Updated the guide with a mysql dB as postgess was not really working . Also re-phrased the google takeout migration to make more sense.

Get location history with a selfhosted dockerised location tracking server and an android client to provide periodic location updates

create a proper Dockerfile for raspberry aarch

nano Dockerfile

paste

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FROM debian:latest

ENV TRACCAR_VERSION 4.10

WORKDIR /opt/traccar

RUN set -ex && \
    apt-get update &&\
    TERM=xterm DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install --yes --no-install-recommends unzip wget default-jre && \
    wget -qO /tmp/traccar.zip https://github.com/traccar/traccar/releases/download/v$TRACCAR_VERSION/traccar-other-$TRACCAR_VERSION.zip && \
    unzip -qo /tmp/traccar.zip -d /opt/traccar && \
    apt-get autoremove --yes unzip wget && \
    apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/*

ENTRYPOINT ["java", "-Xms512m", "-Xmx512m", "-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true"]

CMD ["-jar", "tracker-server.jar", "conf/traccar.xml"]

build the Dockerfile

docker build -t debian-traccar-nginx .

create the volume

docker volume create traccar_raspberry

run the container

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docker run -d \
  --name Traccar \
  -p 5002:5002/tcp \
  -p 5002:5002/udp \
  -p 5055:5055/tcp \
  -p 5093:5093/tcp \
  -p 5093:5093/udp \
  -p 82:8082 \
  --mount source=traccar_raspberry,target=/opt/traccar \
  --restart=unless-stopped \
  debian-traccar-nginx:latest

update: the above Dockerfile is no longer needed tested the debian atm64 image and it works fine on raspberry400 Digest:sha256:f09791c90dbfe9ea5adeb5c5c1f657cfdb1eccaf56bda2194f2a84abfb4b6412

https://hub.docker.com/layers/traccar/traccar/debian/images/sha256-f09791c90dbfe9ea5adeb5c5c1f657cfdb1eccaf56bda2194f2a84abfb4b6412?context=explore

android client needs tcp 5055 port so if you dont plan to use any of the supported hardware gps trackers you can skip listening to 5002,5093 tcp/udp ports and only keep 5055 for events and 8082 for the webui

docker-compose file

*assuming you have an external hard drive mounted as TOSHIBA on /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA and your username is ippo

create dirs that will have all are files and db on our external drive for backup reasons

mkdir -p /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar

mkdir -p /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/logs

mkdir -p /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/data

mkdirn-p /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/conf

get the trackar.xml configuration file from the builded image

docker run --rm --entrypoint cat debian-traccar-nginx:latest /opt/traccar/conf/traccar.xml > /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/conf/traccar.xml

the actual yml

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docker-compose.yml

version: '2'
services:
    web:
        image: 'debian-traccar-nginx:latest'
        restart: unless-stopped
        hostname: 'my.ddns.provider.com'
        container_name: traccar
        ports:
            - '8082:8082'
            - '5055:5055/tcp'
        volumes:
            - '/etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro'
            - '/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/logs:/opt/traccar/logs:rw'
            - '/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/conf/traccar.xml:/opt/traccar/conf/traccar.xml:ro'
            - '/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/data:/opt/traccar/data:rw'

run the container

doker-cmpose up -d

the above will spinup traccar with an embedded h2 db that will not reset on container restart as its volume is mounted on host and take periodic copies of the files but once corrupted those copies cant restore the traccar container Also I have no idea how to properly backup an h2 db (if possible at all) the recomended way is to use an external postges or mariadb database i used a postgres docker imageb connected to the traccar image with a docker network and provided the apropriate network gateway url to the traccar xml for the database url

so:

traccar-mysql

Replace the h2 contents in the xml with the postges according to https://www.traccar.org/mysql/

docker-compose.yml

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 version: "3"

services:
    traccar-db:
        image: yobasystems/alpine-mariadb
        container_name: traccar-db
        command: --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
        restart: always
        volumes:
            - /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql
            - /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/mysql:/etc/mysql/conf.d
        ports:
            - "3306:3306"
        environment:
            - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=xxx
            - MYSQL_DATABASE=traccar-db
            - MYSQL_USER=xxx
            - MYSQL_PASSWORD=xxx
        networks:
            - iot
            
    traccar:
        image: traccar/traccar:debian
        hostname: XXX.XXX.com
        container_name: traccar
        depends_on:
           - traccar-db
        restart: always
        volumes:
            - /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/conf/traccar.xml:/opt/traccar/conf/traccar.xml:ro
            - /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/logs:/opt/traccar/logs:rw
        ports:
            - "5055:5055"
            - "82:8082"
        networks:
            - iot
            
networks:
  iot:
    driver: bridge
    enable_ipv6: false
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 10.0.1.0/29
 

docker network inspect iot

under “Name”: “iot”,we need “Subnet”: “10.0.1.0/29”

and under “Iot”, we need “IPv4Address”: “ 10.0.1.2”,

subnet goes to

config: - subnet: 10.0.1.0/29 in docker-compose

and

IPv4Address goes to jdbc:mysql://docker-bridge-ipv4:container-internal-port/database-name so for our example it will be : jdbc:mysql:// 10.0.1.2:3306/traccar-db in /opt/traccar/conf/traccar.xml:ro (/run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/traccar/conf/traccar.xml in the example)

open a root mysql shell

docker exec -it mariadb mysql -u root -p

type your root password

Hit enter

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS traccar-db

hit enter

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grant all privileges on `db_name`.* TO `user_name'@'%` identified by `root_pass`

hit enter

flush privileges

hit enter

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ALTER DATABASE traccar CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci

hit enter

\q

hit enter

docker-compose up -d

periodic mysql backup and restore

To backup traccar with a date timestamp in the SQL file in order to have db “snapshots”

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docker-compose -f  compose-file.yml exec dbname mysqldump -uroot -pYOUR_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD --all-databases > dump-$(date +%F_%H-%M-%S).sql

And restore

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docker-compose -f compose-file.yml exec -T dbname mysql -uroot -pYOUR_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD  < mariadb-dump.sql

Put that on a crontab And there you go you have periodic db snapshots

Caddyfile

*assuming you use caddy as a reverse proxy/ssl handler

nano /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

add

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#traccar
a.random.ddns.name.duckdns.org {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8082
}

Create admin and disable new users

First you habe to register as a normal user

From the login page fill in email and prefered password And register

Then you can log in with those credestria’s

Its a good.idea for security reasons to disable sign ups

Login as default admin User:pass = admin:admin

On top left corner Settings Users Select your user Select the pencil icon From the permissions tab enable admin

Then From settings Server On permissions tab disable registration

Log out and re-login with your created user

From settings Users You can remove default admin now

Traccar notifications

I’m setting up notifications over telegram. There are many notification types Some interesting ones are enter / leave geofence (have to set up a geofence obvius’y first) Device moving Device stoped Device online Device offline

Useful if you monitor a second device e.g. a childs device

Edit the traccar.xml

In he docker-compose example above I maped /run/media/ippo/YOSHIBA/conf/traccar.xml as the config location

So

nano /run/media/ippo/TOSHIBA/conf/traccar.xml

And add

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<entry key='notificator.types'>web,mail,telegram</entry>
<entry key='notificator.telegram.key'>BOT_KEY</entry>
<entry key='notificator.telegram.chatId'>CHAT_ID</entry>

You have to create a bot get its api token Start a chat with it And get the chat id

To create the bot Visit @botfather /newbot Name it And get the token

To get the chat id Type @get_id_bot in the conversation chat with the bot

Restart the container

You can test the connection visiting your acount and sending a test message

public demo servers

If you just want to test traccar before start building and selfhosting it, there are some public servers available

Public servers (demo) https://www.traccar.org/demo-server/

Android client app https://www.traccar.org/client/

Navigate to one of demo servers

demo4.traccar.org

demo3.traccar.org

demo2.traccar.org

demo.traccar.org

And register Select username Mail And password

Then use registered mail and password to login

On client app While service deactivated Copy identifier Insert the demo server URL you registered Select location accuracy (high) Select frequency report ~120 sec Let others as is and enable service

On status verify that the location is updating

On server Top left menu Select the plus icon to add a device Select a random name And the identifier from the client app And save

The you can select the device on the top left menu

It appears on the map From the refresh icon you can select a time period to show a location trail on the map and even animate the motion of tracks

From the reports tab you can you can view a table of location reports from a selected period

#disadvantages: The public servers are ephemeral and your data will disapear at some point you have to either buy a plan or selfhost the server

Migrate google location history takeout to traccar

download your google maps location history takeout

• select location history only
• and json as format
• extract the Records.json

you’ll use a python script to limit the resaults to just time , latitude and longitude converted to proper coordinates

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git clone https://github.com/Scarygami/location-history-json-converter
cd location-history-json-converter
pip install -r requirements.txt
python location_history_json_converter.py Records.json  output.csv -f csv

The csv file generated by the script above will contain 3 columns:

• time
• latitute
• longitude

We’ll add more columns:

• deviceid
• protocol
• valid

using the following command:

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sed 's/^/osmand,1,/; s/$/,1/' export.csv > curated.csv

The csv file should now contain 6 columns:

• @osmand
• @deviceid
• @time
• @latitude
• @longitude
• @valid

These represent tc_positions table fields in traccar postgres db, so now the file should look like this:

protocol, 1, Time, Latitude, Longitude, 1
osmand, 1, 2012-08-25 21:26:20, 37.95954620, 23.72793730, 1

We are going to parse those values to as sql LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE statement to the appropriate tc_position table fields

• copy the csv to the container

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    docker cp curated.csv traccar-db:/
  

• open a root mysql shell to the db container

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    docker exec -it traccar-db mysql -uroot -pROOTPASSWORD
  

• connect to database

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    use traccar-db
  

• load the data:

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    LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE 'inn.csv' INTO TABLE tc_positions FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' (@osmand, @deviceid,@Time,@Latitude,@Longitude,@valid) set protocol=@osmand,deviceid=@deviceid, devicetime=@Time,fixtime=@Time,servertime=@Time,latitude=@Latitude,longitude=@Longitude, valid=@valid;