nicracine

Don't worry about the speed of delivery. I am totally with you in this; I would much rather have stable code and perfect backup feature and wait a few days more.

In the meanwhile, is there any way to copy data files, or even the whole app directory, so that I can switch roms without having to re-enter all my data by hand?

Keep up the good work!

Nicolas Racine

Armond

[Copy from my email reply to a very similar problem]
You are quite right. I should confess that some of the statistics are slightly wrong. For example the average MPG is calculated as mathematical average of MPGs while it should be calculated using "total distances" and "total fuel volume". Because many of the statistics you get are based on others, one small mistake will propagate to other statistics as well. For example if I calculate the total fillups wrongly, the entire "cost per mile", "cost per gallon", "cost per etc" will go wrong!

The problem is that the first fillup must be totally dropped from "some" of the calculations. Perhaps only the cost of first fillup must be used (that's what drives you to the second fillup). Actually I'd updated all my calculation formulas (actually the database queries) and was ready to release. But in my final testing I found out that when I filtered the records, the calculation formulas didn't work correctly. You know it gets very complicated when you have a subset of the data and have to update the whole statistics based on that subset. Just imagine you may have non-continuous set of records for calculating total cost, total miles, total gallons, etc. The details are a bit complicated. If you've done it once on paper, you already get what I mean.
Anyways, I just reverted back my changes and never released that version. And now I'm working on backup/restore, the single most voted feature!! There are high demands and pressure for backup/restore so I have to do it first.

But the issues you've mentioned are definitely in my list (and from my point of view even more important than backup/restore), and I will attack them as soon as I release backup/restore and import/export features. I'm sorry if the situation doesn't look ideal! Just a note... As you go on and enter more and more records, the difference between the current calculation formulas and correct ones gets lesser and lesser and sometimes even not noticeable.

[Update] Let me assure you that all your entered data are safe. The problem is only with statistical summary which are recalculated every time. [/Update]

Thanks for your patience,

Last edited by Armond; December 22nd, 2009 at 12:57 PM.

Armond

Thank you :-)

Unfortunately there isn't any way to copy the whole database file to restore it later :-( Or at least I'm not aware of any such trick. Sorry! I wish I could help you more.

overcaffein8d

What exactly does a partial fill-up constitute? I generally fill up with 1/8 or 1/4 tank left. Is this partial, or is it just a normal fill-up length you're looking for? Obviously you can't refill when it's completely empty or you can't get gas

This program is amazing.
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wvidgus

koticphreak

I figured this might be the case, just looked funny and stuck out... thanks for the response! keep up the good work!

brandini

Partial means you don't fill all the way up so you can't tell how much gas you used in that last period..

__________________
I'm on a Droid, man. It's going fast, and- I've got a nautical themed pashmina afghan.

zyxwvu44

wouldnt it be easier to just enter the fuel capacity of the tank instead of partial/full fillup?

overcaffein8d

It would be really awesome if it used the GPS to report the price yoou paid to gasbuddy.com or something

lemodular

Now that is a good idea. I use the Where app to get an idea of the local pricing but some are one or two days late.

spartan141

kool, will give it a try

overcaffein8d

oh, and one more thing:

In soviet russia, vehicles track you!

Armond

I wish it were possible! But we have the "missing a previous fillup" option as well. As its name says, that is for marking a record which has previous missing fillups. So when you mark a record as "having previous missing fillups" and you fill 13 gallons in your car tank, will it be a full or partial fillup (let's suppose the tank volume is 20 gallons)? Well, it depends!! If the car had at least 6-7 gallons left in its tank, it would be a full fillup otherwise partial! So you see in some cases you can not simply guess it.

The same story exists for the very first fillup record because you don't have any previous record of it. I put 3.3 gal in your car as the first fillup record. Is it full or partial? You say partial?? I say "full" because I already had 16.7 gal in my car tank (16.7+3.3=20)!

Armond

Looking up price and reporting the price to websites like gasbuddy.com is already in my list. I just hope they have decent API to work with... I will post the news here as soon as I start the implementation (and perhaps to collect more feedbacks). But don't expect it in a near future. I have many higher priority features and enhancements in my list.

Armond

That's why I'm planning for "aHuman" application. That will be used by vehicles to track their owners ;-)

iimre

First of all thanks for this great application. It almost fulfills my needs. I have item on my wishlist, a custom currency field. Just to be more international.

mj_b90

I have just installed this and your app looks great so far!

Is there any way to set a default octane for each car's new fill ups? For example, my car requires premium gasoline so I have to change this field every time. Setting this as the default for that car would help to speed up the process of adding a fill up.

If there were a way to store stations after using them, this would also help. Since each station carries only one brand of gasoline, this field could be dependent on the stored station.

If you were able to recognize the Gas station based upon location that'd be great. I'd be happy if this were able to store after the first use of that station, as I'd guess that looking up station names based on location coordinates would be more difficult.

I also really like the previously suggested ideas of submitting price data to a site such as gasbuddy.com, this would be really helpful.

Thanks for putting so much work into this great app!

Armond

Guys,

aCar v1.1.0 is out now which is featuring manual and automatic backup/restore!

Feel free to share your feedbacks with me...

Cheersss,
Armond

Armond

Thanks for your feedback. Adding more currencies to default currency list and being able to add any custom currency is already in my list :-) But I can not promise any strict release date for it.

Best Regards,

Armond

Thanks for your feedback :-)

You should already get a similar behavior. Every time you start a new fillup record for your vehicle, the last gas octane used for that vehicle will be fetched from database and will be set as default. Are you experiencing a different behavior?

As soon as you start typing the station/location name, you'll see a list of location being suggested to you based on your previous entries. So it's just a matter of typing one character.

But there isn't any feature to bind the station name to gas brand. I'm not sure if everywhere is the same as there. I need some help on this item :-)

Yes, this would be nice to guess the station name using GPS. One very good usage of GPS it will be. This is already in my list but it's just a matter of time.

Okay. One more vote for this :-)

Thanks for downloading and trying aCar.

phogel24

Very nice. I am ridiculous when it comes to maintenance. This app will be great.

prattleon

seems like a nice app, however, i was so annoyed by the restriction on adding a an older service (one in which the odometer reading is less than a more recent one). i started entering data and then realized i was going to have to start over because i didn't enter records in the order of the mileage reading. a warning would be nice but to restrict it is not cool.

i went to use it again, hoping that i could find a way to enter data into a .CSV file and import it, but i could not find such a feature. the backup is a .abp file which is a barcode file from what i understand. is there a way to edit this so i can input records on my computer and import them into aCar?

Thanks!

overcaffein8d

Another cool idea (for way future) could be a calculator... It already has the fuel per mile. But what if, judging by your previous MPG and an input of number of miles, the app could say how much gas money it would cost--i.e. "it would cost you $14 to drive 300 miles." (I suppose price could be an optional input...or you could use the price of the last fillup for car X)

You could even (for way way way in the future) somehow integrate with GMaps so you can ask it "how much will it cost to drive to nyc?"

brandini

You could go one better and include maintenance costs into the cost per mile.

sarspants

Hi Armond
Been using the app for awhile and really like it. The one thing that bothers me though is that the keyboard pops up every time I open the app. If I'm opening the app to add a service/gas record or check when something is due, I don't really need the keyboard popping up.

Thanks for adding backups! It saved my butt today when the app crashed and I had to reinstall it.

Armond

The problem is that you've not tried to keep the date/time and odometer reading of your fillup/service records in sync! Of course you CAN enter your records in whatever order you want but you should just keep them in sync. For example, when entering a record for "Jan 2, 2010" and odometer reading of "23,430.8", it's not logical thus not valid to enter a seconrd record for "Dec 23, 2009" and odometer reading of "23,822.6"!! You see the point?

Data import feature has been planned for v1.2.0 and it will include import from CSV format. ".abp" is just a backup file extension indicating "aCar Backup Package" :-) Nothing to do with barcode file format. Of course ".abp" is actually a ZIP file which contains some XML representing the application settings, your data and some metadata. But it's not a good practice to edit its content and to add your data there (for import). I do not recommend this at all! If you can wait a while, you'll get a pretty clean import feature!

Cheers,

Armond

Thank you :-) I just added this to my feature request list.

Armond

I'm getting more votes for expanding the statistics and either to include the services data or to add a service specific statistics page. This seems to be a good improvement. Thanks!

Armond

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately I'm having hard time trying to reproduce your problem here. But I have no problem adding a force-hide code for the soft keyboard at the application startup.

Anyone else has got into this problem?

You're welcome :-) Glad to see it has come handy to you!

nicracine

Hi Armond,

Yes, it happens to me too. If the solution is simple, I would appreciate an update for this. I really is annoying. On my Magic, the keyboard takes 2/3 of the screen, so I have to close it to do anything.

Thanks!

Nicolas Racine

Armond

Thank you Nicolas. Solution applied! You'll get it in version 1.1.1 :-)

latinmaxima

I donwloaded this about a week ago and am filling in data. the app looks great and I look forward to providing feedback on it and hopefully donating as well.

jasonp1980

I really like this app, not used a MPG tracker before.

But I would really love to be able to have a webfront end, either your own or via another program.

I have just singed up to fuelly, I notice it can import CSV files. So if your CSV's were formatted to fit we could upload our data manually for now, looking to the future of auto uploading to fuelly.

Later on you could break away and develop your own web front end if required, but seems to make sense to use fuelly implementation as its already made.

Will be donating based on current features, more donations as things get better. Thanks for a great app.

nicracine

Hi Armond,

A quick suggestion for future features. It occurred to me that it would be nice to have a one-stop solution for car maintenance and logging. For now, I use aCar to track my L/km, and my maintenance, which aCar does extremely well. My accountant asked me to follow more closely my car-related expenses, and I started to keep my receipts in Evernote, in a dedicated notebook.

What if aCar could do that as well? Add a receipt field with a link to external jpg files or, if it does not bulk up the database too much, integrate a receipt capture feature with the camera. That would be a great addition to an already superb software.

Thanks!

Nicolas Racine

x16wda

Armand, nice app! However I have a request. I am just starting to "back fill" my old information in this app and occasionally I get a data validation error. When this happens, currently I just get the notice, no description of what was wrong, and no chance to recover - whatever I typed in is gone. It would be much more user friendly if aCar would offer me a chance to either edit what I had put in (thus saving my typing) or cancel the entry.

Let me use it for more than a day and I'll give you more feedback :-)

Armond

Thanks for your feedback.

The problem with Fuelly.com is that they do not provide any API to integrate third party applications. Let's suppose aCar can export the data into fuelly.com CSV format. What are the possibilities then? You can just import your aCar records into fuelly.com for the first time and that's all! After importing your records, there is no way to keep them synchronized between your phone and fuelly.com (unless you just want to move from aCar to fuelly). That's the main problem. To make it effectively work, they should provide a sync API.

Implementing a web front end with synchronization functionality is already in my long term plan. Let's see how I can drive this project!

Cheers,

Armond

Hi Nicolas,

Attaching pictures captured with camera to fillup and service records is already in my list :-) It will affect the database schema as well as the backup/restore features (the pictures will be backed up and restored as well!). But I'm not sure I can implement it anytime soon.

Regards,

Armond

The "back" and "save" icons at the top blue bar of add-fillup-record and add-service-record screens do what you want. Tapping the "save" icon to save your record will give you a chance to know which fields have errors and what they are. Tapping on "back" icon will just cancel the data entry.

But the hard BACK button has a bit different story. To keep it consistent with rest of Android built-in applications (like address-book or so), I decided to quickly check against the data entry rules and store the record when pressing this button. But in the case of errors I didn't want to force the user to stay on data entry screen to manually cancel it. I still wanted the hardware BACK button to definitely close the current data entry screen regardless of whether there were errors or not.

If I get more votes against this behavior, I'm open to change it :-)

Thank you,

nicracine

Hello Armond,

Is aCar for Android 1.6, or should it run on 1.5?

My carrier (Rogers) forced an update to its users, and I had to downgrade to their official 1.5 ROM (now with Sense UI) or lose data connectivity. This sucks big time.

I made sure I backed up my data before performing the upgrade, however, I cannot find aCar anymore on the Market, and my backed-up APK does not install.

Am I to go without aCar until I can root my phone again, or is there a workaround?

Thanks!

Nicolas Racine

Armond

Hi Nicolas,

Sorry about the bad news. The minimum SDK version to run aCar is 1.5. It should obviously shows aCar on your now-1.5 device. I've already tested it here and it shows on my 1.5 device. It's odd to see it does not work there :-( You may want to take a look at SlideMe.org market where I've also listed aCar there (download its market client to connect and download apps from). See if you can find and install it from there.

Thank you,

magnus

Armond,
First of ....great app!

I have a feature request. I am keeping track of both my wife's car and my motorcycle. Now the mpg calculated for a car is fine.......

However......unlike a car, for a motorcycle.....which typically has a tank capacity of 2-6 gallon, instead of calculating full tank to full tank......I typically use reserve to reserve (empty to empty if you are not familiar with reserve switch in a motorcycle)

Hence the difference between the two odometer readings must be divided by the volume of fuel purchased the previous time, not the current one.


The reason for doing this is that different gas nozzles sit differently in a motorcycle tank and fills up to different 'full' levels. While this happens in a car also....over a 10 or 20 gallon tank, that difference is negligible.......but over a 4 gallon tank like I have......those errors can start to be more significant.....hence reserve to reserve is a more repeatable way of making that calculation than full tank to full tank. Hence the odometer reading I note, is when I switched to reserve....not when I fill up the tank.

Any chance of including that as an option?
A 'Motorcycle with reserve switch' option?

Thanks!!!!

nicracine

Thanks for the info.

I managed to download it on SlideMe.

I must say that I am impressed. aCar automatically verified if there was a backup and offered me to install it. I did not even have to do anything.

This makes me even more happy to be able to continue using it.

Nicolas Racine

cigar3tte

Gonna sound like a cheapskate but is there any way to donate less than $5? And if so, would I still get code to unlock manual backup?

Armond

Guys,

I just released version 1.2.0 which brings you one of the most frequently requested features... "Import Data" from various sources!

It also includes a few bug fixes as well. Detailed release notes here:
ZoneWalker.com » aCar - Release Notes

Enjoy!

Armond

Thanks a lot for downloading and trying aCar. Well, $5 is the least amount of donation I've considered to unlock the pro features.

But if you really think that aCar does not worth that much or have difficulties donating $5, email me please and let me know your reason. I will do my best to help you :-)

Thank you,

cigar3tte

Nah, it's just something personal, I've not broken the $3.00 barrier with Market apps that I've bought.

txtinman

The version for people who donate says it can import csv files. How should it be formated? For instance, how many columns, column titles and so on? I have used a spreadsheet to track my motorcycle for 3 years. I would like to import it to aCar if I can.

Mike White

Armond

Mike,

As long as your CSV file be in a standard format (one header line following by your records), aCar will import it. In the import process, it will provide you a screen to dynamically define the mappings between aCar fields and your CSV columns. So in theory it can import almost any kind of CSV file :-)

Even those who have NOT donated will have the chance to import the first ten lines of their CSV file (as a trial). So you can try it before deciding for any donation! Please let me know if you're facing any problems and I will do my best to help you. You can email me directly.

Thank you,

daweze

looks to be a great app i am still holding out for the export function before making a switch.

But i do have a feature request that i would miss form my current app.
New Tire/Tires every has to buy them and granted its every few years but its big $$$ to do it. I know i can add a custom service but there is not really a appropriate place to put things like which tire or tires were replaced RF, LF, RR, LR or stems.

txtinman

I decided to try this out so I created a test file in Excell. When I tried to import it using the plain .csv file button, aCar could see the file, but the import button was grayed-out and could not be selected. I tried it from the Mileage app screen and the import button worked, but an error message said the file was not in the correct format.

daweze

i found this also. But I found that if you store another .csv file even a duplicate of the 1st with a new name the import will ungrey.