Making a Weasly clock on top of OwnTracks

This page is under construction.

OwnTracks is an open-source app for sharing device location with other devices. It uses the MQTT standard for communicating location updates. The protocol is generic and can be implemented using any MQTT broker. I chose to use my existing OpenShift account which comes with 3 free instances for the MQTT broker.

MQTT broker on OpenShift

• Create a Node.js application on OpenShift
• Install the Mosca MQTT broker in that application
• Use MongoDB for persistence and set the DB up for the application
• Since OpenShift exposes only the HTTP and WebSocket ports, attach the Mosca broker to the HTTP server of the application
• The MQTT client can now connect to this broker using WebSocket protocol
• TODO Optionally, setup user authentication and ACL

Patching OwnTracks

• Use this fork of OwnTracks to get a WebSocket connection to the broker created in the previous step
• TODO Implement the clock-face in OwnTracks using available location and waypoint data