No reinvention required. Take a look at most the journaling apps (DayOne for example) they manage to use the inbuilt Google/Apple maps of devices to display. Something like that, a simple connector, which is what Atlas did previously.
Again, most the journaling apps use the gps to log a weather stamp. The automation solutions, which you suggest, I have tried but do - don’t work so well if you move around quite a bit.
Don’t think either suggestions are too outlandish and totally reasonable to suggest.