortunately there is no documentation yet, so you need to look through the code to understand how it works.

For example to create a device you need to call /api/device/add with device JSON object.

So it looks like the only way to dig into that, is to dig into the code here: https://github.com/tananaev/traccar

Hopefully he gets around to adding an API as he mentioned it in this postings. He is active as he answered a post for myself not too long ago. 

Anyways, thanks for the insight guys! We are continuing to use Tickets for our team with or without the tracking as of now. 

[Arnie Shore]

All, WRT tracking, I wonder if you people with gps-capable smartphones have tried the vanilla rm login?  We'd like to hear re usage experience.  -- AS

--

[Alex Barrett]

Hi Arnie, 

We have been using the Vanilla RM at Sussex 4x4 Response since it was implemented. 

The system itself works absolutely fantastically for our needs, obviously where GPS and Data signals allow, and it does the job to a good enough extent that we haven't worried about other Mobile device based tracking systems and the only other system's we've been looking at are APRS ones to tie in as an addition. 

The issue we've had with RM is that the interface usability varies wildly between device types. It's something I've brought up with Andy before and was hoping to have contributed something towards it's UI development however haven't got that far yet. 

RM really is a very useful part of Tickets for us and is actually one of the main reasons we adopted the system. 

Alex 

[Lee White]

Hi guys, most of our mobile units are using the RM and I have had no real complaints at all. It is very low data usage and easy to use. Our larger mobile units use the mobile screen in CAD itself since they have laptops.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

[Adam Harden]

It looks like they published the API. I dont know if this is what you're looking for: 

https://www.traccar.org/traccar-api/ 

I am still hopeful on Traccar, as it's really easy to setup, use and deploy. The app is free for mobile devices, and it supports a lot of hardware gps tracking devices. 

[mdtayl...@gmail.com]

Can you explain a little about how to use the RM? Being new at this I don't even know what the RM is, but having a time trying to find the correct mobile tracker app to use.


Thanks
Mark

[AndyH]

Mark.

Tickets RM page is inbuilt into tickets and is a smartphone oriented set of scripts. Part of this is to capture the location using HTML geolocation services and pass this back to Tickets thereby doing the tracking without the need for an external tracking provider. The one real limitation on "RM" is that it eats data quite a bit so users really need to have unlimited data plan from their service provider. "RM" provides a number of additional things such as messaging, display of any assigned jobs, directions and with 3.10A a "Help" facility as long as websockets are running - this is a broadcast to all "Officer needs assistance" type of feature which will popup a window with the message Responder Assitance Request and the location of the person requesting.

Cheers
Andy

[mdtayl...@gmail.com]

Thanks Andy,

Since my install primarily is used when a disaster takes the internet down then nothing using the internet is going to work for me. That is the reason Traccar is attractive to me. With Traccar data is sent over our county wide LAN to our Traccar server and it does not rely on the internet. Same with APRS. I'm trying to set it up so that our APRS digi sends info either to Traccar or to Tickets eliminating the need for the internet to do APRS tracking.

In other words, totally infrastructure independent.


Thanks
Mark

[Evangelos Nannos]

Just for zour info, there is another webinterface of Traccar here http://traccar.litvak.su/index.html

I have already installed it on version 3.6 and looks really great!!

[Adam Harden]

I am also running the Traccar Web UI mod. It's fantastic. 

I know this treat is now over a year old, and I thought it'd be great to give some feedback.

My organization tried to use openGTS. In short, it did cost us money to hire someone to install it on our web server. After the install, I had numerous issues with getting the mobile apps working. Any software for apple devices never worked. We gave up on openGTS.

However, Traccar is easy to install, easy to update and heck I even managed to get the web ui mod installed and working. The apps coming out for traccar are now coming from other 3rd party sources. The apps also work with android and apple devices, without problem. 

Our volunteers say the app is easy to use as well. So that's a major plus. 

Traccar also supports a vast amount of GPS devices, aside from mobile devices. We have one device working on a fire engine, and it's flawless. 

At any rate, Traccar continues to grow and expand, and thus would be a great fit into Tickets. 

[Adam Harden]

Hello Andy,

I just wanted to see if there was anymore interest in adding Traccar to Tickets. Honestly, traccar is so easy to setup and run now and is supported on Windows, Linux, Mac and other open source OS's. 

They recently released version 3.9, so they continue to expand the product. They now have a full guide and examples on how to implement the server with other systems (API is updated and they use a system called swagger for examples of integrations). Here is the link: https://www.traccar.org/documentation/

The other neat thing is they are now offering a paid traccar server service. So if a client doesn't have the capability to setup a traccar server, you can pay a small fee to have them host it for you. There are also multiple android applications available. Needless to say, traccar is as strong as ever and has fantastic support via github (the developer answered a question of mine in about 20 minutes today). 

Right now, tickets is hard to use as is because there isn't an easy to install tracking system. I have tried the others with very little luck and even paid for someone to setup the service for us. This only worked for android devices, which wasn't practical as we have many ios users. 

With that said, I have been running the traccar server for over a year now with no problems. It's solid and easy to use. 

Just thought I would see if this could ever happen as they have more documentation and examples out now. 

Thanks.

[Roberto Sanglay]

Adam,

I know this is an old thread but I am interested with how you got Traccar integrated with TicketsCAD.

I have fiddled with Traccar a few years back but never got it to work perfectly with tickets.

I am working with a new tracking system based on LoRaWAN which uses Rest API for the request.  We have done a few successful test request but I dont know how to proceed capturing the results into tickets.

Any lead would be much appreciated.,

Thank you.

Robert

[Arnie Shore]

Roberto, LoRaWAN looks interesting.  Now, FYI, the Tix interface, realized in file incs/remotes.inc.php, typically implements a server-to-server connection, with the Tix end polling the remote (logically, if not physically) protocol-specific server on a timed basis.  The Tix end collects device position data from the remote in the exchange using its published API, and updates responder and tracking tables via conventional SQL calls.

So does your LoRaWAN network currently implement a  server?  Without such, a Tix interface appears impractical.  With it, it's a 'simple matter of code'.

AS

[Roberto Sanglay]

Arnie,

We did an initial connectivity test to the LoraWAN Based tracking server using Postman. The REST API setup includes a header for Basic authentication and outputs a Json file.

The successful initial test is downloading 4 to 5 devices in a single file, so I requested the server side for an individual device API.

My problem now:

1.  How and where to put the header for the Basic Authentication (/incs/remotes.inc.php)

2.  How to parse the json file ( I am looking at the insta-mapper code set function )

Sample insta-mapper result (from insta-maper website):

[{

"heading":"0" Heading of the device,

"id":"766305" unique id of the tranmission,

"datetime":"2013-11-29 16:16:06" local date time of tranmission,

"device_id":"1" device id,

"lat":"54.58761597" lat,

"lng":"-5.88851929" lng,

"speed":"6.0" speed in MPH,

"altitude":"181" altitude in feet,

"sharing":"Y" sharing enabled(This will always show Y),

"friendly_name":"Fabio" friendly name of the device,

"minutes":"13963" minutes since last update,

"kph":"10 speed in KPH"

}]

Sample result from LoRaWAN Tracker :

[{"id":2756391,"attributes":{"batteryLevel":33.0,"distance":448.89,"totalDistance":5520524.42,"motion":true},"deviceId":404,"type":null,"protocol":"osmand","serverTime":"2019-06-21T06:31:43.102+0000","deviceTime":"2019-06-21T06:31:41.000+0000","fixTime":"2019-06-21T06:31:41.000+0000","outdated":false,"valid":true,"latitude":9.8394378,"longitude":118.7383059,"altitude":-120.06851196289062,"speed":3.1295888678069113,"course":206.0,"address":null,"accuracy":16.209999084472656,"network":null},{"id":579625,"attributes":{"hdop":3.0,"distance":0.0,"totalDistance":19827.79,"motion":true},"deviceId":182,"type":null,"protocol":"osmand","serverTime":"2018-10-06T10:17:08.737+0000","deviceTime":"0018-10-06T02:16:54.000+0000","fixTime":"0018-10-06T02:16:54.000+0000","outdated":false,"valid":true,"latitude":10.061035,"longitude":118.815,"altitude":34.2,"speed":12.49,"course":167.9,"address":null,"accuracy":0.0,"network":null},{"id":2755556,"attributes":{"hdop":3.0,"distance":0.0,"totalDistance":4141.16,"motion":true},"deviceId":406,"type":null,"protocol":"osmand","serverTime":"2019-06-21T01:23:01.673+0000","deviceTime":"2019-06-20T17:22:52.000+0000","fixTime":"2019-06-20T17:22:52.000+0000","outdated":false,"valid":true,"latitude":9.875067,"longitude":118.76196,"altitude":0.0,"speed":12.54,"course":18.5,"address":null,"accuracy":0.0,"network":null},{"id":2761435,"attributes":{"hdop":3.0,"distance":0.0,"totalDistance":0.0,"motion":false},"deviceId":407,"type":null,"protocol":"osmand","serverTime":"2019-06-27T05:47:49.864+0000","deviceTime":"2019-06-27T02:10:01.000+0000","fixTime":"2019-06-27T02:10:01.000+0000","outdated":false,"valid":true,"latitude":-8.55388,"longitude":125.54153,"altitude":10.0,"speed":0.0,"course":25.0,"address":null,"accuracy":0.0,"network":null},{"id":640417,"attributes":{"batteryLevel":82.0,"distance":3.92,"totalDistance":4224476.26,"motion":false},"deviceId":142,"type":null,"protocol":"osmand","serverTime":"2018-10-17T01:43:27.606+0000","deviceTime":"2018-10-17T01:43:26.000+0000","fixTime":"2018-10-17T01:43:26.000+0000","outdated":false,"valid":true,"latitude":25.0409397,"longitude":121.5650574,"altitude":0.0,"speed":0.0,"course":0.0,"address":null,"accuracy":28.31100082397461,"network":null}]

Currently awaiting for the new API for single device.

I need your guidance Arnie.

Thanks

Robert

[Arnie Shore]

Roberto, a proper Tix-side implementation would provide a setting to accommodate needed connection/authentication values.  Pending that happy day, you might use some defunct or unused tracker function.  Or, hard-code it. (Ugly, but useful in initial testing.)

WRT JSON data, note the calls to function get_remote (defined in file 'incs/functions.inc.php'), which provides an optional JSON boolean calling parameter. Which in turn can return a native PHP array.  

AS 

[Adam Harden]

Hi All,

Sorry for the late reply, I was out of the office for a while. 

We got tickets working with Traccar just fine. Though, traccar updates a lot so sometimes the integrations break. Right now, we actually don't have an active tickets install so Im not sure if the current version is working out of the box. Traccar is super simple to setup on a any server, so that's why I was asking for it initially. We do use Traccar though, and love it. The only reason we stopped using tickets is we had to use something that had a full reporting feature that tracked everyone's hours, especially during training. 

Good luck!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Open Source CAD" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/open-source-cad/xdtyURynGkI/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to open-source-c...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to open-so...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/open-source-cad.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-source-cad/4bc2746e-5ab0-47e3-ac99-96063bf6afbf%40googlegroups.com.

[Roberto Sanglay]

Arnie,

Yup, I realized that early on.  (working from scratch) But there's still light at the end of the tunnel.  I am hoping to get the new API for requesting info for individual device with in the next few days.  I am looking at the insta-mapper code which I think has everything I need.

Thanks for now.  I will knock at your door again if the this LoRaWan door gets shut on my nose once more.

Robert

[Mark Taylor]

If you have a working Traccar server on the same machine with Tickets it should work out of the box. Traccar did do an update that involved a database schema change, which broke the Tickets interface, and originally the traccar code in tickets was an add-on, or a file replacement to make it work. And some manual manipulation of the settings database was required.

Now, the core code includes all of the required traccar code and the tickets database is altered to accommodate the traccar settings. If you have not tried to interface Tickets and Traccar in a while it is worth giving it another shot.

Mark

[Roberto Sanglay]

All,
To all who have implemented Traccar server with Tix (either on the same server or remote), I have uploaded a script that extracts location data from Traccar server via API (instead of the database access) in one of the Traccar post.
If anyone interested, let me know.

Robert

[Alex Barrett]

Hi Rob,

I'd be very interested in that if you could share it please.

All the best,

Alex

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Source CAD" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open-source-c...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-source-cad/0a0f0aa8-e84a-4e3c-ab7a-933aff719aa2%40googlegroups.com.

[Roberto Sanglay]

Alex,

Check out the thread on the other Traccar post.

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/open-source-cad/hxbca1hr2tg

I will not upload it to this thread to prevent confusion and duplication the copies.

I can pm the files if needed.

Robert