adaptive_location_tracker 0.0.4

A battery-efficient adaptive location tracker with offline sync, Kalman filtering, and foreground service support.

Adaptive Location Tracker 📍

A "Gold Standard" location tracking plugin for Flutter, designed for battery efficiency, high accuracy, and offline resilience. It creates a foreground service on Android to track location reliably in the background, making it perfect for field force, delivery, and logistics applications.

✨ Features

• 🔋 Battery Efficient: Uses Google's FusedLocationProviderClient to minimize battery drain.
• 🧠 Intelligent Filtering:
  • Activity Recognition: Automatically detects if the user is STILL, WALKING, or IN_VEHICLE to adjust tracking logic dynamically.
  • State Machine: Uses a robust logic engine to "Lock" location when stationary (preventing spiderwebbing) and "Breakout" only when verified movement occurs.
  • Outlier Detection: Rejects impossible jumps in location (e.g., GPS drift) and filters low-accuracy signals.
• 📡 Offline Support:
  • Local Buffer: Automatically saves coordinates to a local SQLite database when the network is unavailable.
  • Auto-Sync: data is automatically retried and uploaded in the correct chronological order when connectivity returns.
• 🛠️ Customizable:
  • Configurable HTTP endpoint, headers, and update intervals.
  • Customizable Notification title and text.
  • Ability to send custom extra data (User ID, Task ID, etc.) with every payload.
• 🔌 Plug & Play: Handles permission checks, foreground services, and wake locks internally.
• 🌐 Dual Mode: Supports both HTTP/REST and WebSockets for real-time tracking.

🚀 Installation

Add the package to your pubspec.yaml. Since this is a private plugin, you might use a path or git dependency:

dependencies:
  adaptive_location_tracker:
    path: ../path/to/adaptive_location_tracker
    # OR
    # git:
    #   url: [e-mail]:yourusername/adaptive_location_tracker.git

Android Setup

The plugin handles most permissions, but you should ensure your android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml does not conflict. The plugin automatically adds:

• FOREGROUND_SERVICE
• ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION
• ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION
• INTERNET
• ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION (for Motion Detection)

📖 Usage

1. Import the package

import 'package:adaptive_location_tracker/adaptive_location_tracker.dart';

2. Start Tracking

Call start() with your API endpoint and configuration. The service will spin up and start posting JSON data to your URL.

HTTP Mode (Default):

await AdaptiveLocationTracker.start(
  url: 'https://your-api.com/v1/trace',
  headers: {'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_JWT_TOKEN'},
  extraData: {
    'driver_id': 12345,
    'route_id': 'RT-9988',
  },
  notificationTitle: "Active Delivery",
  notificationText: "Tracking location for safety",
  intervalSeconds: 15, 
);

WebSocket Mode: Enable isWebSocket: true to stream real-time locations over a socket connection. If the socket fails, data falls back to the local database and is synced via HTTP later.

await AdaptiveLocationTracker.start(
  url: 'wss://your-api.com/ws/locations', // Use wss://
  isWebSocket: true,                       // <--- Enable Socket Mode
  headers: {'Authorization': 'Bearer ...'},
  extraData: {'user_id': 101},
);

3. Stop Tracking

To stop the background service and release resources:

await AdaptiveLocationTracker.stop();

---

⚠️ Important: Android Background Restrictions

🔋 strict Battery Optimizations

Android OS becomes very aggressive when the device battery is low (usually < 15%) or "Battery Saver" mode is enabled. In these states, the OS may:

• Throttle GPS updates.
• Kill background services (even Foreground Services) to save power.
• Suspend network activity.

Recommendation: Advise your users to keep "Battery Saver" OFF during active tracking sessions for guaranteed reliability.

📱 OEM Specific Issues (Xiaomi, OnePlus, Samsung)

Some manufacturers (notably Xiaomi/MIUI, OnePlus/OxygenOS) have aggressive custom battery killers that ignore standard Android rules.

• Xiaomi (MIUI): By default, MIUI prevents background auto-start. Users must manually enable "Autostart" for your app in Settings, otherwise the service may be killed ~20 minutes after the screen goes off.
• OnePlus: "Battery Optimization" must be set to "Don't Optimize".

Mitigation: You should detect these devices and prompt the user to whitelist your app in their battery settings if critical tracking is required.

---

📡 API Payload Format

The plugin sends a POST request (or Socket Message) with the following JSON:

{
  "latitude": 37.774929,
  "longitude": -122.419418,
  "accuracy": 12.5,          // in meters
  "timestamp": 1679812345678, // Unix epoch milliseconds (GPS time)
  
  // ... Plus any fields you passed in 'extraData'
  "driver_id": 12345,
  "route_id": "RT-9988",
  "mode": "bike"
}

⚙️ How it works internally

1. Garbage Gate: Incoming GPS points with poor accuracy (> 60m) or impossible speeds (> 150km/h) are immediately rejected.
2. State Machine: The service tracks if the user is MOVING or STATIONARY.
   • Moving: Points are buffered and passed if they show significant distance from the last point.
   • Stationary: If the user stops (detected by Motion Sensor + GPS Cluster), the location "locks" to a single high-quality point. No more updates are sent until a "Breakout" (verified sustained movement) occurs.
3. Real-Time Transmission:
   • HTTP Mode: POSTs JSON to your endpoint.
   • Socket Mode: Streams JSON to your WebSocket.
4. Local DB (Fallback): If an request fails (404, 500, socket error), the JSON payload is saved to a local LocationHistory.db.
5. Sync: On the next successful location update, the service creates a background thread to upload queued offline events via HTTP, ensuring chronological order.

❤️ Credits

Built for high-reliability field operations.