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aCar - Track your vehicles

toefer said:
Stupid question...

What difference does ticking the partial fill-up box make?
Click to expand...

When you mark a fill-up record as partial or that you've missed some previous records (feature added in v1.0.4), you're giving hints to Fuel Efficiency (MPG) calculation engine on how to do the calculation.

If you want to have a correct Fuel Efficiency value for your car, you should have FULL TANK fill-ups. So if you mark one or more records as partial, the engine will only calculate the fuel efficiency (for those partial records) AFTER you enter a full record. And it will be the average fuel efficiency of all those partial ones. You can return back to middle of this thread and study the sample fill-up records we've discussed on.
 
Just downloaded it. How do I put in a new tire replacement I did last week? Am I limited to only those maint items on the list ?
 
Just downloaded this now. I have been using gasbuddy with my iTouch for the past 4 months and am now a droid owner and hope this is one is just as good or close. Based on playing with it for a few minutess, it seems to be and have everything that one did.

I'm in sales and use my personal vehicle for work so I need a good app like this to track mileage and expenses since we do get reimbursed.

Do you have a feature to print out records or a way to email them to your email address?

Will leave feedback at the end of the work week!
 
galt said:
Just downloaded it. How do I put in a new tire replacement I did last week? Am I limited to only those maint items on the list ?
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No not at all. You can freely customize the services list and add your own. On the main screen, go to options menu (press the hard MENU button on your phone) and you'll find a "Manage Services" item there. Tap on it and you'll see the list of the services recognizable by aCar. Notice the top blue bar and the ADD icon at the right side. Tap on the ADD icon and you'll get forwarded to "New Service" screen. Add whatever you want and save them :-) As well, you can tap on any of the available items in the list to view & edit their details.

Please let me know if you need anything further...
 
Tierlifer said:
Do you have a feature to print out records or a way to email them to your email address?

Will leave feedback at the end of the work week!
Click to expand...

You'll have backup/restore in next major version. I've not set any strict date but you'll have it soon.

Eagerly waiting for your feedbacks after the real usage :-)
 
Armond,

This may be a reason your app is not appearing in the Market on my and some other phones:

From Android Market Help forum
The David: Well, this puzzled me for quite a few days and I found what seems to be a definitive answer. Apparently its caused by Google's crappy DRM protection. If you recently upgraded your firmware, I think the phones signature changes, and your access to copy protected apps becomes restricted. This makes me quite mad because I have well over $60 of apps that I can't access any more until google or the publisher makes some kind of update - not sure what. Can I get a refund??? This pisses me off because I feel it discourages developers who I'm sure are affected substantially by decreased sales - which delays innovation and creativity, and is quite frankly pushing me to look for a pirated copy of software I purchased.
Click to expand...

Note that I recently upgraded my firmware. I'm also finding other apps not appearing. For curiosity, is your app copy protected?
 
hilmyh said:
Armond,

This may be a reason your app is not appearing in the Market on my and some other phones:

From Android Market Help forum


Note that I recently upgraded my firmware. I'm also finding other apps not appearing. For curiosity, is your app copy protected?
Click to expand...

Thanks for investigating this further. Yes, aCar is copy protected and it may be good reason for this anomaly!

More and more I hear and read these complaints about Google copy protection mechanism, the more I think that I've made a mistake by copy protecting my application. The bad news is that there are some bad bugs when you change the copy protection setting of your application on developer console! It can completely screw up your application (there are some reported bugs about this) and I'm not going to take this risk at the moment.

As an alternative you can easily download aCar from two other Markets I've already mentioned in one of my previous posts (see comment #50 on this thread).

Best Regards,
 
Armond said:
Thanks for investigating this further. Yes, aCar is copy protected and it may be good reason for this anomaly!

More and more I hear and read these complaints about Google copy protection mechanism, the more I think that I've made a mistake by copy protecting my application. The bad news is that there are some bad bugs when you change the copy protection setting of your application on developer console! It can completely screw up your application (there are some reported bugs about this) and I'm not going to take this risk at the moment.

As an alternative you can easily download aCar from two other Markets I've already mentioned in one of my previous posts (see comment #50 on this thread).

Best Regards,
Click to expand...

Well, we can only hope Google sorts this out soon.

Thanks for making the app available on other markets. I have just downloaded it from SlideME. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Regards
 
Armond said:
You'll have backup/restore in next major version. I've not set any strict date but you'll have it soon.

Eagerly waiting for your feedbacks after the real usage :-)
Click to expand...

Yeah it's no rush really. I need my mileage more documented than my gas consumption as we get paid per mile anyways. I run close to 2500 miles a month and fill up 2-3 times a work week so I'll be a good guinea pig for you. So far from what I saw it's just as good as gas buddy. With the holiday this week it's a short work week but I will get back to you anyways. :)

Sidebar: Do you or can anyone else reccomend any good mileage apps? Saw a few but did not get a chance to check 'em out and would prefer a free one if possible.


Thanks!
 
Tierlifer said:
Yeah it's no rush really. I need my mileage more documented than my gas consumption as we get paid per mile anyways. I run close to 2500 miles a month and fill up 2-3 times a work week so I'll be a good guinea pig for you. So far from what I saw it's just as good as gas buddy. With the holiday this week it's a short work week but I will get back to you anyways. :)

Sidebar: Do you or can anyone else reccomend any good mileage apps? Saw a few but did not get a chance to check 'em out and would prefer a free one if possible.


Thanks!
Click to expand...

Would you please let me know what features you expect from a mileage app? aCar might be able to do them or might already have such or similar features...
 
Armond said:
Would you please let me know what features you expect from a mileage app? aCar might be able to do them or might already have such or similar features...
Click to expand...


Sure....

milebug is what I use for my iTouch.

Basically it has inputs for a "trip name" ,vehicle, purpose..etc

Then when you touch the "+" sign a odometer pops up and you input what your odometer is when you leave your destination. Then you click the "+" again when you either get back home or at your destination and input what your odometer says. It adds it up and keeps track of as many or as little as possible. I do mine every month and have it sent to my email then print it up so I can take it to my accountant come tax time.
 
Tierlifer said:
Sure....

milebug is what I use for my iTouch.

Basically it has inputs for a "trip name" ,vehicle, purpose..etc

Then when you touch the "+" sign a odometer pops up and you input what your odometer is when you leave your destination. Then you click the "+" again when you either get back home or at your destination and input what your odometer says. It adds it up and keeps track of as many or as little as possible. I do mine every month and have it sent to my email then print it up so I can take it to my accountant come tax time.
Click to expand...

I would be interested in this one too. It would also be cool to overlay or merge to track with existing data.
 
Just ran into this thread, liked the screenshots and decided to give it a try. Downloaded app from AndAppStore, as I couldn't find it on the market. Fantastic stuff here! keep up the great work on this app :)

Much easier on the eyes than the app I was previously using, and easier to navigate through the different options.
 
blampars said:
Just ran into this thread, liked the screenshots and decided to give it a try. Downloaded app from AndAppStore, as I couldn't find it on the market. Fantastic stuff here! keep up the great work on this app :)

Much easier on the eyes than the app I was previously using, and easier to navigate through the different options.
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brohism said:
Excellent app! I just installed it and I'm very excited to start using it with my car.
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Glad to see you like it :-)
 
hilmyh said:
I was just searching for an app like this and stumbled into this app. Looks to be exactly what I'm looking for. But I don't see it in my Market :(. Not enabled for Asia? I'm residing in Malaysia.

Please, please, give us some love.
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mirager said:
I'm really interested in this app, just can't find the danm thing anywhere...
Using sapphire (myhero 2.0.4), on the market from denmark... build 1.5
Tried market enabler to fake 5 or 6 different providers, no luck.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...

blampars said:
Just ran into this thread, liked the screenshots and decided to give it a try. Downloaded app from AndAppStore, as I couldn't find it on the market.
Click to expand...

Would you please check once more and see if you see aCar on Market. I know you may have already downloaded the app from alternative websites, but I've just read a news about Google fixed some of these visibility issues. I need a confirmation....

Thank you,
 
Z
Armond said:
Would you please check once more and see if you see aCar on Market. I know you may have already downloaded the app from alternative websites, but I've just read a news about Google fixed some of these visibility issues. I need a confirmation....

Thank you,
Click to expand...

Yes I see it on Android Market now.
 
Hi Armond:

I started using your app, and it seems to have much of the functionality I seek. Unfortunately I lost my data after an update. I had entered a couple of items (fuel, oil change, tire rotation), then updated the app following a notification from the Market. After the update all of my data was gone. No events, and no vehicles entered. My original download was ~Nov 7th, and the update that broke things was the first pushed out after that.

Regards,
Brian
 
btmac said:
I started using your app, and it seems to have much of the functionality I seek. Unfortunately I lost my data after an update. I had entered a couple of items (fuel, oil change, tire rotation), then updated the app following a notification from the Market. After the update all of my data was gone. No events, and no vehicles entered. My original download was ~Nov 7th, and the update that broke things was the first pushed out after that.
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I'm so sorry for the data lost :-( It's the worst that can happen!

But the odd is that after my Nov 7th release I've had two further releases (on 11th and 14th) which didn't touch the data at all! It was only on my Nov 21st release when I just ADDED one database column. Again no existing data have been even touched. I can't see any reason behind this. You are the first to report any such problem. Maybe a bug in Android application-update process?

Can anyone else confirm this?

Anyways, I would like to take a closer look at what has happened on your phone. It would be great if you can email me your phone log so that I can analyze it in detail. There are two FREE very small applications to collect and send your log via email. One is called "SendLog" and the other one is "Log Collector". Please download/install them from Market. As soon as you run any of them, they'll ask for an email to send the log (I guess one of the above applications also asks for a log format - choose the "time"-based one). Enter my email and done! Obviously you'll need an active internet connection while doing this. As well, please let me know what version of aCar caused that problem.

Thanks for helping me to track down this problem.
 
Hi Armond:

I downloaded SendLog, but it only shows info from today, and nothing with aCar, so I will not send the log.

One perhaps critical piece of information that I did not think of before is that I had to exchange my first Droid for a new one. The first one was extremely unstable, freezing and crashing about 20x per day. The replacement has been very stable.

I don't recall looking at aCar right before and after the exchange. I thought the loss of data occurred after an update of aCar, before the exchange. It is possible it was due to the exchange of phones instead.

Does aCar store the data on the SD card? If so, maybe that is why my entered data is no longer accessible. I didn't save the info from my first SD card. I was under the impression from reading other forum posts that the phones automatically saved everything and restored it, but that seems not to be so.

Regards,
Brian
 
Hi Brian,

btmac said:
I downloaded SendLog, but it only shows info from today, and nothing with aCar, so I will not send the log.
Click to expand...

It's okay. Perhaps the log size is limited and it does not keep all the logs.

btmac said:
One perhaps critical piece of information that I did not think of before is that I had to exchange my first Droid for a new one. The first one was extremely unstable, freezing and crashing about 20x per day. The replacement has been very stable.

I don't recall looking at aCar right before and after the exchange. I thought the loss of data occurred after an update of aCar, before the exchange. It is possible it was due to the exchange of phones instead.
Click to expand...

It may be a good reason. As I stated in my previous post, there is no such other data corruption/deletion reports between the updates. I've thought a lot today, but couldn't come into any conclusion that why such thing might happen.

After all, I will keep an eye on this problem to see if I can reproduce it somehow or anyone else reports it. Anyways, Thanks for letting me know.

btmac said:
Does aCar store the data on the SD card? If so, maybe that is why my entered data is no longer accessible. I didn't save the info from my first SD card. I was under the impression from reading other forum posts that the phones automatically saved everything and restored it, but that seems not to be so.
Click to expand...

aCar stores its data on phone internal memory because I can count on it, but not all Android devices may have SD Card (although most have!). Moreover the data doesn't take much space. Here I've generated random data worth of two years for 3-4 vehicles (around 450 fill-up and service records) for my own tests but the data size is still under 200kb.

But the good news is that backup/restore feature will come in next major version. And you'll have the option to take backup from your data once in a while to prevent such data loss situations. I'm still not sure what to do with backup file... To store it on SD or to email it? Or both? I'm trying to come up with a basic but FULLY WORKING solution without over complicating the application.

By the way, Brian, is it your comment and rating on Android Market (on Nov 29) requesting for a full version without ads? If it's you, you can donate to get the option to remove the ads completely from the application :-) Please refer to aCar website.

Regards,
 
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