Heartbeat behavior causes stale/incorrect location — significant user impact
I think that you already did multiple posts about it and also submitted a ticket. Why do you need another forum topic? This is definitely not helping your case.
Yes I did and I think you might have forgotten it. Because you are normally quite responsive but ever since we brought this issue up, I don't recall you fixing it nor addressing the issue at least, so with the huge amount issues users are facing because of this there are alooooooot of instances where this behavior has proven problematic, I thought it might helpful to bring it up again
Can you point any reports other than your own one? That would be more helpful than keep posting about it.
I am the developer of a tool that relies on traccar. I am not sure if I should post its link here because don't want to make it seem like I am promoting any product or service but these are reports that my users are sending me. Plus, if you think about logically, is this an issue ? Yes. Is solving it hard , I don't think so specially when you have created the best tracking app humanity has ever seen so far in my opinion. But I don't think you have personally encountered this issue because you haven't been in areas with spotty connection but this isn't the case everywhere in the world. So why stop short of creating the perfect app because of something so simple and easy to fix like this?!
I think you're making a wrong assumption that we're sitting here and doing nothing. We have thousands of requests and many of our own ideas. They need to be prioritized.
Never implied that you are sitting there doing nothing. And if that is the case. I wouldn't have bothered typing this. I just assume that you haven't personally been in a situation where network is abit spotty and that is why you underestimate how serious this issue is. I got users who literally thought that their loved ones have been in a car accident because of this issue. Some other user depend n traccar for safety, etc. there is nothing wrong with pursuing new ideas and innovating just like you have always did but ignoring legitimate reports doesn't help. Thanks
Can you please find other reports from people who use official Traccar.
My users are using official traccar with my server. Do you want me to post the reports I got from them?
Not sure how it helps, because most of them are non technical reports, they are just reports of issue that I traced back to this issue with heartbeat behavior
@Antony,
If it is so important for you and as you stated your Users depend on it for safety etc. Then why dont you use Antons professional paid service ?
Do you / they value the $ more then the loved ones ?
The merit of your reply "trace-track" is flawed, assuming that only the paid version of the app get issue fixes isn't the right approach. It is like saying only paid versions of Linux get security updates. And if this is Anton's approach or way of thinking, he wouldn't have had traccar being free in the first place. Plus, throughout the conversations I have had with him during the years he has never even implied this. And if he never said this, why would you feel the urge to say it yourself?. A free app doesn't need to suck in order to encourage users to pay for its paid version, this isn't how it works. I don't think you should speak for someone else with all due respect. Of course paying for a free app is always much appreciated to the developer but that isn't what we are discussing here.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. We do have paid professional services and if you are interested in sponsoring the work, that will definitely help with prioritization. The reason I don't mention it upfront myself is because usually people react to it very negatively. So if you want, you can sponsor the work. If not, you just need to wait till we prioritize it naturally. Having more independent examples would definitely help with that.
I just wanted to post this reply here as a small token of gratitude for your efforts and swiftly inplementing a fix for this issue, I just saw the github commit. I truly appreciate the enthusiasm and care in which you are always listening and going above and beyond with traccar. Thanks Anton
The current heartbeat behavior in the new traccar version is causing so much trouble and significant issues for users that in some cases would cause the users to panic when location is out of sync thinking that the person they are viewing their live location might have had an accident.
The current heartbeat behavior remains problematic, maybe you haven't noticed because it mainly is an issue for users who are in areas with less than ideal internet connection, the reason is. If the user lost internet connection while they are moving while passing by locations X and next time they gained connectivity again is later on when they were stationary at location Y, since heartbeats no longer include the user's location, the server would still think the user is at location X while in fact they are at location Y. The ideal solution is to save the last know user location while moving and once the app switches to stationary mode. With every heartbeat traccar would send the last known location for the user.
You might womder. Why is it an issue ! Can't you just turn on offline buffering ? While offline buffering might resolve this issue but if the user went offline for a period of time while moving, when they come back online a burst of requests will eventually get semt to the server leading to unnecessary server load and bandwidth usage and who has a server and doesn't set a rate limit for bursts of requests anyways !? So offline buffering isn't the solution.
Would you pleaseeeee consider this as it is causing so much trouble for users, I would truly appreciate it .
Thanks