Traccar Android Client - what monthly plan needed?

etraccar8 years ago

What kind of SIM card plan do I need to get?

I was thinking prepaid monthly plan - does it have need a Data plan? How much Data plan do I need per month?

Also it will send back text message with location on request?

Anton Tananaev8 years ago

Monthly data usage would depend on volume of messages and quality of signal. With default 5 minute interval, it shouldn't use more than 50MB of data per month (assuming decent reception).

etraccar8 years ago

That's great - thank you for your help! I will start a new thread with my other questions.

stobbie8 years ago

What is causing it to use that much data?
I'm using followmee on a few smart phones with a two minute interval and on average each phone uses only 7 tot 10 MB each month.
I'm now planning to use a traccar server and fit all of our rental cars with a tracker, but I did not suspect data consumption would be that high.
Our cars travel through all of Europe so data is expensive..

Anton Tananaev8 years ago

That's an upper limit. It reality it should use less data. How much exactly I don't know. It would be nice if someone can test it and provide statistics here.

My calculation actually shows 4MB for 2 minute interval, but it's in ideal conditions.

stobbie8 years ago

OK, I've got 10MB m2m sims. I'll try with a three minute interval and will let you know my data consumption in a month..

stobbie8 years ago

With a three minute update it seems I'm using 0,75 MB each day.
My provider rounds each session to 1KB, and closes the session each hour. I think traccar client closes data connection after each update.
I have some other phones with followmee, and with the same interval I only use 100KB or something each day. I think followmee doesn't close the session after the upload.
We are on an international M2M sim plan, so data use is expensive. Only 10MB each month is included in the plan.
Is it possible for traccar client to leave the session open between updates?

stobbie8 years ago

Or an option to save position every X seconds but send the data every Y seconds. Then I could send the positions once or twice each hour which would save data rounding as well.

Anton Tananaev8 years ago

I will investigate the issue.

stobbie8 years ago

great

Anton Tananaev8 years ago

I have disabled connection closing from the server side, but on newer versions of Android (possibly 4.4+), client side has connection timeout as well (I think about 1 minute) which is not configurable. I guess the only option is to combine positions into batches.

stobbie8 years ago

That's great, and that explains why my data consumption is much much higher on newer phones!
At this moment I have only one traccar phone running in on of our rental cars, and plan and extra data would cost me around 7 euro's each month now. For one car that would not be a problem, but with a lot of cars it's adding up..

A good firewall on an android phone is a must, android is using lots of data by itself, I have blocked everything except for traccar (or followmee)

Do you have the version without connection closing for download already, then I can try it on an older phone.
I'm leaving on holiday for a whole month tomorrow so I could put one traccar test phone in my own car :-)

Anton Tananaev8 years ago

Well, you need a new server version. I don't have a solution for new phones at the moment, so you can try to use older Android (pre 4.4).

stobbie8 years ago

OK, I didn't see 'server side'
That's even better, than it would also work on the one testphone that's on the road now already.

Anton Tananaev8 years ago

Yes, it should, but you need to wait for the server release.