GPSTrack

GPSTrack guides

Everything worth tracking, and how to track it.

How to push GPS from a device you own, how to record a ride with nothing but a phone, and how to work out what a journey should have cost.

Latest · Meterless

Your phone says 8.05 km, the meter says 6.7 — who's right?

A real ride measured three independent ways. Two agreed to 0.6%; the vehicle's own odometer was 16.8% out. What that means for anyone comparing a phone against a taxi meter.

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More guides 15 in total
  1. Meterless

    No meter? What to pay for a tuk-tuk ride

    Negotiated rides have no receipt and no record. How to set a fair price before you get in, and how to know afterwards whether it was — measured, not guessed.

    29 July 2026 · 5 min read

  2. Meterless

    Was I overcharged by a taxi?

    How to tell the difference between a fare that felt high and a fare that was wrong — what evidence actually helps, and what to do during the ride rather than after it.

    22 July 2026 · 5 min read

  3. Meterless

    How much should a taxi ride cost?

    Every fare calculator guesses before you travel, from a route you have not taken. Here is how to work out what the ride you actually took was worth — during it, from your own phone.

    15 July 2026 · 5 min read

  4. Meterless

    How a taxi meter actually works — and the speed where it switches

    A meter does not add a distance charge to a time charge. It runs one accumulator fed by whichever rate is winning, and the speed where they swap decides your fare in traffic.

    8 July 2026 · 5 min read

  5. Track Me

    Track a walk without an app or an account

    What "nothing is uploaded" actually means, where the data really lives, and how to check the claim yourself rather than taking anyone's word for it.

    6 July 2026 · 4 min read

  6. Track Me

    Export your run to GPX for Strava or Garmin

    Get a recorded route out of the browser as a GPX file and into Strava, Garmin Connect, Komoot or RideWithGPS — including the upload step everyone gets stuck on.

    4 July 2026 · 4 min read

  7. Track Me

    Why GPS distance disagrees with your watch

    Two devices on the same run report different distances, and one of them is usually reading high. What GPS jitter does to a total, and how a filter stops it.

    2 July 2026 · 5 min read

  8. Track Me

    Why your run stops recording when the screen locks

    There is no background geolocation on the mobile web. Why iOS and Android suspend it, why a PWA does not help, and what an honest recorder does about the gap.

    30 June 2026 · 4 min read

  9. Track Me

    Track your run or ride with just your phone

    Distance, duration, pace and splits from the phone already in your pocket. No app to install, no account to create, and nothing leaves the device.

    27 June 2026 · 4 min read

  10. Telematics

    HTTP or MQTT for GPS tracking? Pick by power budget

    Both deliver the same point. The difference is what a connection costs your device. A decision table, the handshake arithmetic, and where each one falls apart.

    25 June 2026 · 4 min read

  11. Telematics

    Send custom telemetry alongside GPS

    Push rpm, fuel, voltage or water temperature on the same request as the position, and bind each one to a gauge, sparkline or compass. No schema to register.

    23 June 2026 · 4 min read

  12. Telematics

    Live-track a Raspberry Pi with a USB GPS dongle

    Plug in a u-blox dongle, read it with gpsd, and stream fixes to a live map from a shell script. Includes the systemd unit and the m/s to km/h trap.

    20 June 2026 · 4 min read

  13. Telematics

    Stream GPS from an ESP32 over MQTT

    Wire a NEO-6M to an ESP32, publish fixes over MQTT with TLS on port 8883, and watch them arrive on a live map. Full sketch, no backend to write.

    18 June 2026 · 5 min read

  14. Telematics

    Track anything with one HTTP request

    Put a moving thing on a live map with nothing but curl — no account, no SDK, no app. A complete GPS tracking walkthrough in two requests.

    15 June 2026 · 4 min read