Family Monitor

• Introduction

• The User Interface

• Settings

• Privacy Policy

• Google Maps Configuration

• FAQ

Introduction

Family Monitor is a very simple app that works alongside Google Maps. To start (i.e. before using the Family Monitor app), ask your family to allow Google Maps to share their locations with you. (See here for instructions).

Then, within Family Monitor, define locations that you will use when setting alerts, for example, your home and your children's school. (See here for instructions). Once the locations have been defined, you can create alerts in the form of:

• Suwon is further than 800m from home.
• James is closer than 2km to the library.
• Suwon is further than 500m from Me.
• Me is closer than 20km to the office.

Note that you refer to yourself as Me. And that's it!

The User Interface

Family

Click a family member to view their location on the Map tab.

Alerts

Right click an alert to delete, edit, reset or share it. Click an alert to view the object of the alert's location on the Map tab.

Fired Alerts

Right click a fired alert to delete it. Click a fired alert to view the object of the alert's location on the Map tab.

Map

A browser view of Google Maps. Tapping on a family member or an alert, on the corresponding tabs, will bring you to this tab to show the relevant location.

This tab is also used to define locations that are to be used in Alerts:

If using Windows:

1. Find the desired location in the map (by scrolling, entering an address...)
2. Tap the location icon add_location. The icon will start flashing.
3. Long press the desired location on the map and wait for a 'Save with name' dialogue to open. This can take several seconds. If the dialogue doesn't open or has the wrong location, try long pressing again.
4. Enter a name for the location and tap OK. The location icon will stop flashing. You should find that the newly defined location can now be used when defining an alert.

If using XBox:

1. Tap the location icon add_location. The icon will start flashing. Enter the address (just the post code / zip code should work) in the dialogue box that pops up.
2. Wait for a 'Save with name' dialogue to open. This can take several seconds.
3. Enter a name for the location and tap OK. The location icon will stop flashing. You should find that the newly defined location can now be used when defining an alert.

Settings

The following can be found on the settings page which is accessible via the cog button.

• Check frequency

  How frequently to request an update of your family's locations from Google. A value lower than every two minutes is not possible.

• Alert Auto Reset

  Whether to automatically reset an alert. For example, if an alert is set to fire when James is closer than 100m from home:

  1. Alert fires when James is closer than 100m from home
  2. Later, James is further than 100m from home
  3. Later still, James is again closer than 100m from home. If the alert auto resets, the alert will fire again. If the alert does not auto reset, a new alert will not fire.
     
     
• Alert Reset Period

  How long to wait before resetting the alert. In the above example, the Alert Reset Period is, at step 2, how long James has to be further than 100m from home before the alert auto resets.

• Units of Distance

  Whether the metric or imperial system should be used.

Privacy Policy

Family Monitor does not ask for, process or store any personal information apart from the names of the family members associated with alerts that the user creates. These alerts are only stored on the device running Family Monitor. In addition, the only network communication is to addresses (URLs) within the Google.com domain and to cyferorg.github.io when displaying this help page.

Google Maps Configuration

Note that for earlier versions of Family Monitor, the Google Maps configuration required two steps. There is now only one step since Google's Location Bookmarks are no longer used.

Family Monitor now only requires Google Maps' Location Sharing to be enabled. (The following screenshots are from the Android version of the Google Maps app but the iOS version is very similar.)