For many years, I have been tracking my location using Aaron Parecki’s Compass. Compass is a fairly lightweight tracking server that stores data in flat files. It pairs nicely with Overland, Aaron’s iOS app and other apps to receive location data and store it. But, much as I like the software, it is in need of update (something Aaron himself has noted he will get to).  A piece of software not being updated for a few years is not necessarily a reason to leave it, but it does make you want to look at what else is out there.

Why Location Tracking

Different people have different reasons for wanting to track their location. For me, it is related to maps and photos. Most of the time, where I am is rather uninteresting. But when I am traveling, it can be much more interesting. I want to see those maps, revisit places I’ve been.

I first discovered I had turned on this feature without realizing it on Google, with its timeline service. When I realized it, I changed to their current short term timeline service but downloaded all the data first. Then I migrated it into Compass and started adding my own with a variety of tools on my Android phone, as Overland didn’t have an Android equivalent.

For Android, I’m currently using Colota, which replaced my long-time use of GPSLogger, which was designed more for short-term tracking. Colota has the features that work for me. Connects to a server of your choice, queues offline and syncs, saves on device, etc. The developer even offers a companion product called Colota Forwarder, which I use. I run Home Assistant, and rather than having multiple apps on my phone track my location, I send to a small forwarder instance, which forwards it to Compass, Home Assistant, and currently two other products I’m testing.

GeoPulse

The first of the two self-hosted location servers is GeoPulse, which bills itself as an alternative to Google Timeline, the product I originally had turned on location for. GeoPulse accepts GPS data, groups them into stays, trips, and gaps in data. You can make manual corrections. GeoPulse is free for personal use under a BSL1.1 license.

• It does lookups on the locations to create a step by step timeline.
• It tries to straighten routes to align with roadways.
• It includes weather polling for all the points.
• It offers street images
• Integration with Immich for photo maps
• It has a full API.

According to its own docuemtns, in typical self-hosted usage GeoPulse uses about 50-100 MB of memory and stays below 1% CPU outside imports, timeline regeneration, and other background jobs. That makes it good for lightweight deployment.

Dawarich

Dawarich also bills itself as a replacement for the missing Google Timeline. Dawarich offers a hosted and self-hosted version. The cost of running a server means some people might prefer the hosted version, although the different plans they offer have limits.

Dawarich compares itself to GeoPulse on its own page, noting in addition to the same features GeoPulse offer, it offers native apps, privacy zones in shared links and exports, richer sharing, a more permissive AGLP-3.0 license, and a much broader contributor community.

Dawarich has a much beefier set of hardware requirements. 2GB of RAM, 1 CPU Core, and 10GB of disk space. You can limit its memory usage.

Comparing the Products

I agree with Dawarich’s statement that it offers a much broader community. I’m coming from a product that has a single maintainer, and only a few contributors. But the memory usage is also a concern. I imported 13 years of data into both. Both are running on the same hardware, a 1GB VPS. Even limited down to the size of the server, the cost of running Dawarich on hardware it requires well exceeds GeoPulse.

I picked a day from my 13 years, when was on a trip, and told both of them to retrieve it. GeoPulse pulled it up quickly and displayed the information. Dawarich in its default configuration took much longer on the same low powered server.

So, if I were going to leave Compass, I would move to GeoPulse. For now though, I’m going to tear down Dawarich after I do some additional testing and run Compass and GeoPulse in parallel and decide what I’m going to do next. But for a new user, who is looking for a full featured yet lightweight option, I’d seriously consider that one.