needs examples.

Like I said. Examples not docs

Are the demo servers a good enough example? https://www.traccar.org/demo-server/

Id have to register my own account with my personal data and connect my private phone to send my location to a server i know nothing about. Lets not.

It's a great open-source option, but I'd also skip using their hosted service given that Traccar is a Russian company.

> but I'd also skip using their hosted service given that Traccar is a Russian company.

Why?

I mean... I don't live in russia, russian police/fsb has no power here, same probably is true for you too, and if i/yo do something stupid, the chances of a russian company giving data to my/your local police is much lower than if I/you used some local company. Why should hosting in russia be problematic here?

No legal power :)

As opposed to their soft power, which is also non-existent?

Because nobody ever got murdered or abducted in a safe country by a dictatorial regime :)

At that level of paranoia, why dont you just self host.

https://www.traccar.org/download/

I don't specifically distrust the code. I dont know where my data on that hosted service ends up since its rather private information. So self hosting is an option if i can see a demo without providing my personal data.

I mean...

How else do you expect to test something? You either install it on your own server, and send your private data to your private server, or you use a public server and give them data.... what third option do you expect?

A demo with fake data allowing you to explore the product. This is actually very common in both opensource and in the commercial sector

I self-hosted it for a while now. Works well. I track all devices I have and additionally hardwired a GPS in my car, connected to it. It supports a almost infinite list of GPS devices and protocols, so definitely you can find something on their list.

Very configurable, when I added a Bluetooth temperature beacon to the GPS in my car I was able to write specific computed attributes in it so that it converts raw value and saves temperature together with each check-in.

Are these GPS trackers that require their own cellular account?

Yes. There are solutions to that though, that are cheap and work worldwide wherever there is a cellular range (e.g. Hologram, SimBase). They only lost cellular when I was at a really weird place (Faroe Islands), and only one of them. Trackers use very little data (depends on the tracker and config I guess, I use branded ones i.e. Teltonika)