The following is a Llamalab Automate flow that is meant to start audio recording when the screen is locked and a gesture is performed. Furthermore, the flow also writes a .txt file containing the latitude, longitude, altitude and the timestamp when the GPS fix was obtained.

The flow can be downloaded from:

• Start Audio Recording
• Start Audio Recording (Re-Arm)

and imported into the Automate application as a new flow.

The first required step is to configure the gesture you'd like to use. After importing the flow, click the Motion gesture "Turn" node and tap the "Record Gesture". Be sure that the gesture is involved enough in order to eliminate false triggers. Using the gesture recorder is a little finicky, so good luck, but with some patience an adequate gesture can be recorded.

Note that one of the cool features matching some misdirection is that the flow is perfectly compatible with a device casing or skin; the user would look like they are fidgeting with the device and since the device would be both off and in a sleeve or case, it should look inconspicuous.

Once the gesture is recorded, and in order to record, the screen must be locked or turned off and then the gesture must be repeated once. If the gesture has been recognized, the phone will vibrate on your fingers letting you know that the audio recording has started. Note that, typically, vibrations should be silent (otherwise, there is no need to have sounds and vibrations separate) but that some phones might go full hog on the vibration. If the vibration is too loud, then the Vibrate node in the flow can be eliminated.

While recording, the gesture can be repeated multiple times and the flow will restart recording with a different file, as well as create a text file containing the geolocation where the last GPS fix has been made. Here is what the files look like:

when accessing the device from Windows Explorer.

The flow is designed as a dead-mans switch, meaning that the audio recording cannot be stopped. In order to stop the audio recording, the phone must be first unlocked and then the fiber must be terminated manually. This is by design.

This flow couples well with some automatic-synchronization tool that, once a file is recorded, the file gets automatically uploaded to a centralized server. This matches the dead-man's switch perfectly in case the device is compromised or destroyed, due to the files being uploaded to a server in real-time.

We always recommend some P2P technology (such as Resilio Sync) due to the speed avalanche when sharing files but any other OpenSource tool would do as well for mobile devices and centralized servers (Syncthing, perhaps).

Re-Arming the dead man's switch can also be performed automatically, via the Start Audio Recording (Re-Arm) flow. The re-arming will take place every time the device is locked.

The re-armer must be bootstrapped by opening Automate and then running the "Start Audio Recording (Re-Arm)" flow. Running the "Start Audio Recording (Re-Arm)" flow will produce a popup where the "Start Audio Recording" flow must be expanded and then Toggle Start Audio Recording selected. Otherwise, the re-armer is set-and forget, does not require to be altered in any way and can run continuously alongside the sound recorder.

Llamalab Automate might have some geolocation issues that do not allow flows that rely on positioning to run till the end.

You will set prophecy with this tool so make sure to adjust its usage to your risks.

The re-armer is a minor derivate off Artifank's "How to check if a flow is running" contribution to llamalab. Instead of popping up dialogs, the re-armer changes Artifank's original script to just restart a selected flow.