Oh interesting. I've just read through that link, and I was assuming that something similar to the "external only" option would have been the only way it worked. More specifically, I thought it'd just store a list of historical points and display those on an OSM overlay. But it seems like even "external only" is much more involved than that.

What happens with self-hosted Photon if you specify a country, but then also visit another country? (I assume in hybrid mode it's as simple as "use Photon in your country, use Nominatim otherwise?)

But yeah, definitely sounds like a Pi is probably not gonna cut it. I'll have to see if my Synology can do it, or if the weird OS restrictions Synology imposes prevent it.

But then I'd have to combine that with existing services myself. NixOS ensures that there is only one postgres running for example, such that not every service starts its own postgres instance.

For immich, for example the following is enough for a most basic configuration:

services.immich.enable = true;
services.immich.port = 2283;

It's a 1gig json file that has about 10 years of data. I get multiple repeats of the rabbit timeout in the logs. The Job Status section tells me that it's got just under 9 hours of processing remaining for just over 16,000 in the stay-detection-queue. The numbers change slightly, so something is happening, but it's been going for over 12 hours now, and the time remaining is slowly going up, not down.

***
[ntContainer#2-1] c.d.r.s.p.VisitDetectionService          : Detected 61806 stay points for user ada
reitti-1  | 2025-07-04T03:06:17.848Z  WARN 1
***
[ntContainer#2-1] o.s.a.r.l.SimpleMessageListenerContainer : Consumer raised exception, processing can restart if the connection factory supports it
reitti-1  |
reitti-1  | com.rabbitmq.client.ShutdownSignalException: channel error; protocol method: #method<channel.close>(reply-code=406, reply-text=PRECONDITION_FAILED - delivery acknowledgement on channel 9 timed out. Timeout value used: 1800000 ms. This timeout value can be configured, see consumers doc guide to learn more, class-id=0, method-id=0)
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.BlockingQueueConsumer.checkShutdown(BlockingQueueConsumer.java:493) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.BlockingQueueConsumer.nextMessage(BlockingQueueConsumer.java:554) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer.doReceiveAndExecute(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1046) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer.receiveAndExecute(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1021) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer$AsyncMessageProcessingConsumer.mainLoop(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1423) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer$AsyncMessageProcessingConsumer.run(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1324) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) ~[na:na]
reitti-1  | Caused by: com.rabbitmq.client.ShutdownSignalException: channel error; protocol method: #method<channel.close>(reply-code=406, reply-text=PRECONDITION_FAILED - delivery acknowledgement on channel 9 timed out. Timeout value used: 1800000 ms. This timeout value can be configured, see consumers doc guide to learn more, class-id=0, method-id=0)
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.ChannelN.asyncShutdown(ChannelN.java:528) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.ChannelN.processAsync(ChannelN.java:349) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQChannel.handleCompleteInboundCommand(AMQChannel.java:193) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQChannel.handleFrame(AMQChannel.java:125) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQConnection.readFrame(AMQConnection.java:761) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQConnection.access$400(AMQConnection.java:48) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQConnection$MainLoop.run(AMQConnection.java:688) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     ... 1 common frames omitted

Real time is nice, but not a must have at least for my use case.

if you switch off location services

...then no app gets a location anymore.

Of course, happy to do so. I'll report back with my experience when I have it working!

I don't actually have any personally. I'm still with Google Photos for now and hadn't decided what to switch to, with Immich, Nextcloud, and the non-open Synology Photos being the top of my list. Legitimately, what a tool like this supports could be a factor I use to help decide.

How complicated is the code interfacing with Immich? Is it a piece someone not familiar with your overall code base could relatively easily pick up and make a pull request for?