Location Tracking

[Jade_C9]

Location tracking:
Is there a way to track the location of a user periodically? I am looking into a mobile application where logging the users exact location while on the move would be a requirement.
I am aware of the use my current location function, but this requires manual input from the user. I am looking for something more automated for an “in case of emergency” situation.

[ThinhDinh]

Live Location - not for production use

It was a fun challenge and I had it pretty accurate and able to dynamically move the 3 points, so the tri-lateration always kept up and I always had an accurate location because I would always be within the 3 points. The only problem is, I think glide has a bug somewhere where javascript crashes and can’t recover, so the app would halfway stop responding after a few minutes. I had put Try Catches in the code, but there would still be a hard crash somewhere. Now, the newer Location component i…

According to Jeff’s finding here, the location component on the new Glide Apps does track the live location of the user.

[Jeff_Hager]

The new location component does seem to update coordinates in real time. Any time I’ve played with it, I’ve filled user specific columns in an app where I’m not signed in…so I’m not entirely sure if it would update the back end database or what kind of hit it would have against the update quota. If it does update the back end, then it could potentially eat up your update quota very quickly. So I guess I would be cautious and try it out on a small sample app first.

[Jade_C9]

Thank you for getting back to me. I hadn’t thought of the impact on the quota if its constantly updating periodically. Perhaps a better work around is to keep the trigger of physically pushing a button in place, but make it so one button push triggers the emergency action needed along with the update current location function. being fairly new to Glide I am open to suggestions.

[Jeff_Hager]

I would definitely do some experimenting with a sample app. Like I said, I’m not sure if you could track live location without incurring constant updates. I would assume you would. If you use a form, you should be safe, but if you are placing your button and location component on a detail screen, then you may be incurring updates on non user specific columns, and you may incur updates on user specific columns if the user is signed in. It’s just not a scenario that I’ve tested. Make a small demo app, set up a few different options, view it on your phone, and monitor your update count to see what happens.