added connection length tracker
added distance calculation between old and new points to keep track of connection length
(cherry picked from commit 0ac8331cdf903ea5f7f1ccc0d39fe22f66de1959)
got rid of print statements
(cherry picked from commit a74749ac44f52245a160ff107cc581839ac7e3c3)
added line to keep track of points_end
(cherry picked from commit f53162a2bcc3e75a76910102a45842bfa65d0cc6)
small changes for debugging
(cherry picked from commit d5b474d7b6e174b1d46e63d62a859ad4bf5ae00e)