Google Find Hub devices in Traccar
I see this output before enter some index. I start main.py, after that startup google chrome, I'm login and after my login in google crom I see this output
The output shows that you pressed 2.
A little bit more context for everyone looking at this. And this is an important distinction between a regular GPS tracker and the Google Find My Device network.
The location for your device exists whether you have sent it to Traccar or not.
That is, your device's location, if it has been seen by other Android devices, is already in Google. I'm specifically referring to tags here, which rely on them being detected by Android devices.
- Just because you may not be querying it in Traccar, doesn't mean it's lost
- As soon as you tell Traccar to query the device's position, it will give you the last known position as collected by Google. You have no control over this; it will update based on the devices which are seeing it and reporting its location into the Find My Device network
Ultimately, this is why "periodic" reporting for devices in the Find My Device network makes no sense to track any more frequently than, say, once an hour. This is not a "Push" system it is a "Pull" system.
Let's say you really want to know if a device moves out of a Geofence, and your experience with Traccar is that as the device starts to move it uploads its location data more frequently. That is a "push" system where the device pushes its location directly into Traccar. However, with Google Find My Device, whether the devices' location even updates is totally outside of your control. Maybe it will be seen by other phones, maybe it won't. You could have configured the periodic reporting for your devices in Traccar to be every 10 minutes, but it will be completely irrelevant and useless unless other devices are seeing your tag and updating its location. Your periodic reporting is just asking the Google Find my Device network to tell you what the network thinks the location of your device is.
TL;DR - Periodic reporting is actually just Periodic querying. It is a "Pull", relying on the Find My Device network and if your device has been seen by other Android devices.
In our case, and only once this is production stable, we will tell customers to have their device locations get queried at most once an hour, unless they have detected a theft event, at which point they can change to every 10 minutes or so and hope they get seen by other Android devices.
For those of you planning on tracking Android phones with their own 4G/5G connection, that is of course a bit different as the Android device will be updating its location itself, and therefore you can likely query it more frequently with a higher likelihood of its position data being up to date.
@Anton do we know if someone sharing a device's location will work here if they share it into the account we are using with the microservice?
Correction to the above - when I say "sharing a Device" this is only possible with tags, not phones. I will try to test this when my test batch of tags comes in. Prices are about $9 AUD per tag when buying small batches from Ali Express.
The tags we are using are these ones. Very generic, easily found on Amazon, and they're about the same size as an AirTag.
Hi Kaldek,
Do you think it can actually be used for production?
If we need a large number of Google tags (2,000-3,000 devices or more),
would it violate Google's terms of service and possibly be banned?
thanks.
Nobody knows yet mate.
Theerayuttu I definitely won't recommend using so many devices under a single good account, but there's no limit on how many account you can set up and link. You just need to host a separate microservice for each.
Kaldek not sure about sharing.
The output shows that you pressed 2.
main.py doesn't show any availability devices. I can input any number for it. Tell me please, it will work only with airtags or it will work with smartphones? I can check airtag today, but in my google find device portal I have 2 my smarphones and 2 children's smartphones. If it work only with airtag - then everything is clear.
It works fine for my own smartphone. That's all I can say. And of course it works with tags.
ok, I will try it from another OS. now I check it from ubuntu 24
I think I should see the devices here:
For those interested, there is a very long and detailed article about how this network works.
https://petsymposium.org/popets/2025/popets-2025-0147.php
(Written by the guy behind GoogleFindMyTools)
Awesome, that is greatly appreciated.
Seems like you entered a wrong index.