Download & Install • What's New in v2.8.3 • Compare • All Features • Architecture • Self-Host VPS

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Save $180+/year per family while reclaiming 100% of your location privacy.
Kin-Tracker gives your family unlimited geofenced Safe Zones, turn-by-turn transit trails, remote Find My Phone ringing through silent mode, live room audio monitoring, and a synced family grocery list—completely free, ad-free, and hosted on your terms.

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Why Families Switch From Life360

Commercial tracking apps sell your family's movement history to third-party data brokers while locking basic alerts behind $14.99+/month subscriptions. Kin-Tracker eliminates the compromise:

1. Zero Data Brokers & Zero Accounts: No email sign-ups, no ad SDKs, no location monetization. Create a private family circle and pair devices in 30 seconds with a 4-digit PIN or 6-character invite code.
2. Engineered Never to Miss an Arrival or Ring: Built around a hardened Android Foreground Service with per-coroutine hardware WakeLock leases, adaptive cellular data compression, and downgrade-safe Room persistence.
3. Full Self-Hosting Freedom: Use the default hosted sync relay out of the box, or tap Server URL during onboarding or Settings to route 100% of your family's GPS & WebSocket audio traffic to your own private VPS.

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Download & 30-Second Setup

Ready to install on Android 8.0+?	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3
	Tap Download APK on your Android phone or tablet	Open the .apk file and tap Install	Pick your name & avatar, then Create Circle or enter your family #PIN

• Automatic In-App OTA Updates: Every fresh launch checks your configured server for newer builds so family phones and tablets stay up to date effortlessly.
• Browse Release History & Checksums: github.com/Viguru24/Kin-Tracker/releases

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What's New in v2.8.3

v2.8.3 (build 48) builds on the v2.8.2 overhaul with major reliability, safety UI, and synchronization upgrades across Android and the Node.js backend:

• Full-Screen STOP Overlay + Exact Device-UUID Ringing: Trigger Find My Phone from any circle device to ring through silent mode—now backed by strict device-UUID matching (eliminating cross-device false rings on shared family names/tablets) and a large one-tap STOP button overlay directly on the ringing phone or tablet.
• Redesigned Circle Switcher & Live #PIN HUD: See your active circle name and #PIN directly inside the top map pill and Current Circle hero card, plus live inline "Connecting..." / error feedback when pairing a new device with a PIN.
• Unified Sync Engine (SyncResolutionHelper): Foreground (CloudSyncManager) and background (BackgroundSyncProcessor) sync paths now share a single conflict-resolution engine with placeholder token guards (00000000_), 30-day shopping-list deletion tombstones, and a 2-minute server-side grace window so newly joined tablets/phones are never overwritten by stale snapshots.
• Authenticated /audio Relay & Resilient WebSockets: Live room audio WebSocket streams verify circle IDs and member identities before relaying, paired with 45s ping keepalives and exponential reconnect backoff up to 300s.
• Zero-Loss Database Upgrades & Per-Coroutine WakeLocks: Replaced catch-all destructive Room fallback migrations with downgrade-only fallback so saved circles and safe zones survive schema upgrades, isolated location WakeLock leases per coroutine, and added a bounded 100-entry diagnostic telemetry buffer in AppLogger.
• Low-Data Gzip Mode: Strips bulky completed-trip breadcrumb histories from background sync payloads while throttling cellular wakes cleanly (30s Wi-Fi / 45s metered).

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Kin-Tracker vs Life360 & Apple Find My

Capability	Life360 Gold ($14.99+/mo)	Apple Find My	🛰️ Kin-Tracker v2.8.3
Cost Forever	$180+/yr	Free (Apple hardware lock-in)	$0 Forever (MIT Open Source)
Location Privacy	Third-party broker history	Apple Cloud	Zero Brokers • Self-Hostable VPS
Unlimited Safe Zones (Geofences)	❌ Paywalled (2 free only)	⚠️ Basic alerts	✅ Unlimited (Home, School, Work, Custom)
Find My Phone Through Silent + STOP UI	⚠️ App-only ping	✅ iOS only	✅ High-Priority Alarm + Full-Screen STOP
Live Room Audio Walkie-Talkie	❌	❌	✅ Authenticated WebSocket Audio
Railway & Turn-by-Turn Transit Trails	❌ Gold/Platinum only	❌	✅ Built-in Breadcrumbs & Train Detection
Synced Family Shopping & Task List	❌	❌	✅ Real-Time Synced + Tombstone Safe
One-Tap Ghost Mode Blur	⚠️ Bubble tier	❌	✅ 1h / 2h / 8h Instant Blur
Custom Private Server Support	❌ Impossible	❌ Impossible	✅ Configurable in Onboarding & Settings

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Complete Feature Suite

Feature	How It Works
🛡️ 24/7 Screen-Off Background Radar	Foreground location service paired with per-coroutine WakeLocks and AlarmManager wakeups keeps GPS active through Android Doze without draining your battery.
📍 Smart Safe Zones & Hysteresis	Customizable Home (140m), Work, School, and custom geofences with 60m exit hysteresis and 3-reading confirmation to filter indoor GPS drift.
🚨 Find My Phone & Emergency SOS	Remote loud alarm override targeting exact device UUIDs with a giant one-tap STOP card, plus instant Emergency SOS distress beacons across your circle.
🎙️ Authenticated Room Audio Intercom	Tap in to listen to a family member's room monitor stream over circle-scoped /audio WebSockets with automatic speaker/IP routing.
🛤️ Transit Mode & Route Playback	Automatic walking/driving/railway corridor classification (RailwayTransitDetector) and interactive breadcrumb trip playback cards.
🗣️ Voice Proximity Announcements	Optional Text-to-Speech alerts announce safe arrivals, departures, and low-battery warnings (<15%) aloud when hands-free.
👻 Ghost Mode Privacy Pause	Temporarily pause or blur your live location for preset windows without leaving your family circle.
🛒 Synced Family Shopping List	Add, check off, and clear shared household groceries in real time across every paired phone and tablet.
🔋 Battery & Charging Telemetry	Live percentage indicators, charging badges, speed readout, and automatic low-battery notifications on the map.

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Architecture & Security

flowchart LR
    Phone["📱 Android Phones & Tablets\nKotlin • Jetpack Compose • Room DB"]
    Relay["🌐 Sovereign Node.js Server\nExpress • Better-SQLite3 • /audio WS"]
    Dash["🖥️ Live Web Command Center\n/dashboard Admin Map & Controls"]

    Phone <-- "HTTPS Gzip Sync + Pin Mapping\n(SyncResolutionHelper)" --> Relay
    Phone <-- "WSS /audio Circle-Scoped Stream\n+ Telemetry WebSockets" --> Relay
    Dash <-- "Admin Key Auth\nCircles, Safe Zones & Ring API" --> Relay

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• UI & State: 100% Kotlin + Jetpack Compose (Material 3), reactive StateFlow viewmodels, OSMDroid offline-capable tiles, and collision-deconflicted family markers.
• Persistence & Safety: Room SQLite with MIGRATION_10_11 and downgrade-only destructive fallback, plus an in-memory 100-entry AppLogger diagnostic ring buffer.
• Verified Quality: Backed by 22 Android unit test suites (77 tests) via Robolectric/JUnit and end-to-end Node.js admin & sync server tests.

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Self-Host Your Own Sovereign VPS

Want zero external dependencies? Deploy the included Node.js server (server/) on any Linux VPS or Docker host:

cd server
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # Set PORT and your private ADMIN_KEY
npm start

Then open Kin-Tracker on your Android device, tap Server URL during setup (or in Settings → Circle / System), and enter your VPS HTTPS URL (e.g. https://tracker.yourdomain.com). The server also includes an interactive /dashboard web map and hosts your own Over-The-Air (OTA) update channel (server/src/routes/updates.js)—see OTA_UPDATE_GUIDE.md for endpoint specs.

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Build From Source (Developers)

Prerequisites: Android Studio Ladybug+, Android SDK 36, Java JDK 17+, Node.js 20+ (for backend).

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Viguru24/Kin-Tracker.git
cd Kin-Tracker

# 2. Run Android & server test suites
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest
npm --prefix server test

# 3. Compile the Android APK
./gradlew assembleDebug

Compiled APK outputs are generated under app/build/outputs/apk/debug/.

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_{Released under the MIT License • Built for family privacy by Viguru24}