I toyed with this idea, but the directory structures are completely different, and they both keep their own databases. If one updates images, the other database will be out of sync. IMHO, it’s best to keep them separate

It takes a little experimentation to get it right, but you can find out which urls are involved with your game’s ads and whitelist them

Last time I tried that was… problematic. I suppose I could try again…

I’m kinda just getting started. The goal is to have a media server in addition to my current raspberry pi server that will act as a second dns. If I can’t find a way to keep them synced, I’ll give adguard a try

I only have one dns field. Apparently, there’s a fork of asus software that provides 2 so my suspicion is that the router is automatically supplying its own IP as dns2

OK, this seems to be the issue. I have this section but only one field for DNS.

I have my router as DHCP and I also have the DNS set to the pi-hole which I’m assuming is how the devices are getting it. I’m just not sure why it’s getting my router IP as well.

The router is running DHCP and is set to hand out the Pi-hole IP as DNS. Interestingly, there’s only one field for this so maybe the router is choosing itself as DNS2? If I go into WAN settings, there are fields for DNS1 & 2 but if I was under the impression that these should be set for upstream DNS.

Why would I use anything that runs my homelab traffic through centralized servers? It kinda defeats my whole purpose in “privatizing” my data. They say they don’t collect data blah blah blah but nobody can be 100% sure what goes on in their own servers.

I really like the idea of combining VPN with Syncthing-like connectivity but not at the cost of privacy. If they would just allow an opt-out from using their servers and not requiring signing up for an account I would be all over it.

Unless I’m mistaken, I’ll be sticking with my Wireguard with one port forwarded through my router.

I’m thinking that, when I decide to upgrade from my homelab-ish setup, I’ll be going with one of these. I haven’t looked into the software so much but just something a bit more purpose-built than a pi4 with a USB drive 😋

Interesting, I’ll have to give that a try. Thanks for the tip!

A small update: Traccar with the wake lock off and the interval set to 100 seconds uses a fraction of the battery but the accuracy still seems questionable. Since it’s not draining the battery anymore, I’m going to keep running them in tandem for comparison. If I remember, I’ll come back here with my results

I’m using wireguard but I hear a lot of good things about tailscale.

Depends on your router. I have an Asus and it has a free ddns option through their domain. I point my Wireguard client at this address and never think of it again. That way, the only port that’s open on your router is a Wireguard port and they don’t respond to sniffing.

If that’s not a possibility, I had a ddns service before that for like $2/month

Well, I’ve had a fully functioning Traccar instance running all night and most of the day and I’m sad to say that I’m less than impressed.

The tracking isn’t quite as bad as OwnTracks but not nearly as good as PhoneTrack. Instead of showing me that I randomly went to a city several miles away, I just spent some time in a field by my house instead of walking down the road next to it.

I’ve kept PhoneTrack running in tandem and the comparison, in terms of accuracy and battery usage, leaves no question. I tried everything I could think of to post a screenshot of my battery usage but “image is too large” was all I got even for an 18k image. So, after a day-ish of running both, my battery stats in Android show:

• Traccar Client: 36% (top of the list, 15 hours background, 1 min screen time)
• …several other apps, including those with a lot more screen time
• PhoneTrack: 1% (background 8 hours)

I think it’s PhoneTrack’s “significant motion” setting that makes the difference here. If Traccar gets this feature (or already has it and I’m missing it…) that will solve a few problems.

If I’m missing something with Traccar here, somebody please set me to rights. It seems strange that the only setting in the Traccar client to save battery is to set the interval longer, thereby killing accuracy. PhoneTrack seems to have solved this problem, and it’s “just a Nextcloud app”, Traccar is dedicated to this functionality, I feel like it should have more options. 🤷‍♂️

Looks like I’m sticking with PhoneTrack for now which means my Nextcloud instance has been relegated to app platform instead of all-in-one file manager.

EDIT: Didn’t notice the wake lock setting, trying it for a bit with that off to see if that helps

I got a minimum traccar instance running last night (no db, config, etc…) and it seemed to be working great. Later, I noticed battery usage on my android device was a bit higher than normal. Not thinking much about it, I went about my business. This morning I was still seeing higher than average battery usage. I checked the client logs and saw a ton of “failed to send” messages. I checked the server and the registration page came up. Apparently, my minimal setup failed to persist the data and, at some point, I redeployed my stack and lost everything.

My suspicion is that the repeated failures were causing the battery drain so I’m trying again with a full db setup but not having much luck so far. I’ll check back in after I either succeed or give up.

The UI for traccar is way cleaner than phonetrack but if the battery usage doesn’t compare, it’s a no-go. Phonetrack has just been invisible and functional so it’s got some big shoes to fill

While I think “sucks” might be a bit of an overstatement, I agree with your point. I’m already running Syncthing as my main method of spreading important files around to different drives so the file sync part of Nextcloud isn’t that important to me.

Not planning on having more than 2 users so the enterprise-y type features don’t really apply. Very good points though!

Exactly! It’s just so convenient from an app platform standpoint, though… But, it just feels strange to keep a tool around, who’s main job is basically file management, just for an app platform when those apps’ functionality can be found elsewhere. I may just keep Nextcloud around as a testbed for new functionality via its apps, then reproduce that functionality with another service in a separate container if it turns out to be useful.

This is pretty much what I expected but I didn’t want to assume. Thanks!

I looked at Traccar for a little bit but found that (based on the availability of documentation / user posts) OwnTracks seems to be more popular. After setting up OwnTracks and comparing it to PhoneTrack, it was OBVIOUS that PhoneTrack is superior… at least for me. I’ll take another look at Traccar tonight and see if it compares. Thanks!

I worked in operations for a large company that had their own 50,000 sq ft data center with 2000 physical servers, uncountable virtual servers, backup tape robots, etc… Their cooling bill would like to disagree with your assessment about scaling. I was unpacking new servers regularly because, when you own you own servers, not only do you have to buy them, but you have to house them (so much rented space), run them, fix them, cool them, and replace them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also seen the AWS bill for another large company I worked for and that was staggering. But, we were a smaller tech team and didn’t require a separate ops group specifically to maintain the physical servers.