What I want to achieve:
I’m subscribed to Home Assistant Cloud, and I want better location history but integrated to Home Assistant.
What I’ve tried:
I’ve tried to setup the server integration, I have traccar running successfully, but I don’t know how to reach traccar without exposing it to the internet too, is that even possible? I know there’s a script that feeds a HA device’s location to Traccar, but I would prefer to use the official integration if possible.
Questions
Can I avoid exposing Traccar server to the internet without using a VPN?
I’m using the traccar client integration in HA and the traccar client on my phones.
So, I don’t have traccar server anywhere.
This allows me to use the webhook URL from the traccar client integration on HA and use a web proxy to protect that from the internet.
On the phones, the traccar client connects to the webhook URL I expose through the proxy.
Hope that makes sense as everything is called client here - took me a while to work it out myself.
But if you don’t have a Traccar server anywhere, how is it any better than the location history already present in HA ?
Well, I’m using the smaller HA client so that it doesn’t use google / apple servers, this means no location data via the HA client on my phones.
So, for me there is no location data already in HA. I have to put it there.
“History” - as in long term storage of where I’ve been? I don’t need to keep more than a day (or 2) live on the system… but the webhook is just a sensor with data, so the storage can be longer if required.
For us, there’s a lot of noise with us wandering around the house / town / etc. that has no longterm interest. Instead, I’ll use OSM to track an interesting journey.
But, integrating straight into HA simplifies my overall system - 1 less server to secure & maintain.