What I want to achieve:
I’m subscribed to Home Assistant Cloud, and I want better location history but integrated to Home Assistant.
What I’ve tried:
I’ve tried to setup the server integration, I have traccar running successfully, but I don’t know how to reach traccar without exposing it to the internet too, is that even possible? I know there’s a script that feeds a HA device’s location to Traccar, but I would prefer to use the official integration if possible.
Questions
Can I avoid exposing Traccar server to the internet without using a VPN?
I’m using the traccar client integration in HA and the traccar client on my phones.
So, I don’t have traccar server anywhere.
This allows me to use the webhook URL from the traccar client integration on HA and use a web proxy to protect that from the internet.
On the phones, the traccar client connects to the webhook URL I expose through the proxy.
Hope that makes sense as everything is called client here - took me a while to work it out myself.
But if you don’t have a Traccar server anywhere, how is it any better than the location history already present in HA ?
Well, I’m using the smaller HA client so that it doesn’t use google / apple servers, this means no location data via the HA client on my phones.
So, for me there is no location data already in HA. I have to put it there.
“History” - as in long term storage of where I’ve been? I don’t need to keep more than a day (or 2) live on the system… but the webhook is just a sensor with data, so the storage can be longer if required.
For us, there’s a lot of noise with us wandering around the house / town / etc. that has no longterm interest. Instead, I’ll use OSM to track an interesting journey.
But, integrating straight into HA simplifies my overall system - 1 less server to secure & maintain.
I’m gonna give you my setup even if it’s not what you’ve asked. I use Tasker to automatically start GPSlogger whenever Içm not connected to a known WiFi. GPSlogger sends data to NodeRed (it could send the directly to Traccar) that sends it to Traccar and Dawarich (if you don’t know it, try it!). You could easily send the position to HA with “call service” or an HTTP request
I actually prefer Dawarich, but I went with Traccar in hopes of an easy integration, which is not being the case for me at all. Dawarich, having real routes is much more attractive. Did you integrate Traccar or Dawarich with HA ? How ? Did you expose Traccar or Dawarich to the web?