GPS tracker broadcasting capabilities

YegorBondar

I have a silly stupid question but I did not find any clear answer about it.

I’m working on a system that will receive and store data from different GPS-trackers, but this system won’t the main consumer of the events. It’s clear that we can easily setup pin-to-pin communication via TCP/IP protocol between device and server, but this is not enough for my case.

So my goal now is to understand how to broadcast GPS data to several systems.

Do GPS-trackers nowadays support broadcasting functionality?
Should I set up a kind of proxy/re-translator that will play the role of a broadcasting server?
All resources, articles, and practical experience shared here will be much appreciated!

Thank you!

ashe

YegorBondar Hello!
If you are interested in sending data to multiple resources and more data management, then at the moment we can suggest you consider the option of using another product of our company - flespi (https://flespi.io/, https://flespi.com/).
You can create an account in flespi and set up the receipt of data from your devices (trackers) in flespi. Here you can observe your data yourself, process it, and also configure its forwarding to other services.
You can easily configure sending data to the Ruhavik application.
You can read more information here https://flespi.com/kb/flespi-to-ruhavik

YegorBondar

ashe
thank you for an answer!
Any other options apart from using 3rd party system?

ashe

YegorBondar Hello!
Flespi is also one of the solutions of our company Gurtam as well as Ruhavik and GPS-Trace platform.
At the moment, we do not have the ability to send data from the application. And in general, if you want to send data to several systems for their different processing, do you intend to use several systems in advance, or is it not so?

If you want to send data somewhere else because you may lack some functions in our application, then we will be glad if you share your opinion. This will help the development of our application.

TomD

Hi, I have a similar question. I have a TK419 tracker. I got it working with Ruhavik by sending SMS to the tracker to change the server and port to Ruhavik. However, I find that Ruhavik lacks some of the functionality of the native app (can’t cut engine or change tracker settings but maybe flespi setbox can do that) and in some regards doesn’t work as well as the native tracker app, althogh Ruhavik does do some things better. I would like to have the best of both worlds. Is it possible for Ruhavik to act as a proxy, sniffing the messages, while still maintaining TCP connection between the tracker and the native server? I assume the native app needs 2 way TCP communication to change tracker settings, so I can’t just forward messages to Ruhavik and the native server. I guess I could alternatively set up a proxy on my own server, but I’m a programming novice and this is way out of my level of expertise.

Edit: played around with flespi to see if I could point my GPS to flespi and have flespi send the data to both the native server and Ruhavik. Unfortunately the free plan only allows for 1 stream so that won’t work, unless you want to pay 100 euros per month! Could Ruhavik function as a proxy to maintain TCP between the tracker and native server? Then again, probably would be a premium option which means I wouldn’t use it. The reason I bought my tracker is to minimize ongoing costs. The tracker cost me _$70 and comes with a free native tracking app for life. My only ongoing cost is the SIM and I found a cheap option that costs me less than $10 / year with worldwide coverage, so it’s hard to justify paying $24 / year to Ruhavik as it doesn’t really do much more than the native app, even if it does a few things better. Then again, maybe I’m overthinking this and flespi setbox is what I need to supplement Ruhavik. I’ll play around with that. It doesn’t give me any options for my tracker but seems I can fool setbox into giving me options by telling it my tracker is an older model.

rost

Hello, TomD .

Thank you for such detailed reasoning and thoughts.

Tell us please, what is your tracker model?
Perhaps we can integrate custom commands for your tracker that you can use directly from the application without using the SETbox.
We integrate the custom commands module just a couple of releases ago, you can read about it here. –
https://forum.gps-trace.com/d/1279-ruhavik-1-6-0-extended-menu-custom-commands-and-a-little-more/7

The big advantage of Ruhavik is that you can directly communicate with the developer and get a detailed answer. At the same time, none of our users pays a single cent for support and assistance from the developer. Also, in addition to the answer, we often make improvements for our users to make it as convenient as possible for them.

As for proxying data through your own server, I think this question should be asked to Flespi on their forum, maybe they will provide you with some solution.

As for the cost of Ruhavik, in general, we consider it extremely acceptable in comparison with other platforms.

TomD

Thanks for the response. My tracker is an eelink TK419. Yes, quite a few custom commands missing in setbox for that tracker. Actually I’m had to tell it the tracker was a prior version (TK319) for it to show me any options. Should I raise that issue with flespi as well? Seems like setbox is a flespi module that is only available in Rukhavik via web link, so I’m guessing those would be the folks to add the functionality. Can you confirm? But it would be awesome if it could be built into the app as well!

TomD

Here is the documentation from eelink’s website.

https://www.eelinktracker.com/Images/default/EELINK%20Device%20Protocol%20V2.0.3%20(A4).pdf

The setting most critical to add would be the motion sensor alarm. There are other alarms relating to fences but since Rukhavik has it’s own fencing I’m not sure those are are as critical.

TomD

Actually, it looks like flespi already has a proxy option (which allows connecting the tracker up to 3 servers), so I can have the best of both worlds (or three)!

https://flespi.com/blog/migration-between-gps-tracking-systems-with-zero-data-loss-and-more

This will allow me to use the native app to change tracker settings while still using ruhavik and/or another third party app.

rost

Hello, TomD .

In this case, you are right!
The Setbox is the Flespi tool you use.
If you already communicate with them, then you can ask them to add the necessary commands. This will avoid unnecessary communication. However, if you haven’t talked to Flespi yet, we can ask them to add the necessary commands.

As a rule, there are a lot of unnecessary commands in the documentation from the manufacturer, please provide us with a list of commands that you would like to integrate, then we can turn to Flespi for integration. Also, in order for sending commands to become available from the application side, it is necessary to further integrate the ability to send custom commands for this type of device. It’s also possible as far as I can see.

Therefore, we will wait from you for a list of commands and your response to communication with Flespi.