I have implemented a foreground service to get GPS updates for longer runs, like 3 hours, when the app is in background. It is our business requirement. But the app stops getting updates after a few minutes. I see the "location icon" on top bar go disappear, even though my foreground service notification is still there.
I have also excluded my app from Battery Optimization list from the settings, so that Android doesn't kill my app. It helps to keep gps updates alive for about half an hour only, then again the location icon goes away and i stop getting gps updates.
What can I do to keep it always ON?
I am posting this answer based on my short comment and OP request
You can start that service by separate process by adding android:process=":FusedLocationService" in your Service component in manifest.xml.
I had done this and work in most of the device except some of the manufactures like Honor and other because they customized Android AOSP for better user experience
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background-location-limits.html
Apart form this you can use JobScheduler to fetch location data after a particular interval (approx 15 mins)
You can build logic a/c to OS version as well.
And while fetching the location use FLP (FusedLocationProvider)
Hope this will help, But after all this depend on Mobile brand(like ONE PLUS) you will face the issues. You need to handle these scenario as well.
Related
There are some questions in my mind would like someone to answer and clarify:
I have background service that sends coordinates of location every second from background and updating location on another device like happens in driver customer model, what will happen to this app under background execution limit? And how will I survive this execution limit and after that what will be behaviour of my application? Will I have to start forground service for this?
Also what if I disable location permissions for this app frim settings while its working and sending coordinates, what will happen? Moreover can I notify user that location permission is disable and service is stoped?
Thanks
If you need frequent location updates (like for tracking exact path, the user was running) you definitely need a foreground service. Just add notification to your service and tell it to go foreground, displaying said notification:
startForeground(yourId, yourNotifcation)
If you need to know, when user happens to be in / outside some area, than Geofences are your best bet. Say, you want to know, whether he have left a train station. Or is nearby a certain shop.
If you need just infrequent (like every 15 - 20 minutes or more) updates of user location, than you can do this via WorkManager
I'm trying to develop an Android app that among other things, uses location services to get user location and sends it to a remote server. The user can turn this feature on and off according to his own will, but as long as it's turned on, it will get user location periodically (maybe each 30 seconds, don't know it for sure yet). Also, while it is turned on, it must keep tracking the user even if the application is closed.
So far I've considered 2 options:
Option 1 - Use Service, call startForeground to make sure Android don't kill it (the sticky notification is not an issue to me) and use a LocationListener with the said interval, but this seems rather inefficient as the service would be doing nothing most of the time, I mean, the listener would be called each 30 seconds, send the location to the server and the service itself would spend the next 29.9 seconds or whatever just waiting for the next location.
Option 2 - Doing some research, I've seen some approaches using AlarmManager to trigger some background service (like seen in this post), but I'm concerned that using alarms that often (every 30 seconds) might not be good for the battery and system general performance (in a code snippet in this page of Android's Developer guide there's a comment saying that "hopefully your alarm will have a frequency lower than 30 MINUTES").
Maybe there's another option that I still haven't thought about, or maybe there's a way to put the service from option 1 to sleep for some time or something like that. Bottom line, I'm looking for the approach that doesn't impacts on performance, consumes the minimum amount of battery and has the least chance of being killed by Android.
Any help and/or suggestions are welcome.
I've created an android app that is so far working quite well. It contains a local service which is responsible for getting the users location every couple of minutes and relaying that via UDP to a collection server which is in turned displayed on a web application map.
The app needs to be constantly running unless the user explicitly signs out of the application. Currently, it seems the OS is shutting down the service and restarting it as needed. I can see this because normally it would report its location consistently every 2 minutes. Instead, there are gaps in these intervals.
So I'm looking for some advice on how I can write a service which (at the battery's expense unfortunately) can stay running always and pool the location service just enough to send accurate fixes at a 2 minute interval.
I have a well working code base so far, so if demonstrating where I currently am with code would help, don't hesitate to ask.
Thanks in advance to those that lend a hand.
Your best bet is to use the AlarmManager to wake up every two minutes, do some processing and quickly go back to sleep.
If you think you're hardcore, you could even use a wake lock, but that will keep the phone's CPU turned on persistently without mercy. You don't want that.
I am coding an android application that gets the user position every 5 minutes, stores it in the database and sends it to a server.
I have read many ways of doing it, I was going to do the following:
User starts the application
The main UI activity starts a service.
The service runs in background and keeps turning on and off the gps, and creating new
threads that will save to database,and send the data to the server.
But I have seen that it can be done with a "Remote service" (http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/ApiDemos/src/com/example/android/apis/app/RemoteService.html) or with an AlarmManager that schedules starting this service every 5 minutes.
The service will need to be running always: it is important that after every interval (5 minutes), it is executed.
I think I need some clarity here.
Thank you for your help,
I am coding an android application that gets the user position every 5 minutes, stores it in the database and sends it to a server.
Please allow the user to choose the location provider. Not everybody has GPS on their device. Not everybody has GPS enabled. And, not everybody will want the power hit of GPS being turned on every five minutes.
Please allow the user to choose the polling period, including "never poll -- I'll refresh the information manually from the activity". Also, please honor the background data setting (deprecated as of ICS).
I think I need some clarity here.
If the polling is supposed to go on even if the activity is not in the foreground, use AlarmManager. However, most recipes for using AlarmManager will have the real work (in your case, GPS fix and network I/O) be handled by an IntentService. This will not work in your case, because GPS is asynchronous -- you cannot just get a fix whenever you feel like it. It will take a long time, possibly forever, to get a fix, so you have to deal with the delay and eventually timing out the operation. Writing a Service to do this is possible, but tricky, particularly if you are aiming to collect this information even if the device falls asleep.
If, however, the polling is only supposed to go on while the activity is in the foreground and the device is on, I wouldn't bother with a Service at all. Just have the activity use postDelayed() to set up an every-five-minutes scheduled bit of code to run, then have it do the work.
I´m currently developing an app which is working as a proximity alert, using the network provider.
Running several tests, I noticed that my phone sometimes is not receiving updates when the screen is turned off.
Is LocationManager somehow affected by the phone´s standby?
Having reached my set destination, I turned my screen on and after some seconds (I request updates about every 60 seconds) my app suddenly gets a fresh and correct update. Especially when running Maps or other apps which use the network provider, my app does receive location updates more reliably.
Thanks for your answer in advance,
Jonathan
I didn´t find a solution but the problem. It is a nasty Android Bug, which prevents the system to send location updates with new coordinates when the device is in wakelock.
See here: Issue on Google Code
I hope this might help anybody out there to solve some problems.
When using LocationManager's addProximityAlert() you have to be aware that if the screen goes to sleep the checks for proximity alerts only happen once every 4 minutes in order to conserve battery life.