aCar - Track your vehicles

[Armond]

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?"

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

 

[Armond]

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

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]

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 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?

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

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

 

[nicracine]

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?

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]

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

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]

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.

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 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

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]

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

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]

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

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

 

[Armond]

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?

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]

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,

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]

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

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]

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,

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 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.

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.