Setting up Compass with GPS Logger for Android

After much debate about whether to build my own solution or install one, I installed Aaron Parecki’s Compass.

Compass is a GPS Tracking server. It is specifically tailored to an iOS app Aaron developed called Overland. Which creates a problem as I am an Android user.

So, I needed an Android app that could send data to Compass. I tried GPS Logger. It is a popular GPS Logging app, although I’m not sure if it was intended for 24 hour a day use. It seems the biggest use cases it is used for would be gps tagging of photos and tracking hacks.

It supports logging to a custom URL. THe following settings have to be set

• URL: https://example.org/api/input?token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• HTTP Header: Content-Type: application/json
• HTTP Method: POST
• HTTP Body: { “locations”: [ { “type”: “Feature”, “geometry”: { “type”: “Point”, “coordinates”: [%LON, %LAT, %ALT] }, “properties”: { “timestamp”: “%TIME”, “speed”: %SPD, “direction”: %DIR, “activity”: “%ACT”, “provider”: “%PROV”, “battery_level”: %BATT, “horizontal_accuracy”: “%ACC”, “annotation”: “%DESC”, “device_id”: “%SER” } } ] }

The above sends a variety of preset parameters GPS Logger provides in the format Compass expects.