Adaptive Automotive Volume

[Matt Sargent]

I play podcasts from my GS3 via bluetooth in my car. My old Chevy Blazer had a nice function, where it could automatically increase the audio volume at higher road speeds (to compensate for the additional road noise). But my current Nissan doesn't have that feature. I use Tasker for a lot of things, and it occurred to me that it should be able to make adjustment to the media volume based on the GPS speed value. Has anyone else attempted this?

 

[codesplice]

This sounds like a cool idea - the obvious drawback would be that you would never been able to make the audio louder than the head unit's volume control. You could, however, adjust the volume for the Media stream on your Android device.... start at say 50% and have it slowly ramp up with speed. You'd just need to set the volume on the head unit a little louder.

/sub for further ideas.

 

[Matt Sargent]

The bluetooth is an aftermarket device that plugs into the car radio's input jack. So I can adjust the volume from either the car's volume control or the phone's. The car always set the radio's output to a median level when first turned on, and I have Tasker set the phone's volume to 11, and that works well at in-town speeds. I'm looking at having it automatically increase the volume when I'm at highway speeds.

I think the trick is to get it to work like a thermostat. Most thermostats have a 2 to 3 degree buffer zone. If you set the temp at 74, when it drops to 73, the heater comes on, but it doesn't shut off until it's 76. That keeps it from constantly turning on and off. So in my case, I might bump up the volume when I hit 45mph, but not drop it back down until I'm doing 40. Increase it again at 65, and drop back down at 60, etc.