Skip to main content

Traccar smart home integration, free and open source

Traccar integration for Gladys Assistant

Your Traccar GPS trackers in Gladys: zones, presence, speed, battery, alarms.

View on GitHubAll integrations

Brings the GPS trackers of your Traccar server into Gladys: phones running the Traccar Client app, car trackers, pet or bike trackers — any of the hundreds of models Traccar supports. Each tracker becomes a Gladys device with its zone, speed, battery and distance from home; scenes can react when a tracker enters or leaves a zone, goes offline or raises an alarm; a tracker at home can drive the presence of a Gladys user.

Traccar is a complete tracking server you host yourself. If you only want the presence of a phone, the OwnTracks integration of Gladys is lighter; Traccar is the choice when you already run it, or when you track vehicles and GPS devices.

Tested against a real Traccar 6.16 server with simulated phones (OsmAnd protocol), not with physical GPS trackers: feedback welcome.

Requirements​

  • Gladys 5.1 or later.
  • A Traccar server (version 5 or later) that Gladys can reach on your network, usually on port 8082.
  • A Traccar user who sees the trackers. A read-only user is enough: the integration never changes anything in Traccar.

Configuration​

  1. In Traccar, open Settings → Preferences, then the Token section, and generate a token (set an expiration date far enough ahead). You can also use the email and password of a Traccar user instead.
  2. In Gladys, open the Configuration tab of the integration:
    • Traccar address: as you open it in your browser, for example http://192.168.1.20:8082. Without a port, 8082 is assumed.
    • Token, or Email and Password.
  3. Save. The Test the connection button shows the Traccar version and how many trackers and geofences it sees.
  4. Open the Discovery tab and add the trackers you want in Gladys.

Home and presence (optional):

  • The home is a radius (150 m by default) around the location of your Gladys house (Settings → Houses). With several houses, give the name of the one to use; by default, the first one that has a location.
  • Or name a Traccar geofence (for example Home): a tracker is then at home when it is inside it, and the radius is ignored.
  • Presence: last fix at most: a tracker at home only keeps saying "seen at home" while its last position is younger than this (30 minutes by default).
  • Language: the language of the feature names and of the texts the integration writes (zones, statuses, sentences). French by default.

Devices​

One device per Traccar tracker, with:

FeatureWhat it shows
StatusOnline, offline or unknown, as Traccar sees it
Last updateDate and time of the last message received by Traccar
ZoneThe Traccar geofences the tracker is in, or "Outside zones"
SpeedIn km/h
BatteryIn %, if the tracker reports it
MovingYes or no, if Traccar computes it
IgnitionOn or off, for vehicle trackers that report it
AddressOnly if your Traccar server computes addresses (geocoder)
Distance from homeIn km, to the Gladys house
At homeYes or no, following the home rule above
PresenceA "seen at home" signal for the presence of a user (see below)

Battery, moving, ignition and address appear as soon as the tracker reports them: if one appears later, Gladys offers to Update the device in the Discovery tab. Distance needs a Gladys house with a location; at home and presence need a home (house or geofence).

Updates are live: Traccar pushes every new position to the integration through its WebSocket. If the link drops, the integration reads Traccar every 30 seconds until it is back: the latest position of each tracker is caught up, not the ones in between.

Presence of a user​

Gladys decides who is at home with scenes. Two ways, which combine well:

  • Simple: a scene triggered when the At home feature of the tracker becomes 1, with the action User seen at home; a second one when it becomes 0, with User left home.
  • Robust: the Presence feature sends a "seen at home" signal at every position at home, then every 5 minutes while the last position is recent. A scheduled scene (every 5 or 10 minutes) with the action Check user presence (the user, the house, the Presence feature of their tracker, a delay such as 15 minutes) marks the user away when the phone has not been seen at home for that delay — even if it ran out of battery at the office.

The scenes "user left home" and "user back home" of Gladys then work as usual.

Dashboard widget​

The GPS trackers widget lists every tracker (eight at most) with its zone, the time of its last position and its status as a colored badge. Tap a tracker for its address, speed, battery, distance from home and a link to the map (OpenStreetMap).

Scenes​

The integration adds to the scene editor, under Integrations:

Triggers

  • Tracker enters a geofence and Tracker leaves a geofence: optionally for one tracker and one geofence (its name exactly as in Traccar; empty means any). The next actions can use the tracker name, the geofence, the address and a map link.
  • Tracker goes offline: the tracker stops reporting and Traccar marks it offline or unknown (phones and HTTP trackers go to unknown), after the timeout set in Traccar (10 minutes by default). Variables: tracker name, last update.
  • Tracker alarm: the tracker reports an alarm (SOS, low battery, overspeed, power cut, fall, tampering, vibration, movement), optionally only one kind. Variables: tracker name, alarm code and label, map link.

These triggers come from the positions themselves: no notification to set up in Traccar. Only the trackers added to Gladys fire them.

Action

  • Get the position of a tracker: returns a ready sentence ("Car is in Work, 4.1 km from home, position of 16:08."), and the status, zone, address, at home (yes/no), distance from home (km, -1 when unknown), speed (km/h), time of the position and a map link, for the next actions.

Scene examples​

  • The kids are home: trigger "Tracker enters a geofence", tracker "Phone Léa", geofence "Home" → send a message "Léa is home".
  • Where is the car? Trigger: a button or a chat message → action "Get the position of a tracker" (Car) → send a message with the sentence and the map link.
  • SOS: trigger "Tracker alarm", alarm "SOS" → send a message with the tracker name and the map link to everyone, and turn the lights on.

Troubleshooting​

  • "Traccar refused the token": the token expired or was revoked; generate a new one. With an email and a password, check them in the Traccar web interface.
  • "Traccar does not answer": check the address (with the port) from another device of the network, and that Traccar is running. The integration runs in a container: localhost there is not your server, use its IP address.
  • No distance from home: the Gladys house has no location (**Settings → Houses), or the integration was installed without the house location permission.
  • A tracker never "at home": check the radius, or the exact name of the home geofence; a phone indoors can report a position tens of meters away.
  • Details are in the integration logs, with LOG_LEVEL=debug for every message. Positions are never written in the logs at the normal level.

Limits​

  • No map in the dashboard: the widget vocabulary of Gladys has none; the map opens in OpenStreetMap.
  • Read-only: no commands are sent to the trackers.
  • Traccar's own events (overspeed computed by the server from a speed limit, maintenance, fuel) are not triggers; the alarms reported by the trackers are.
  • Speed limits, geofences and statuses are those of Traccar: change them there.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Traccar asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Connect your Traccar serversectionNoEnter the address of Traccar as you open it in your browser (port 8082 by default). Then paste a token: in Traccar, open Settings, Preferences, Token, and generate one. A read-only Traccar user is enough. Or enter the email and password of a Traccar user instead.
Traccar addressstringYes
Token (recommended)secretNo
Or: email of a Traccar userstringNo
Password of this usersecretNo
Home and presencesectionNoA tracker is at home when it is within the radius below around the location of your Gladys house, or, if you name one, inside that Traccar geofence. Use its At home feature in scenes with "User seen at home" and "User left home", or its Presence feature with "Check user presence".
Gladys house (optional)stringNo
Home radius (meters)numberNo
Or: Traccar geofence of homestringNo
Presence: last fix at most (minutes)numberNo
Language of the names and textsselectNo

How to install Traccar in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Traccar appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-traccar:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-traccar.

Traccar requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

Traccar is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.

Subscribe to the Gladys Assistant newsletter

A few emails per month about new releases and project news. Sent by Pierre-Gilles Leymarie, founder of the project. Unsubscribe anytime 🙂
Last updated on