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aCar - Track your vehicles

SnoopDoggieDroid said:
Im a statistics type person and im always keeping track of my MPG because a dippage will always point to something else being problematic with your vehicle.

Looks to be a great app and i will definitely use it when i get my droid on tuesday!
Click to expand...


I just reDL'd this after getting my new and hopefully unrebooting Droid. Can't wait to fully use this on a daily basis. Thanks DEV!
 
tipopilota said:
Great product, one feature request I would like to see would be the ability to export the info to google docs.
Click to expand...

I have this feature request already in my list :-) Perhaps this will be one of the websites I will export the records to (or sync with).

tipopilota said:
would also like to see if there is a way to zoom into the charts. currently they are very hard to read.
Click to expand...

I just added this to my list, but I'm not sure how good it will be to view a chart partially. I personally like to see such statistical or comparison-based charts or graphs in one shot.

But you already have an option to get 48 more pixels on your phone screen, which means %15 bigger view in landscape mode!!! Just make a donation and you'll get the option to remove the ads ;-)
 
Been looking for an app like this, and I'm sure to put it through it's paces in a good way.;)

Thank you for developing this app.:)
 
Armond said:
I have this feature request already in my list :-) Perhaps this will be one of the websites I will export the records to (or sync with).



I just added this to my list, but I'm not sure how good it will be to view a chart partially. I personally like to see such statistical or comparison-based charts or graphs in one shot.

But you already have an option to get 48 more pixels on your phone screen, which means %15 bigger view in landscape mode!!! Just make a donation and you'll get the option to remove the ads ;-)
Click to expand...

What's a great app. I have the experience of using "Personal Vehicle Manager" on my old WM phone. I'd like my old data to move to this app. and keep them in the future. Therefore importing & exporting feature for backup is very important to common user like me. Besides, it would be better if importing & exporting data is Chinese language compatible. Thanks a lot.:D
 
Hi Armond,

I'm a previous iPhone user, trying to convince my husband to switch to a Droid as well--one of the apps he absolutely loves is GasCubby, because with our iPhones, we were able to sync our GasCubbies between two phones(by setting up a backup/sync account with one email), and has basically said that he would switch if I found an app with this capability. aCar seems to be the closest to what he is looking for. With the backup/restore that you're looking at implementing, do you think you could also implement a sync function, for people that have multiple Android phones in their house, as well as multiple cars that they're tracking? Thanks in advance! I love this app. :D

Nicole
 
That is a good idea; similar to the OurGroceries app where two (or more?) phones can sync with groceries list so you would not double buy.
 
Love the app! Just got an HTC Hero about a week and a half ago and I've been wanting this app before I even got the phone! A couple features I would love to see:

1. Extra reminders. For example, whenever you remove a wheel you're supposed to retorque the lugs after 50-100 miles, a little reminder of that would be cool. So any maintenance item that requires removing a wheel would have that on there. It would use your average miles/day to calculate that, right?

2. Trip meter section for fill-ups. I know I can just put it in the notes section but a dedicated trip meter option would be cool.

Thank you for all your hard work!
 
thenicole84 said:
I'm a previous iPhone user, trying to convince my husband to switch to a Droid as well--one of the apps he absolutely loves is GasCubby, because with our iPhones, we were able to sync our GasCubbies between two phones(by setting up a backup/sync account with one email), and has basically said that he would switch if I found an app with this capability. aCar seems to be the closest to what he is looking for. With the backup/restore that you're looking at implementing, do you think you could also implement a sync function, for people that have multiple Android phones in their house, as well as multiple cars that they're tracking? Thanks in advance! I love this app. :D
Click to expand...

Hi Nicole,

Thanks a lot for downloading and trying aCar, and glad to see you've liked it.

Well, sync functionality is a bit different from backup/restore. Backup/Restore is something quite standalone and aCar can do it locally all by itself. But synchronization needs a website to work. You need to synchronize your data with somewhere (website). To tell you the truth, I have some long term plans in my mind which includes a sync function and much more. Let me not go into details till I can come up with a practical result. I have great plans if I can succeed!

I'm sorry that I can not help you at the moment, or promise any strict release date for such feature. Although I'm working on aCar in full-time basis but being just one person it's really hard to do all these features. Plus I should do the support which takes great amount of time.

As a side note, you can already track multiple vehicles on one phone if you've not noticed yet.

Cheers,
 
sarspants said:
Love the app! Just got an HTC Hero about a week and a half ago and I've been wanting this app before I even got the phone! A couple features I would love to see:

1. Extra reminders. For example, whenever you remove a wheel you're supposed to retorque the lugs after 50-100 miles, a little reminder of that would be cool. So any maintenance item that requires removing a wheel would have that on there. It would use your average miles/day to calculate that, right?

2. Trip meter section for fill-ups. I know I can just put it in the notes section but a dedicated trip meter option would be cool.

Thank you for all your hard work!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your kind words, and glad to see you've liked aCar :-) About your feature requests:

1. I guess you need a free one-time reminder which is different from fixed repeating service reminders you have now. Like "Remind me after 100 miles or a week, to do X". Is this what you're looking for? It seems interesting and useful! Please confirm and I will add this to my list.

2. Yes, recently I'm getting more and more requests for trip meter (for business and tax purposes). And I've already increased the priority of this item in my list :-) I should just think more about how well I can integrate this into aCar. I have to answer some questions: Where is the best place to put the icon to start/stop the trip? The main screen is already very crowded, so should I create an entire new screen for it? Then will it look integrated with rest of the application? Moreover, where should I show the trip records? On main screen? and the list goes on...
I will appreciate your feedback on this. If you think here is not the right place to start a detailed discussion, you may contact me directly by email.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
 
Hello Armond,

great app you made there. May I make a minor (but probably not too hard to implement) feature suggestion?

I am driving an old car with more than 200,000 km on the odometer. I have to fill it up every 300-400 km. And I have a Tattoo, which has a kind of small screen with a small keyboard.

It would be great if I didn't have to enter the full odometer number every time, but only the last 3-4 digits.

Let's say the last fill-up was at 212,376 km. If I just enter "721" as the odometer reading, it will assume that the new (full) reading is 212,721 km. Maybe you can even make it assume wrapped numbers, so for example if I entered the next reading as "108" it would assume (108 < 721) that the new reading is 213,108 km.

Do you think that might be implemented?

Thanks, and Cheers from Down Under

Skywolf
 
Sweet! I'm going to download this and give it a whirl. I've been keeping a spread sheet on my laptop for years for my motorcycles (since maintenance on a motorcycle is of upmost importance...:) ), but I've been searching and searching for something for my phones.

With this, I'm more likely to keep track of the cars now as well.

Having the option to export the data (for backups and for convience as well) would be really nice.

Thanks!
 
This is being asked other places... but if you could make this work with a bluetooth obd2 scanner.. you would be my personal hero!
 
Skywolf76 said:
I am driving an old car with more than 200,000 km on the odometer. I have to fill it up every 300-400 km. And I have a Tattoo, which has a kind of small screen with a small keyboard.

It would be great if I didn't have to enter the full odometer number every time, but only the last 3-4 digits.

Let's say the last fill-up was at 212,376 km. If I just enter "721" as the odometer reading, it will assume that the new (full) reading is 212,721 km. Maybe you can even make it assume wrapped numbers, so for example if I entered the next reading as "108" it would assume (108 < 721) that the new reading is 213,108 km.
Click to expand...

It's interesting. I've had another request for users who want to enter the "distance since previous fillup" instead of full odometer reading.
These two requests have some conflicts unless I make the whole odometer reading input configurable:
- Entering full odometer reading (as it is now)
- Entering the distance since previous fillup
- Entering the last three digits of odometer reading (your case)

Okay I just added your request to my feature request list, but no promise on exact release date because I still have higher priority features to implement first.

Just a question... When you want to edit that fillup/service record you've entered the last 3 digits of odometer reading, do you want to see the full odometer reading? Or just the last 3 digits you've entered?

Cheers,
 
JDuc said:
Sweet! I'm going to download this and give it a whirl. I've been keeping a spread sheet on my laptop for years for my motorcycles (since maintenance on a motorcycle is of upmost importance...:) ), but I've been searching and searching for something for my phones.

With this, I'm more likely to keep track of the cars now as well.

Having the option to export the data (for backups and for convience as well) would be really nice.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

As I've already mentioned, there are no backup and export facilities at the moment. But you'll get the both:
- "Full Backup" will include your entire data along with application settings and so (several files packed in a zip container). This will be used only for restoring, and won't be useful to view it on your laptop or so.
- "Export as CSV" will come after backup/restore (v1.1) and import (v1.2 ??) in a third major update (v1.3 ??). Since this will be in plain CSV format, you can easily view it on your laptop in MS Excel or other such softwares.

Regards,
 
prerunnerseth said:
This is being asked other places... but if you could make this work with a bluetooth obd2 scanner.. you would be my personal hero!
Click to expand...

Yes, other users have already discussed this. And I'm very excited about such potential feature. Since Android is a bit limited when it comes to BlueTooth communication. Currently Android uses BT for audio streaming (to BT headphones and such), but of course I've seen applications which have enabled BT files transfer and other communications as well. I should do further investigations...

I guess I will call for help (and for brainstorming) as soon as I want to start this feature. I want to implement this correctly not half-baked! Even after implementing, it will need extensive testing on different cars to see if it really works flawlessly.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
 
Hello Armond

Okay I just added your request to my feature request list, but no promise on exact release date because I still have higher priority features to implement first.

Just a question... When you want to edit that fillup/service record you've entered the last 3 digits of odometer reading, do you want to see the full odometer reading? Or just the last 3 digits you've entered?
Click to expand...
On the first thing: Of course, that is only a minor feature request, so no hurry. I am interested in the sharing as well, and some other requests made here.

Secondly: My idea is just a quicker way to enter the full odometer setting, so it should display the full odometer setting. A simplified code would look somehow like this:

Code: 
private int calcNewOdometer(int oldOdometer, int newEntry) throws UncalculableOdometerException{
   int newOdometer = newEntry; 
   if (newEntry < oldOdometer) {
      if ((newEntry >= 1000) || (newEntry < 0)) throw new UncalculableOdometerException(); 
      int distance = newEntry - (oldOdometer % 1000); 
      if (distance < 0) distance += 1000; 
      newOdometer = oldOdometer + distance;
   }
   return newOdometer;
}
If you take the odometer entry as a string, you might check for a + sign at the beginning to indicate a relative entry, too. So no need to make too fundamental changes to the system, with introducing new settings and stuff.

There is one further request I'd like to make:
Last fillup I got ads in the app. Now that wouldn't be bad, after all I want you to profit from this. But with the on-screen keyboard, and the ad, there was no room left for the entry box, so I had to type blind.
I only have a Tattoo, with QVGA resolution (240x320), can you reproduce that? Is there a way around it? Can you offer an ad-free version for money?

Cheers,

Skywolf
 
Skywolf76 said:
On the first thing: Of course, that is only a minor feature request, so no hurry. I am interested in the sharing as well, and some other requests made here.

Secondly: My idea is just a quicker way to enter the full odometer setting, so it should display the full odometer setting. A simplified code would look somehow like this:

If you take the odometer entry as a string, you might check for a + sign at the beginning to indicate a relative entry, too. So no need to make too fundamental changes to the system, with introducing new settings and stuff.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing the code :-) Okay. I will try to implement this along with relative odometer readings (starting with +) in next version.

Skywolf76 said:
There is one further request I'd like to make:
Last fillup I got ads in the app. Now that wouldn't be bad, after all I want you to profit from this. But with the on-screen keyboard, and the ad, there was no room left for the entry box, so I had to type blind.
I only have a Tattoo, with QVGA resolution (240x320), can you reproduce that? Is there a way around it? Can you offer an ad-free version for money?
Click to expand...

Well, that annoying ad bar can be removed for donators. People who donate will get a donation reference ID. They should just enter that ID in "Donate..." screen of aCar (accessible from options MENU on main screen). After that, they will have the option to remove that ad bar. The option to hide/show the ad bar will be added to application "Settings" (accessible from options MENU on main screen).

If you want to donate, please go to the following address on aCar website:
ZoneWalker.com
 
Hello Armond,

Can you give us an estimate of when the Backup/Restore will be implemented?

In the meanwhile, if I wanted to back-up my data (I am thinking about switching ROM again), what files would I need to save to my SD card?

Thanks!

Nicolas Racine

BTW, I am going to your donation page right now. I reallike like this app!
 
Great work on this app, just one thing doesn't make sense to me. I'm on the fuel statistics screen and after 4 fill-ups, I have 30.42 average MPG and cost per gallon of $2.77. which would cause me to assume my cost per mile would be $0.09, however, it shows $0.12...
 
nicracine said:
Hello Armond,

Can you give us an estimate of when the Backup/Restore will be implemented?

In the meanwhile, if I wanted to back-up my data (I am thinking about switching ROM again), what files would I need to save to my SD card?

Thanks!

Nicolas Racine

BTW, I am going to your donation page right now. I reallike like this app!
Click to expand...

Hi Nicolas,

I guess the next major version, which will include backup/restore as well, will be ready in 10 days. But no strict promise on this. Sorry if I'm not as fast as you might like to get the update. Backup and specially Restore are two very sensitive features which are directly dealing with user data. Any mistake (even small) can ruin all or some parts of user data which is a disaster! So I'm doing my best to implement it real carefully and to test it as much as I can (and to test it on different versions of Android - 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0).

Thanks a lot for your donation. It's very much appreciated :-)

Best Regards,
 
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