Data Gaps - I don't understand the criteria

[TonyCollett]

For the most part, I use OwnTracks with Significant Changes on, and I have automation that changes it to Move Mode when I leave the house and changes to Significant Changes at work or at home. The tracking is near-perfect (a few odd location glitches where I'm tracked to the middle of the ocean, but not many).

My timeline is pretty normal: Go to work, work for 8 hours, come home, be at home for 14 hours, repeat. It's those long periods of time where I end up getting data gaps and inconsistent travel times.

See this screenshot, my travel time is usually around 35-55 minutes, but here the travel time is over 5 hours, which then ends up shortening my workday. And then at home I end up getting a data gap, but as I understand it, it should be a Stay instead? The start times of my 'Transition to a new place' are perfect, but not the stop travelling detection.

I have the following settings:
Stay Point Detection
Stay Detection Radius - 50m
Minimum Stay Duration - 7 minutes
Enhanced Filtering - Enabled
Velocity Threshold - 2.5 km/h
GPS Accuracy Threshold - 60m
Minimum Accuracy Ratio - 50%

GPS Gaps Detection
Data Gap Threshold - 600 minutes (36000s)
Minimum Gap Duration - 30 minutes
Gap Stay Inference - Enabled
Maximum Gap Duration for Inference - 24 hours

Trip Classification is all default values

I probably understand that my 600 minutes in Data Gap Threshold is what's causing the data gap instead of my home Stay, but I'm not 100% sure

Basically, I'm asking about 2 things:

1. I'm pretty confident that my positioning data is consistent and happy with how much it pushes, so I don't want data gaps, instead I'd rather have Stays in my timeline
2. How do I improve the travel end points so they stop tracking within ~5-10 minutes so I'm not left with 2-6 hour travel times?

I hope I've made sense

[tess1o]

Hello,

Please export the debug data via /app/debug-export (select +-2 days to the date where you see a problem). It will copy your GPS data with randomly shifted coordinates - I won't be able to track your location but will have the same distance between GPS coordinates, the same timestamp, speed, etc.

I will try to analyze it and answer your questions.

Thanks.

[TonyCollett]

geopulse-debug-2026-01-11.zip

My exported data for a few days. Thanks for looking into this

[tess1o]

Hello,

Sorry for delay with response.

I see you exported data from January 9 - 11. However, on your screenshot I see January 5th. Please either export data for January 5 (better Jan 4-6) or explain what is wrong in your opinion with the timeline you see on Jan 9-11.

Thanks.

[TonyCollett]

Whoops, sorry about that
Here's 4-6 Jan
geopulse-debug-2026-01-30.zip

[tess1o]

Hello,

Thanks for sharing the data. Your data indeed has some GPS gaps. For example (UTC time):
(date, speed, GPS coordinate)

2026-01-04 07:06:57.000000,47,POINT (125.1094785 -49.5552448)
2026-01-04 07:07:01.000000,44,POINT (125.1100492 -49.5552198)
2026-01-04 07:07:06.000000,37,POINT (125.110709 -49.5551743)
2026-01-04 20:02:29.000000,7,POINT (125.1102817 -49.5553992)
2026-01-04 20:02:30.000000,6,POINT (125.1104163 -49.5553842)
2026-01-04 20:02:32.000000,13,POINT (125.1104352 -49.5552741)
2026-01-04 20:02:34.000000,19,POINT (125.1103142 -49.5552493)
2026-01-04 20:02:36.000000,24,POINT (125.1101554 -49.5552438)

This is for the first Data Gap on your screen (12 hours 55 minutes in total).

2026-01-04 07:07:06.000000,37,POINT (125.110709 -49.5551743)
2026-01-04 20:02:29.000000,7,POINT (125.1102817 -49.5553992)

The distance between these 2 GPS coordinates is 398 meters. In your settings you have "Stay Detection Radius" = 50 meters. So basically GeoPulse sees:

You have data - OK
No data for almost 13 hours - OK, it happens
You have new GPS data but GPS coordinates are 398 meter away from last known position. If it were 50 or less meters - we could "merge" it to the previous Stay. But 398 meters > 50 meters so we don't know what to do with and what happened - we show Data Gap.

Next, long trips. Actually on the latest build (1.16.0) and with your settings it looks good to me:

Please try to do the following:

1. Upgrade GeoPulse to the latest version 1.16.0
2. Reduce Data Gap Threshold to 180 minutes

Your timeline will be regenerated and please verify what you've got.

Sometimes the algorithm "fails" because suddenly GPS data is not coming anymore we have to decide what to do - finalize current state (trip or stay), wait for new gps points, etc.

Thanks