PHLocation V1 Plug-In [No Longer in Development - See PHLocation2]

[VirtualPanther]

Followmee is pretty good. I have it set to 2 mins but have my home radius set to around .7 mile for it to trigger before I get to the driveway. You can go down to 1 min but battery drain is too much. I also have a 5 mile radius for "nearly home" already for heating and a few other things. The direction device sounds perfect for larger radii. Looking forward to it.

Thanks. I set mine to update every five minutes. Battery life on my iPhone 6 Plus is already killing me...

Anyway, I had only two places created so far: home and work. I did the same thing for my wife's iPhone. We both work night shift. Just got to work at 6 pm. It's 7:09 PM here and the plugin shows that we have been here for five minutes

Prior to few minutes ago, it was showing me still close to home and her -- midway between home and work. We drove together...

Anything else I need to do in order to get at least somewhat reasonable accuracy? Not updating my location for an hour does not work, if I am to trigger any events on my approaching or leaving an area

[sooty]

Thanks. I set mine to update every five minutes. Battery life on my iPhone 6 Plus is already killing me...

Anyway, I had only two places created so far: home and work. I did the same thing for my wife's iPhone. We both work night shift. Just got to work at 6 pm. It's 7:09 PM here and the plugin shows that we have been here for five minutes

Prior to few minutes ago, it was showing me still close to home and her -- midway between home and work. We drove together...

Anything else I need to do in order to get at least somewhat reasonable accuracy? Not updating my location for an hour does not work, if I am to trigger any events on my approaching or leaving an area

It's a while since I played with FollowMee so I'm not 100% sure if the issue is with the plug-in or the FM service.

If you log into the FM website can you see your location history being updated at more frequent intervals? If so, then the issue is likely one of the following:
1. Polling frequency of the plug-in to FM too high.
2. An error when requesting data from the FM server. (Plug-in should report this)
3. Plug-in settings for the user. Min distance to move too high. Max speed to low. Accuracy too low.

Paul..

[U5tabil]

Thanks. I set mine to update every five minutes. Battery life on my iPhone 6 Plus is already killing me...

Anyway, I had only two places created so far: home and work. I did the same thing for my wife's iPhone. We both work night shift. Just got to work at 6 pm. It's 7:09 PM here and the plugin shows that we have been here for five minutes

Prior to few minutes ago, it was showing me still close to home and her -- midway between home and work. We drove together...

Anything else I need to do in order to get at least somewhat reasonable accuracy? Not updating my location for an hour does not work, if I am to trigger any events on my approaching or leaving an area

5min will drain your battery a lot. iv set it for 15min even that is draining the battery.

i suggest incresing to 15min, and the make the radius on area of trigger larger.

[VirtualPanther]

I have a silly question: What does the "Update" button do? Or, rather, what should change after I press it? I attempted to "refresh" my location, which is frequently incorrect for a while, by pressing "Update" and nothing happened. I verified that FollowMee map shows my location correctly, so I am unsure of what else to adjust. I realize that frequency of updates alters precision, but of course battery life suffers. i can see that now. Even at 10 min updates, my battery is draining significantly faster than with any other app I've ever used. But I simply wanted to see if it was just that: the app simply needed to update my location by polling FollowMee server, in order to reflect my current position. Unfortunately, manually clicking "Update" did not have any effect...

[Skinnez]

Have you turned the GPS power down, and put battery saving mode to high?
I can get thru a full day and charge overnight, if I am travelling in the car for long periods you need to plug it in.
I did try and add dynamic polling to the followmee feature requests but it didn't get much interest.

[sooty]

I have a new version ready for anyone brave enough to test it...

Due to the fact that there are many changes, I'd prefer to have a few users test it before letting it loose generally so drop me an email if you want to have a go.

The main changes are:

Most of the new position processing code has been re-written to make it more efficient. New position updates (regardless of the service used) are now queued and processed in separate thread so the providing service or app isn't kept waiting for a response from the plug-in. Previously the update function didn't return to the calling app or service until all device updates were complete.

5 new child devices have been added to the main user type root device. Speed, Altitude, Course, Accuracy and Battery Level. Not all services support all these properties so they are added dynamically based on the service being used. FollowMee for example doesn't report Course so that device won't be added for a FollowMee user.
Existing users who already have user devices configured can add the new devices by opening the root user device for editing, selecting the PHL tab and clicking the Update Child Devices button.

NOTE:
Backitude users will have to configure the extra info in the mobile app naming the fields "speed", "course" and "altitude" (without quotes). FollowMee and BTraced should automatically update the extra fields.

By far the biggest changes are to the known place devices. The 2 previous device types of Near/Not Near and Distance have been replaced with a single known place device that works in a similar way to the user type devices with a Parent > Child configuration.

Configuration is done on the root device and child devices include:
Direction (Approaching / Leaving / Static).
Near / Not Near.
Straight line distance.
Driving distance (approximate).
Driving time (approximate).
Walking distance (approximate).
Walking time (approximate).

This change will require all known places to be re-added and configured.
If you have the older type of known place devices configured then they won't be deleted (in case you want to go back the the previous version) but they won't be recognised by this version nor will they be updated. They can be safely deleted from the HS3 device management page if no longer required.

The direction device should be considered work in progress at this stage as it hasn't been fully tested.
There are 2 configuration options on the root device PHL tab:

(App/Leave Qty)
This is the number of same direction updates required to trigger a change of state on the direction device. So, for example if set to 3, the plug-in would need to see at least 3 consecutive position updates where the user is getting closer to the place before the direction device would be updated to Approaching.

(App/Leave Timeout)
This is the time in minutes without any position updates from this place's associated user before the direction device will be set to Static.

Paul..

[sooty]

I have a silly question: What does the "Update" button do? Or, rather, what should change after I press it? I attempted to "refresh" my location, which is frequently incorrect for a while, by pressing "Update" and nothing happened. I verified that FollowMee map shows my location correctly, so I am unsure of what else to adjust. I realize that frequency of updates alters precision, but of course battery life suffers. i can see that now. Even at 10 min updates, my battery is draining significantly faster than with any other app I've ever used. But I simply wanted to see if it was just that: the app simply needed to update my location by polling FollowMee server, in order to reflect my current position. Unfortunately, manually clicking "Update" did not have any effect...

The update button on a FollowMee device performs the same function as the timed poll does. It requests position data from the FollowMee server. The plug-in then looks at this data and decides if it is a new position (based on the options set for that user). If it is, then the user device(s) are updated appropriately.

So, if your current position is correctly shown on the FollowMee web site, the plug-in is either not retrieving the position data properly or the user options set are preventing it from updating the devices or I got something wrong.

If you contact me by email we can go through some tests to try and establish the problem.

Paul..

[VirtualPanther]

Have you turned the GPS power down, and put battery saving mode to high?
I can get thru a full day and charge overnight, if I am travelling in the car for long periods you need to plug it in.
I did try and add dynamic polling to the followmee feature requests but it didn't get much interest.

I've got GPS on "Medium"; power saving mode - on "High". I only drive for under an hour each trip usually, but always dock the phone, with the charger attached. At work, however, on my belt...

But at this point, the battery is secondary. First, I have to see usable precision. So far, updating my location 20 min after I arrive is not something I can use

[sooty]

The battery life vs position accuracy/frequency subject has been discussed many times in the past and the top and bottom of it is:

The plug-in can process position updates almost as fast as you can throw them at it but you can't have accurate position data without running the GPS receiver on the mobile device and that uses a lot of battery power.

I have tested the plug-in using a purpose built vehicle tracking unit that can upload an accurate GPS fix at 1 minute intervals and this works very well. The VTU does all the logic so it can be configured to only report at 1 minute intervals if the ignition is on and the vehicle is moving and go to sleep if the vehicle is stopped etc...

Of course in a vehicle, power isn't an issue and its also using an external GPS antenna.

Paul..

[sooty]

I've got GPS on "Medium"; power saving mode - on "High". I only drive for under an hour each trip usually, but always dock the phone, with the charger attached. At work, however, on my belt...

But at this point, the battery is secondary. First, I have to see usable precision. So far, updating my location 20 min after I arrive is not something I can use

Is your position being updated on the FollowMee website in a timely (acceptable) manner? If not, then this is an issue with FollowMee. If so then the issue is with the plug-in.

Paul..

[U5tabil]

Sign me up! This sounds great. Your doing a great job Paul. Would love to see how this new features would play out. I sent you an email.

V.K

[sooty]

I've just uploaded a new beta 3.0.0.102.

There were a few issues with the previous version relating to the new direction device.

For those that are running the beta you can just re-use the download link I sent you to get the latest version.

Paul..

[sooty]

Just uploaded beta 3.0.0.104 following another round of bug fixes mainly related to the FollowMee service.

Again, just re-use the beta download link.

Paul..

[VirtualPanther]

Just uploaded beta 3.0.0.104 following another round of bug fixes mainly related to the FollowMee service.

Again, just re-use the beta download link.

Paul..

Paul,
I wanted to try the latest beta. Where do I get it? Link on the first page leads to version .93

[VirtualPanther]

Is your position being updated on the FollowMee website in a timely (acceptable) manner? If not, then this is an issue with FollowMee. If so then the issue is with the plug-in.

Paul..

I will try and check on the timeliness. It is definitely always correct on FollowMee site. Today is actually the worst example. I haven't left the house since Saturday evening (it's Monday morning now). My time at location is shown as 2144 min, yet my location is wrong. It is correct on the FollowMee site, but I have no idea when exactly it was last updated there... Next piece of the puzzle: my wife's iPhone is correct in all aspects, and she just got back from work a couple of hours ago. All settings are the same for all users.