Feedback after using reitti for ~2weeks

[tr1plus]

Hi

I used AI to structure my thoughts, content is written & reviewed by me

General Introduction

I’ve been using reitti now for a bit under 2 weeks, and while it tracks my goings (mostly), I am seeing some slight annoyances (or bad user expectations, happy to be proven wrong ;) ).

How I’m Using Reitti

• OwnTracks Integration: I'm using OwnTracks to mqtt in significant changes mode. This setup seems to work well for most cases.

Specific Issues and Suggestions

1. Inconsistent Activity Tracking

• Description: Sometimes reitti seems to start tagging an activity from the evening before when leaving home in the morning. (reitti starts the activity at 23h, but I only left at 10am the day after)
• Possible Causes: GPS positioning jumps indoors, significant changes mode in OwnTracks.
• Proposed Solutions:
  • I played around already with the settings to increase zones & timings, but no luck (yet)

2. Lack of Option for No Transportation Mode

• Description: It's inconsistent whether it tracks the correct transportation mode or not. (e.g. walking instead of cycling, even tho I reach speeds of 30-50km/h.) - for this point I would almost prefer to not track the transportation mode at all.
• Possible Causes: Significant changes mode in OwnTracks, GPS positioning issues, issue from above resulting in bad avarage speed calculations.
• Proposed Solutions:
  • Add an option to disable transportation mode tracking globally.

3. Combined Transportations Modes

• Description: If driving for 50km and then walking for 10km, it’s seen as one trip with a single transportation mode.
• Impact: Breaks statistics and consistency in "memories."
• Proposed Solutions:
  • Enhance the algorithm to distinguish between different transportation modes within a single activity.
  • Add an option to disable transportation mode tracking globally.

4. Inconsistent Memories

• Description: Memorie generated are inconsistent due to incorrect start times and transportation mode assignments. (as per the points above)

• Impact: Decreases usability of the tool.

• Proposed Solutions:

  • Improve time synchronization logic.
  • Managing the above points should already add some improvements.

6. Accessibility Improvements

• Description: Heatmaps are not very intuitive (had to look in the issues to find this is possible), especially when scrolling through dates.
• Proposed Solutions:
  • Add a dedicated button or feature to access heatmaps more intuitively.
  • Enhance the UI/UX to make it easier for users to navigate and interact with heatmaps.

Again - this is not complaining, It's FOSS software and your vision; and I appreciate that a lot. But I want to give back by sharing my experience & thoughts so it may help the future of this project

Thanks!
Joren

[dgraf-gh]

Hi Joren,

Thank you for the feedback. This helps immensely in understanding the pain points and identifying what works well in Reitti as we continue to improve it.

I will address each of your points individually, but first, I want to clarify my vision and the core philosophy behind Reitti. I hope this explains why certain design choices were made.

The Vision

First off, Reitti is not intended to be an "accurate by the second" tracker. If timing is off by a few minutes, I am generally fine with that. To keep the app as fast as possible, we have to make certain trade-offs in how we detect visits. While there are certainly more pinpoint-accurate trackers available, they often come with their own set of issues. Ultimately, the user has to decide which features are most important to them.

My primary goal for Reitti is to resurface memories—answering questions like, "What was I doing a year ago?" or "What did we do during our 2013 holiday?" In my opinion, our current accuracy is the "sweet spot" between precision and the speed required for a near-real-time view.

Inconsistent Activity Tracking

This is a personal pet peeve of mine as well, especially when it records a trip in the middle of the night without me ever leaving the house. I have tried many solutions to solve this: I introduced synthetic points into the GPS data and experimented with aligning or spreading them across the start and end of tracks.

It remains a mystery why this persists. Rest assured that every release includes attempts to solve this, and future updates will continue to mitigate it. There seems to be a complex interaction between existing places (like your home) and incoming data, likely amplified by the fact that OwnTracks (and similar apps) send less frequent updates. Interestingly, when I import GPX files from others, it usually works perfectly—likely because the import process creates "fresh" places, which seems to bypass the glitch.

Lack of Option for No Transportation Mode

I believe this is closely related to the point below; the transportation mode calculation relies on GPS data, which is inherently imperfect.

Combined Transportations Modes

You make a great point, which I also discussed here. This feature will definitely be implemented. When I started development, I designed the system around my own movement patterns: I don’t own a car, so I usually walk or cycle directly to my destination. I hadn't accounted for the "parking lot" scenario until I started using car-sharing services and realized the parking spot is rarely the final destination.

Inconsistent Memories

The "Memories" feature relies on our calculated trips and visits, which are derived from GPS data. As we improve how we handle that data, the Memories feature will improve naturally. When I first designed Memories, I envisioned them for multi-day trips and vacations rather than tracking specific time ranges within a single day. For long-term memories, a 5-minute discrepancy in a start time doesn't matter as long as the overall picture is preserved.

Accessibility Improvements

To clarify: the current feature is not a traditional heatmap. It is a different way of rendering paths to show which routes you take most frequently. However, I take your point that the toggle for this view is somewhat hidden.

True heatmaps will likely be added eventually, once I find a meaningful way to incorporate time into them. I experimented with them while building the new map, but found little immediate value because you end up with two giant "hot" dots at home and work, while everything else looks bland by comparison.

Again - this is not complaining, It's FOSS software and your vision; and I appreciate that a lot. But I want to give back by sharing my experience & thoughts so it may help the future of this project

I truly appreciate this kind of feedback. It is exactly what helps move Reitti forward and ensures it meets the needs of a wider community.

Best,

Daniel

[tr1plus]

Thanks for the feedback.

on "Inconsistent Activity Tracking" - It's just something I see happen everyday. Today I drove to a client and I left home at 11:30AM, but reitti thinks I left at 22:57 the day before (and went by foot).
However, when pressing the "play" to see what happened, the line only starts lighting up at 11:30 as expected. So I'm really not sure what is happening. Not sure if you are willing (or able) to check with some of my data. Maybe it's related to the fact that OwnTracks is in significant change mode only?

on "transportation modes" - I appreciate the work in optimizing the calculations; however, as you say the goal is to look at "what did I do 1 year ago", I would also like an option to just forego transportation modes in general (even tho this could be an optional feature. Maybe I can do this already by deleting all transportation modes and/or just keeping one?

Again - thanks for your work. Going to keep this running and look at it from time to time ;)

Joren

[dgraf-gh]

Hello Joren,

for the transport mode, you could create a custom.css file and upload this in your profile. It should contain this block:

.trip-transport-mode-container {
  display: none;
}

This will hide the transport mode from the main view. Having this disabled completely will be harder and to be honest, I rather would try to make the detection more reliable and support multiple per trip first and see if this fulfills your needs better.

And for the Inconsistent Activity Tracking: Feel free to send me your GPX files for maybe 3 consecutive days. I will see if i can reproduce it locally, I would love to have this fixed. You can send me them to daniel@dedicatedcode.com

Best,
Daniel