Hey all! I’m still in the somewhat early stages of setting up my home server. I have Nextcloud installed for file storage/management. However, realizing that it would be nice to have access to the entire storage drive for the server, I installed File Browser.

Now I’m having a hard time justifying having both. I have a handful of services that could be run as individual services (calDav, notes, news, etc… although, phonetrack seems to be hard to replace).

I’ve noticed lists that people have posted of the “must-have” services on their home servers have included both. My question is “why?” It seems like, at a basic level, they serve similar roles. If you remove the app-platform role from Nextcloud by separately hosting the individual apps, what benefit do you get from having both Nextcloud and File Browser?

I really like NextCloud, but i’m having a hard time justifying the resource usage if its functionality can be replaced by a handful of containers. Or, is that the reason to have it, so you don’t have to do that?

Any opinions on the subject would be appreciated.

  • shiftymccool@lemm.eeOPEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    Well, I’ve had a fully functioning Traccar instance running all night and most of the day and I’m sad to say that I’m less than impressed.

    The tracking isn’t quite as bad as OwnTracks but not nearly as good as PhoneTrack. Instead of showing me that I randomly went to a city several miles away, I just spent some time in a field by my house instead of walking down the road next to it.

    I’ve kept PhoneTrack running in tandem and the comparison, in terms of accuracy and battery usage, leaves no question. I tried everything I could think of to post a screenshot of my battery usage but “image is too large” was all I got even for an 18k image. So, after a day-ish of running both, my battery stats in Android show:

    • Traccar Client: 36% (top of the list, 15 hours background, 1 min screen time)
    • …several other apps, including those with a lot more screen time
    • PhoneTrack: 1% (background 8 hours)

    I think it’s PhoneTrack’s “significant motion” setting that makes the difference here. If Traccar gets this feature (or already has it and I’m missing it…) that will solve a few problems.

    If I’m missing something with Traccar here, somebody please set me to rights. It seems strange that the only setting in the Traccar client to save battery is to set the interval longer, thereby killing accuracy. PhoneTrack seems to have solved this problem, and it’s “just a Nextcloud app”, Traccar is dedicated to this functionality, I feel like it should have more options. 🤷‍♂️

    Looks like I’m sticking with PhoneTrack for now which means my Nextcloud instance has been relegated to app platform instead of all-in-one file manager.

    EDIT: Didn’t notice the wake lock setting, trying it for a bit with that off to see if that helps

    • mbirth@lemmy.mbirth.ukEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      I have yet to try this, but you should be able to use the OwnTracks app with Traccar.

      I‘m using OwnTracks for years now to log into PhoneTrack (and previously php-owntracks-recorder). No issues.

      • shiftymccool@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Interesting, I’ll have to give that a try. Thanks for the tip!

        A small update: Traccar with the wake lock off and the interval set to 100 seconds uses a fraction of the battery but the accuracy still seems questionable. Since it’s not draining the battery anymore, I’m going to keep running them in tandem for comparison. If I remember, I’ll come back here with my results