Control of Locus Map over NFC

3 min readJul 4, 2019

Locus Map & NFC cooperation is definitely not dead.

History

NFC system started it’s a bigger boom in ~2014, when Google and Apple added bigger support for NFC payments and all this stuff around. It was the same year when I’ve added basic support for NFC into Locus Map application.

The main idea was to automatize and simplify repeatable situations like setting something, enable/disable something, etc. Configured NFC tag on the bike was one possible solution.

Unfortunately capacity of these tags was really low and together with its price, NFC usage in Locus Map was always one of the less used functions. Well, this won’t any longer be true as we decided to remove it from Locus Map completely in the near future.

What?

NFC support

We may use an alternative approach. Tasker application allows us to create and control Locus Map over so-called Action tasks as I described in the previous post. What if we should start a certain task over NFC tag?

I’ll try to describe two application we already wrote about, that may help us with this task. Tasker and MacroDroid.

If I may suggest, my personal experience: Tasker is more powerful, but a lot more complex. I personally prefer MacroDroid which has UI closer to what my head is able to consume.

Over Tasker

Preparation

define a task by the method described in the previous post
prepare your nice new NFC tag, best some waterproof sticker that may be placed on bike
rather validate once more that your device is NFC capable

Prepare event

open Tasker > tab PROFILES
FAB (floating action button) + button > Event > Net > NFC Tag

tap magnifier icon in ID title and scan your tag. ID field should be filled.

press back
Tasker now offer available tasks, so choose your Start bike ride

And we are done!

Over MacroDroid

And what about MacroDroid you may ask? A similar system exists here as well. Setup of basics of MacroDroid was also described in (..in preparation) post. Post ended with a suggestion to specify a custom trigger. And this is what we need to do here.

long click on your macro > Edit
tap on Empty trigger > Delete
tap on + in Triggers > Device Events > NFC Tag > Write New Tag

And we are done. Enjoy your next trip!