Dawarich: Self-hosted alternative to Google Location History

I currently use Owntracks for this. The backend is a very simple dockerized python script.

https://github.com/nicbou/homeserver/tree/master/gps-logger

It has been very reliable, except for the OS not launching Owntracks reliably on boot. Above all, it reliably queues pings while offline.

Maybe nice to know: "Da war ich" is German for "There I was".

Not relevant to this since it's a Google Timeline issue, but: I remember visiting a restaurant; a few months later the restaurant closed down and a barber shop took over the premises. Google Timeline now thinks I visited a barber shop back then.

I like it, especially with the ability to import Google Location History. I also like the name, assuming I'm pronouncing it right :)

I'm currently using Home Assistant for keeping track where I've been, but the update frequency is rather low (to save my phone's battery, presumably, despite often having the little location access indicator on screen).

Perhaps someone here has any experience with OwnTracks/Overland? This looks pretty good, but I'm curious about the extra battery usage.

I have tracked my location since 2017, I've built a small Rails application and I am using OwnTracks.

This project looks really cool, I haven't focused as much on visualisations or stats, but I have different output formats that I needed for tax-purposes as I was taxable in 2 countries.

heatmap.py[1] + GPSLogger[2] for a low(er) tech solution.

[1] http://sethoscope.net/heatmap/ , https://github.com/sethoscope/heatmap

[2] https://github.com/mendhak/gpslogger/

I really liked Google Timeline, but started going away from it (in my de-google phase right now), it was nice to go back to when I had been biking a specific place in town, but couldn't remember exactly where.

And I have also been doing some PolarSteps for quite a while, but wanted to start making my own travel books now.

This seems like a perfect tool for both of this!

(iOS user, so seems like the space a little more limited)

Neat!

I've been using Home Assistant for this in the past, although I've disabled it since it seems to report every single tracking point via the network, which isn't great for battery life (or alternatively leads to very coarse tracking). I've been looking for something that does effectively the same thing, but aggregates updates and only syncs them every once in a while.

Regarding this section of the readme:

> To import your Google Maps Timeline data, download your location history from Google Takeout and upload it to Dawarich.

Does that still work, given that Google seems to have started end-to-end encrypting their location history?

Update: Seems like they've addressed that in the wiki, and there is now a new process: https://github.com/Freika/dawarich/wiki/How-to-import-your-G...

Interesting. I run orienteering and uses NextCloud to visualize my activities (from a Garmin watch). Question from a colleague: Would it be possible to navigate from you own track (like a GPS navigator) if you wanted to revisit your own tracks?

Looks interesting, I was using my own small app to do that and even know about Google Timeline somehow (well, I always disable anything-Google anyway).

However, I didn't manage to set it up. It's supposed to be just docker-compose up, but that ended up in some sort of infinite loop for me (I think it's migrations, but didn't really see the errors, since logs are running fast and I didn't use less).

Something similar, but entirely on (iOS) device, and focused on tracking activities based on location (hours at work, shopping, travelling, etc): https://apps.apple.com/au/app/life-cycle-track-your-time/id1... (No affiliation, just a user)

Would be neat if it could also import location from Garmin/Strava for the folks who don’t carry their phone when they’re out for a run.

This looks great, thanks for sharing. I'll give it a spin on my RPI.

What a tongue-twister for English speakers, though :)

Does this require leaving location services on at all times? Or can it turn it on/off itself just to get an update? I always leave location off just because I don't want google or other apps knowing where I am at all times.

Could not import my 10 year + google history hosting it in my raspberypi 5. The number of pending tasks was over 2 million after one day. I guess it was not optimized for large imports, sadly :(

Anyone knows how it compares to owntracks?