Mazda Trip Tracker is a tweak for the Mazda Connect system that allows tracking various trip statistics alongside full GPS logs. After installing the tweak, trips will be logged to the navigation SD card and can be analyzed later using a computer.

Each trip is stored as a single file known as a journal. As data points are collected each second, they are encoded using protocol buffers, prefixed with their length, and appended to the trip journal.

Data points record the following information every second:

• GPS information
  • time (epoch timestamp)
  • latitude (decimal)
  • longitude (decimal)
  • altitude (meters)
  • number of satellites (integer)
• number of odometer ticks (~20 cm each) since last data point
• total car odometer value (km)

The size of data points will vary since they are encoded using protocol buffers. However, you can typically expect them to be around 45 to 81 bytes each. This means that as a worst case scenario, it would only take 285 KiB to store an hour of driving. To put this number into perspective, you could drive 24/7 for an entire year and store the trip using only 2.38 GiB of storage.

When using a more reasonable estimate of 63 bytes per data point and only two hours of driving every day, you would only need 0.15 GiB of storage for the entire year.

When invoked with a filename (but no other arguments), a trip summary will be displayed:

$ trip-tracker ~/2016-1-4T7-0-33
Trip Summary:
    Trip Start:  1451890833
    Trip End:    1451891817
    Trip Length: 0:16:24

    Driving Time: 860 seconds (87.49%)
    Idling Time:  123 seconds (12.51%)

    Total Ticks:    63290
    Total Distance: 12.66 km (7.87 miles)

    Max Speed:        64.10 knots (73.76 mph)
    Avg Total Speed:  25.16 knots (28.95 mph)
    Avg Moving Speed: 28.76 knots (33.09 mph)

    Min Altitude: 1376.29 meters
    Max Altitude: 1415.53 meters
    Max Altitude: 1391.45 meters

You can also export the GPS data as NMEA data, suitable for use with viewers such as FreeNMEA.net:

$ trip-tracker ~/2016-1-4T7-0-33 nmea
$GPRMC,070033,A,...
$GPRMC,070034,A,...
$GPRMC,070035,A,...
$GPRMC,070036,A,...
$GPRMC,070037,A,...
...

For debugging purposes, it is also possible to generate a detailed, human readable dump of each data entry. The dump is created using the description method of the protocol buffer objects, so it will contain every piece of information recorded.

(Note: aside from simple tasks, avoid using this dumped data as input to another program. The dump format is not meant to be parsed and is likely to change in the future. If you want to process trip data points, it is must easier to use the existing tracker.proto definition file in a new program. This allows you to use whatever language you feel comfortable with, assuming a protocol buffer library has been created for it.)

$ trip-tracker ~/2016-1-4T7-0-33 expand
location {
  time {
    seconds: 1451890833
  }
  latitude: ...
  longitude: ...
  altitude: 1405.02
  speed: 0.1
  satellites: 8
}
ticks: 0
odometer: 2869

...

location {
  time {
    seconds: 1451890883
  }
  latitude: ...
  longitude: ...
  altitude: 1404.25
  speed: 16.4
  bearing: 359
  satellites: 8
}
ticks: 42
odometer: 2869

...

location {
  time {
    seconds: 1451890893
  }
  latitude: ...
  longitude: ...
  altitude: 1404.29
  speed: 26.1
  bearing: 359.2
  satellites: 9
}
ticks: 67
odometer: 2869

...