Tiny Travel Tracker - Manual

Table of Contents


Overview

Tiny Travel Tracker keeps track of your GPS location in a private, encrypted database able to store and effectively view hundreds of thousands of GPS points, which are all stored directly on your phone. It has an advanced user interface to see exactly when and where you have gone. The data is owned and viewable only by you, and can be exported to a standard GPX format to use as you wish.

The GPS tracking can be throttled in order to conserve battery life, making it entirely feasible to leave on continually and have an automatic electronic journal of everywhere you have gone.

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Main Screen

Interfacing with the Map

This screen shows a map of the world along with GPS points recorded, as shown in Figure 1.1, below. Any pictures and video that were taken will also automatically be shown where they were taken along the GPS trail.

Figure 1.1 The main map screen

The map can be panned by sliding your finger across it, and zoomed in and out by pressing the zoom buttons, , or pinching your fingers in and out. 

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Viewing and Changing the Time Range

After collecting a large number of points, you often will want to view a small time range, such as a single day, week, or month. The Time Range, shown below in Figure 1.2, is used to do this.



Figure 1.2 The gray area at the bottom selects the time being viewed and can be adjusted by sliding your finger across it

The time range can be moved by sliding your finger across the panel side to side, or up and down. Sliding side to side will move backwards and forwards in time. Dragging up and down will increase and decrease the time scale, from months all the way down to minutes. If the trail goes off the map, you may have to zoom out or adjust the map view. You can also use the Auto Zoom button, , as described here

The current time range will be shown in the white text at the top of gray panel. This corresponds to the time that falls within the H shaped marker in the center. For example in Figure 1.3, below, the time range is April through August.


Figure 1.3 Time View with time range from April to August, 2012


The color of the trail corresponds to the colored area in the bottom panel. In Figure 1.4, below, the orange color is around May 29th, and the GPS Trail indicates the user was in Istanbul. The green color is June 1st, and the user was near the center of Turkey, and the blue color was around June 4th, and the user was on the southern shore.


Figure 1.4 The colors of GPS Trail correspond to the times in the bottom panel


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Auto Zoom Button

You can also use the Auto Zoom button which will fit the map to the current time range displayed. For instance, in Figure 1.5, below, only part of the points within the time range are visible.


Figure 1.5 The Auto Zoom button will recenter the map to show the current GPS trail

By tapping the Auto Zoom button, , the map view will automatically shift so the entire visible GPS trail for the selected range will be shown as in Figure 1.6, below.


Figure 1.6 After tapping Auto Zoom button the map view shifts to show all GPS points within the selected time range

Distance Traveled

The Distance Traveled field shows the approximate distance traveled during the time range selected.


The accuracy of the value displayed will depend on the number of GPS points taken and the accuracy of your GPS hardware.

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Date Chooser

The Date Chooser Button, shown below in Figure 1.7 is used to choose specific start and end times


Figure 1.7 The Date Chooser Button

Tapping the Date Chooser button will bring up Figure 1.8, below screen to specify exact start and end dates


Figure 1.8 The Date Chooser screen. This can be used to select a specific time range to show on the main screen

After selecting a specific time range and hitting OK, the main screen will appear showing the GPS trail for the specific time range.

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Pictures and Videos

Pictures and videos taken by your phone will automatically show up on your GPS trail, as shown below in Figure 1.9


Figure 1.9 Map view with pictures and videos displayed


You can turn pictures on and off using the settings button, on later phones and , in the bottom right corner of the screen and selecting "Turn off photos" or "Show Photos"





If you tap on a picture, , the picture will appear in a full screen. Pictures that were taken near the same place are shown together with a stack of photos icon, . Tapping on a stack of photos will cause a bar of photos will appear that you can scroll through by sliding your finger across them, as shown below:



By tapping on one of the pictures in the bar it will be shown in a full screen view as in Figure 1.10, below.

Figure 1.10

Using or on older phones, you can bring up a menu to share the image through email, SMS, etc. or to delete the image:


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Finding your Location

The Find my Location button, will center the map on your current location, as shown in Figure 1.11, below. Note that if the Find my Location button is grayed out, , then your GPS location is currently not known.

Figure 1.11 The screen is centered on the current location after the Find my Location button, , is pressed.

The blue arrow, , shows your current position and the heading based on the direction the phone is pointing.

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Selecting GPS Points and Areas

Sometimes you want to know the times and dates you visited a particular area. You can do this by tapping directly on the GPS trail or creating a rectangle around the place of interest.


If you tap on the GPS trail, a dotted square will appear around your selection and a table showing the time and distance information will appear. For instance, in Figure 1.12, below, if I tap on Singapore, a dotted square will appear where I tapped and a window will show time and distance information when I was in Singapore, as shown afterwards in Figure 1.13.


Figure 1.12 By tapping on the points in Singapore, the window in Figure 1.13 (below) will appear



Figure 1.13 Selecting the center row will adjust the selected time range to only the period within that row


As above, I was in Singapore 3 times, and traveled a total distance of 251.4 miles while there. If I tap on one of the rows in the window, the Time Range will narrow to show only the times in the row. For instance, if I tap on the middle row, the Time Range narrows from Jan 4th, 2011 to Jan 16th, 2011, as shown below in Figure 1.14.


Figure 1.14 Tapping the minimize button and Auto Zoom button will show the GPS Trail during that time period

Then if I close the window using the button, and tap the Auto Zoom button,, the screen will zoom in to viewable GPS trail, as shown in Figure 1.15

Figure 1.15 The GPS trail during the selected time period


You can also select a larger area by pressing your finger and holding it down over one corner of the area, and then sliding it to encompass the area you are interested in. For instance, in Figure 1.16, suppose I wanted to find the time and distance traveled when I was walking through Petra.


Figure 1.16 Select a rectangular area by pressing and holding in one corner, then dragging to the other corner


By pressing and holding my finger in the upper left corner and sliding it to the bottom right corner, I can select a bigger area, as shown below in Figure 1.16

Figure 1.17 Selecting a specific area to view time and distance information


This shows that I arrived at 6:40 AM and left and 6:35 PM and spent 11 hours and 54 minutes, and traveled 11.7 miles.

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Map Tiles

The map tiles are downloaded automatically when connected to the internet, and then saved in a cache for when the phone is offline.

Settings

The settings screen can be opened by tapping the or button on older phones, and then tapping "Settings" from the menu as shown below


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Collect GPS Data (Settings Screen)

This option will turn GPS point collection on and off. GPS point collection will remain on regardless if the Tiny Travel Tracker app is running or not.

To verify that readings are being taken, look for an icon of a frog, in the upper left corner of the screen, as shown below.



Time GPS is on (Settings Screen)

This option specifies the percentage of time the GPS receiver will be used as a percentage. If this value is lowered, battery consumption by the GPS system will be reduced, but less points will be taken. For example, if this value is set to 10%, then, on average, the GPS will be turned on for 1 minute during a 10 minute time period.

The actual length of time that GPS will run at time depends on the signal strength available. If there is poor or no signal, Tiny Travel Tracker will turn on the GPS for longer periods of time with greater intervals in between. For example, considering the 10% setting, if a GPS location isn't found after 15 seconds of searching, after 150 seconds, 30 seconds of searching will be attempted. Then the phone will wait for 300 seconds before trying again with 60 seconds, etc., up to a maximum of 2 minutes of search time and 20 minutes of rest.

Min Battery Life (Settings Screen)

This option will stop Tiny Travel Tracker from taking GPS readings if the battery life falls below the given percentage. This prevents the battery from draining too quickly when it is low.

Enable Tool Tips (Settings Screen)

This determines whether tool tips are displayed on the main screen when various actions are performed. For example, if tool tips are enabled, the following message is displayed when the Auto Zoom button, , is pressed.



Use Metric Units (Settings Screen)

This determines whether Metric units (kilometers, meters, etc.) or English units (miles, feet, etc.) are displayed for distance measurements.

Change Trail Colors (Settings Screen)

This allows you to turn on and off colors used to display the GPS trail. This may be especially useful if you are colorblind. In Figure 2.1, below, the colors black, red, orange, and yellow are chosen

Figure 2.1 Choose colors screen accessible from Settings


This will result in changing the colors of the GPS trail in the main screen as shown in Figure 2.2, below

Figure 2.2 The result of setting the colors to black, red, orange and yellow within the Change Trail Colors settings option.

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Enable / Change / Disable Password (Settings Screen)

Choosing Enable Password will prompt for a password in order to view GPS trail data. It must be entered every time the Tiny Travel Tracker main screen is visited. There is no way to reset the password if it is forgotten, so be careful setting this. Note that all GPS points are encrypted when stored on the phone and not readable by other applications. See the Security section for more information.

Backup / Export to GPX (Settings Screen)

This option will allow you to create a file in the open standard GPX format for the GPS points stored by Tiny Travel Tracker. If you select to password protect the file, it will be stored in a password protected zip file. Otherwise, it will use a regular unencrypted zip file

Restore from GPX (Settings Screen)

This option will restore points from a GPX file located on the phone's external storage. Note that ALL existing points will be deleted when this option is used.

Allow Error Reporting (Settings Screen)

Selecting this will allow Tiny Travel Tracker to anonymously report errors, so that any issues can be looked at and hopefully fixed.

About (Settings Screen)

This option shows the current version of Tiny Travel Tracker along with all the third party libraries and utilities used. It also shows the encryption standards used by Tiny Travel Tracker.

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Uninstalling Tiny Travel Tracker

If Tiny Travel Tracker is uninstalled, *ALL* GPS points previously recorded will deleted. If you want to save your previous GPS points, you must create a backup under Settings, then Backup / Export to GPX before uninstalling the app.


Security

All GPS data is encrypted and undecipherable outside of the Tiny Travel Tracker application. If Tiny Travel Tracker is uninstalled, all GPS point data is deleted from the phone and the private encryption key is cleared.

Any backup that is created may be done so with a password using the WinZip 256 bit AES standard. If a password is used, then encrypted data is written straight to disk without the creation of a temporary unencrypted file. For more details, see below.

Security Details

All GPS points are encrypted using a combination of AES and RSA. In general the encryption length for AES is 256 bits, but this may be 128 bits depending on your jurisdiction. (To find the number of bits currently being used, select Settings / About within Tiny Travel Tracker and scroll to the bottom.) RSA uses 2048 bit encryption. For AES, we use CBC with PKCS5 Padding and a random initialization vector for each row.

The basic method is to store an encrypted RSA private key and an unencrypted RSA public key into private application data (ie. Shared Preferences). The public key is used to create an AES symmetric key that is then used to encrypt GPS points and related information. The reason for the RSA key is to allow the system to record and encrypt GPS points without having the password available, which would happen if the phone is rebooted, or the application is killed. GPS points can still be recorded and encrypted when the application is in this state, but not decrypted until a password is entered.

The RSA private key is encrypted using the PBKDF2 standard with 2048 iterations along with a 256 bit salt. If no password is used, a default password is chosen and data remains encrypted. The password along with the private and public keys are stored as internal application preferences and are inaccessible by other apps on the system (assuming they don't have root).

The encrypted GPS point data and the encrypted AES private keys are stored in external storage and *are* accessible by other apps on the system. However, they would need the RSA private key and salt which are inaccessible, along with the password in order to decrypt them.

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