CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidiphonegps
Michael
Michael

Reputation: 8729

Battery efficient way to track Android phone

I have a fleet of vans that I am trying to create a cheap way to track.

I need to be able to request an update on their location, and also track their movement so I can go back and see their routes.

I have tried apps already out, but they seem to decrease the battery life to an unsable level. I am looking to make a more efficent way.

Which part of the app would use the batteries? Obtaining the location from GPS or sending the information via 3G?

If its the latter, I could track them and only update every 20 minutes, but keep the route on the phone to update at the end of the day. If it's the former I would just have to update positions with a larger gap (every 30 minutes unless queried)

Upvotes: 3

Views: 380

Answers (3)

Johnny
Johnny

Reputation: 414

GPS definitely uses a lot of battery -- my phone will run for over 24 hours on a charge without GPS on. If I leave my sports tracking app on after a run, the battery will be dead after about 10 hours. If I configure the app to automatically update my progress on the web in real time, the battery will last only about 3 or 4 hours.

Depending on how much granularity you need with the tracking, you could just turn on the GPS every 15 - 30 minutes to get a GPS fix, then turn it off. Also, I think there are different degrees of geolocation accuracy, if you can stand the resolution of a quick location fix (which uses cell towers, and wifi if available to get a rough estimate of location), you'll use less battery.

Upvotes: 0

AlexWien
AlexWien

Reputation: 28727

Most of the battery consumes the display, if enabled.
On iphone 4, I can record 8hs of GPS, one position per second, to the file system.
Best solution is to attach a power cable to the phone in car, like all tracking systems do.
Further it also depends on the compression of the location sequence data packet. With standard web services, the data volume may be 100 times higher that with a binary (proprietary) protocol. Unfortunatly I cannot tell you the relation of power consumption from GSM/3G sending usage to GPS.

Upvotes: 1

Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood

Reputation: 82543

Both obtaining user location via GPS and using the 3G network to send the data is highly battery intensive.

You could most likely increase the time between updates, and also increase the time between sending you the location.

You could also integrate GCM, which will allow you to manually send notifications to the devices (assuming they have Google Play installed) and request location updates only then.

Also, since this is your fleet, have you considered adding a portable mobile charger that uses the vehicle battery to charge your phones?

Upvotes: 3

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