A road-trip GPS log can become a useful travel diary: where you drove, where you stopped, how long a section took and which route you actually followed. The key is to prepare the phone before the trip rather than discovering missing data afterward.
Use a phone with reliable GNSS reception and a healthy battery. In a car, continuous tracking is a good reason to use a proper charger rather than expecting the battery to last all day.
Mount the device where it has reasonable sky visibility without obstructing the driver's view or overheating in direct sun.
A second-by-second track creates a much denser record than a point every minute. More detail can improve route shape but costs storage, processing, radio use and battery.
Match the interval to the purpose. A travel diary does not necessarily need motorsport-level telemetry.
Routes cross tunnels, mountains and rural areas where data coverage disappears. A tracker should preserve original timestamps and upload recorded points when connectivity returns.
That distinction is explained in Does GPS work without internet?.
Start a short local drive, lock the phone, and later inspect whether points continued throughout the journey. If the trail stops when the screen turns off, fix permissions or battery restrictions before the real trip.
Use the Android background-location guide for troubleshooting.
If you publish a live travel map, remember that it can reveal where you are not only now but also where you sleep, park or keep valuables. A password-protected or limited audience is often more appropriate than a permanently public map.
For a finished travel diary, consider sharing the route after the trip instead of broadcasting every overnight stop in real time.
LocationOf is well suited to recording an Android device's recent route and displaying it on a web map. Test the current app, charger and background configuration as one system before you rely on it for a long journey.
If you cross borders, decide how roaming should behave before departure. Some travellers deliberately block uploads while roaming and synchronize later on Wi-Fi; others prefer live sharing and accept mobile-data use. Either approach can work if the tracker and your expectations match.
A good road-trip log is more than a moving dot. Review stops, overnight locations and the actual route while the journey is still fresh in your memory. Export or preserve trips you want to keep if the online service only retains a limited recent history.
If you share the completed journey publicly, consider removing or obscuring private home addresses and places where you regularly park. Publishing a route after returning home can give friends the travel story without broadcasting every overnight location in real time.
There is no single best interval. Frequent points make curves, junctions and short stops easier to reconstruct, while slower intervals use fewer resources and are often sufficient for a long-distance travel diary. The right choice depends on whether you want a general record of the journey or detailed analysis of every road segment.
Test two settings on familiar roads and compare the resulting route. If the slower setting still shows every turn and stop you care about, the extra density of a faster setting may not add much value. If the route cuts corners or misses short visits, increase the detail.