TTN Tracker Locator - see where a GPS tracker is located relative to your location

End Devices (Nodes)
1

Hey,

I made a small, open source, github.io hosted, HTML5 application that shows you in real-time where a GPS tracker is located relative to your location. This is useful if you are outside with your phone and there is a LoRa tracker somewhere nearby (your kid, dog, car, bike, etc) and you want the app to take you to the target.

The information about the tracker is pulled from TTN through the Storage integration.

This is just an early release so some things might not work correctly. I am looking to get feedback and to see if this is useful to anybody besides myself.

Other clients I tried to use for this purpose only show the absolute position of the target and donā€™t respond quickly enough in real-time.

Usage instructions:
You need to have a working LoRa tracker (such as LGT-92) that reports to a TTN application.
You need to have Latitude and Longitude information in the payload.
You need to enable ā€œData Storageā€ integration for the application.
Next go to https://ayavilevich.github.io/TTN-tracker-locator/
In ā€œsettingsā€, provide the relevant TTN application id, TTN device id and a TTN access token.
Best practice would be to create a dedicated access token for this use. The settings are stored locally in the browser. This app has no back-end of its own.
Adjust other optional properties in ā€œsettingsā€, save and reload data in the main screen.

If everything is working you would get the recent path of the tracker relative to your position and orientation. If something doesnā€™t work, troubleshoot in the ā€œdataā€ screen or using TTN console. If you want to report an issue please do so in the repository.

Regards, Arik.

3 Likes
2

Looks great, Iā€™ll have a good go with it over the weekend!

3

Cool. What kind of tracker do you use?

4

RAK7200 for convenience, assuming itā€™s still in one piece, my bench built ones tend to be variable due to specific use case.

1 Like
5

Very coolā€¦ I already export the data to my own mysql so looked at your ā€˜customā€™ option where you add a URL, but I couldnā€™t find documentation on how to use this, i.e. what format for the custom url

6

Regarding the custom data source option, you can use any url. There is no specific format for the url. The format of the data needs to be the same as the format of the TTN Storage Integration, just a JSON array where each item of the array is the payload. Simple.

for example:

[
  {
    "altitude": 69,
    "device_id": "x-v11",
    "hdop": 1.44,
    "latitude": 1.771449,
    "longitude": 1.637163,
    "raw": "x",
    "sats": 6,
    "time": "2020-06-21T06:38:50.916274439Z"
  },
  {
    "altitude": 79,
    "device_id": "x-v11",
    "hdop": 1.35,
    "latitude": 1.771473,
    "longitude": 1.637107,
    "raw": "x",
    "sats": 7,
    "time": "2020-06-21T06:39:50.919876996Z"
  }
]

One last thing to note, you need to have cross origin access between the domain of the data source and the domain with the UI. If you are not familiar with CORS and CORS headers you might want to learn more about that, use a CORS proxy or ask me about your specific setup. In any case, use the ā€œnetworkā€ tab in the ā€œdeveloper toolsā€ of the browser to troubleshoot data retrieval.

7

Hi Arik,
I tryed to give a go to your locator, do you know if it is still working?
Best regards,
Emmanuel

8

It should still be working - itā€™s entirely run on your browser, the web address just delivers the page for you to run.

If you can tell us what youā€™ve tried and what happens and what indicates itā€™s not working that would give us all the best chance to help you.

9

Hi,
I have issues with simulated payload.
image
image
Here is my simulated uplink:
image

10

No you donā€™t, the error is highlighted in red in the middle of the screen shot.

11

What I meant was: I have network issue when I try to send a simulated uplink

12

I donā€™t understand what the CORS error means

13

Here are the settings:
image

14

Are you asking for an embedded LoRaWAN engineer that also does web development who can do the search for you and copy & paste the results for you? May be a long wait!

15

why are you so aggressive ? I am trying to understand something I donā€™t master, as you said: web development

16

Iā€™m not being aggressive - Iā€™m in deep despair - surely you could have Googled ā€œCORSā€ in the time it took you to type ā€œI donā€™t understand what the CORS error meansā€.

Itā€™s all volunteers here so best to use the free resource in the most effective way possible - asking what something is that is easily searchable is not that.

But as it appears to be an error in Chrome, you really are looking for a web person.

Or wait for @ayavilevich to come back online - if you look at his profile youā€™ll see that he hasnā€™t been on the forum since Jan 2021.

17

ok, despite what you think (I am not lazy), I googled this:

When I understand what it says, I will share it on this forum

18

There was no evidence of you Googling - it just looked like you wanted someone else to figure it out.

Now we know that you donā€™t understand CORS, which is a mess and rather specific to browser comms so not expected to be part of the embedded engineers range, Iā€™m sure someone will be inclined to help.

19

I try to do my homework :smile:
thank you anyway

20

So, just the two lots of bad news for the public one on GitHub:

  1. The CORS proxy that was setup isnā€™t running anymore - this takes the request from your browser and makes it look like it came from an authorised source due to the way that browsers & web servers work - it stops people freeloading off a web server when they are using another site - the request has to come from a browser that got the script from the original web server - but this can be bypassed with a proxy.

  2. Despite being released at the time of v3, the public one is trying to use TTN v2.


Iā€™ll figure out the logistics of uploading my version for Git hosting.

1 Like