Additional data in "Live Track - Fleet, Email, Other"
I really like that the custom live track option exists. An example use case is that I can track my Inreach using the KML stream that Garmin Explore provides, and set up a web service to forward the location to CalTopo on regular intervals, without needing to upgrade my Inreach account to a professional plan (that costs $5/month when suspended). To see what I mean, here's the web app I set up to do this: https://inreachlocator.uc.r.appspot.com/
However, it would be nice to be able to show additional data in the position report request sent to the Live Track API endpoint. For example, I'd like to add altitude (Inreach and Zoleo are often used for tracking airplanes), a timestamp (for when the position was last updated by the Inreach, not just when the last report was sent to Caltopo) and current speed (again, airplanes). Maybe any key, value pairs in addition to `lat` and `lng` in the request sent to the API endpoint could just be automatically shown in the status window in the screenshot below, or maybe there could be a specific general-purpose field accepted like `notes` that could allow the user to include an arbitrary string with extra relevant data.
Said another way, it would be great if we could send a request like:
and have the extra data `alt` and `speed` show up in the screenshot below.
Thanks for considering this, CalTopo is awesome!
Comments
8 comments
For part of this, I have discovered that a tracking update shows as the colour for 10 minutes, then grey for 20 minutes, and then disappears from the map (after a total of 30 minutes from the last update to CalTopo). Doesn't account for the delay in the position being gathered and getting to the API, but thought it worth sharing.
If you happen to be a python programmer, sartopo_python might be useful here.
Thanks, I didn't know about sartopo_python. I agree that could be a solution, but I don't really like the idea of using an unsupported API which requires my username and password to make the edits.
Hi Will. This looks very cool. Is it okay for people to use your site? I was just in the process of setting something similar up. But, to be sure I understand what you said - does Caltopo only show the last 30 minutes of tracking? I was hoping it would keep adding to a track to display.
Also, it looks like your site doesn't support passwords on the MapShare site
Dan, feel free to use my rudimentary tool, contribute, or fork it. I’ve made the repo public here: https://github.com/willdumm/InreachTracker
Upvoted! I would like this too. Especially altitude.
Thankfully, I've noticed that the CalTopo position report API endpoint is tolerant if you send this extra data, but it's not using it.
Has anyone found any undocumented query parameters we can try?
I just want to say that I understand the use case, and we're hoping to tackle this at some point, but when we do so it will be via predefined fields that our system knows how to handle and display (for example elevation and speed) rather than arbitrary key-value pairs.
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