Speeding cars — project for motorists

There is one good principle for a person who wants something to take, and do — so much so that his creation became interested in the General public: do only what will benefit itself. The desire to realize some project for Android came to me ten minutes later after gaining smartphone with this OS. But I have always respected this principle, therefore, the ideas passed rigorous selection process and were weeded out as unnecessary.

In addition to the smartphone, I have another car, and he appeared much earlier. You can safely put me in motorists. Several times I had a desire to measure real-time acceleration to 100 km / h his car. It was not strong enough to buy additional devices to understand — and I just took the stopwatch, looked at the speedometer and got some figure. However, the speedometer was lying, from different angles look different, the arrow didn't crawl too fast to clearly define the moment of reaching the desired mark. Having caught the phone, I started to search on the market app to conduct such a measurement. After all, iOS is very well-known program of this plan. But this is a story about our program, so she will remain nameless competitor. App I of course found, but something they did not like me. And it was decided do it yourself, for yourself. During development, I had two interesting ideas that I liked it so much that he was invited partners. And now, 30.07.2012 the project was published. Next I will tell you briefly about what was invented, what happened and what the future plans...


First a little about the technology. All the applets I've ever seen on the market, working exclusively with the accelerometer. There was some use of GPS, but not popular. I immediately had the idea to plot the acceleration, with delays of GPS that would be impossible. It was decided to use the accelerometer.
Many races were held, connected friends engineers, physicists, mathematicians — accuracy of 5-10% is present almost always. When a particularly vicious bumps — measurement was far from reality. It didn't suit me, and came up with the idea number one: to combine late coming, but quite accurate data from the GPS receiver, with the instantly received data from the accelerometer, containing the accumulating error. The long winter evenings we sat looking at the charts, coming up with — how to combine is not entirely compatible. In the end, it was invented concept, which was adjusted empirically. There is no higher mathematics or quantum physics, everything is rather simple and even boring, so the details here I will not describe. But obtained in this way, the result was like me, and besides, the opportunity to weed out obviously incorrect experiments with these same pits, slides, elevation and the like. At that time, no competing application is not declared such a method. And now there is a sense that many use the accelerometer to capture the moment of start, and GPS to determine speed.

At some point I thought that it would be interesting to collect statistics of measurements on different cars, of different years, in different places. Because the data of the manufacturer — these are some figures obtained (received?) in ideal conditions on a new machine. From this interest the obvious way to be the idea to create a web resource for gathering information about the user dimensions, with the ability to search, explore statistics, etc. The best part was that no analog I have found. Maybe bad looking, of course — but still not caught. Borrowing ideas is fine, but the new idea is even better.

What happened since the start.
Since we are not funded by anyone, most of the work has not been canceled — the project was done quite a long time, but three weeks ago still saw the light. To alert the people about him were used by a few automotive forums and resource 4PDA. Honestly, on a serious popularity I wasn't really hoping for. The more pleasant by the fact that after a few days the application was included in the category "Top new free" on Google Play, surpassing erotic Chinese crafts and other weird junk. And web site in the best of days gained more than 10,000 views. Motorists were loyal audience and good ratings the app received a lot. Of course, there were negative reviews. It's inevitable: first, in violation of testing methods will definitely get the incorrect result, and what could be easier than saying "Your program doesn't work." In addition, the diversity of devices on the market makes it difficult to say that the application works correctly on any machine. But what pleases me the measurements uploaded to the website, more than 90% seem to be quite adequate. Unfortunately, the download on the website is much less than the download of the program: perhaps users just don't want to mess with that. But anyway, I can confidently say that our program works, but exceptions are always there.
About the app itself. in Any case do not want to add many of the letters in this article, diluting its manual, plenty of pictures, description of why you need a service, etc. this section will be brief, details are on the project website.

Here is the app:

image

So that you can see on the website:

image

And that's what the project may be useful to the motorist. After, of course, the main reason to use it for fun.

• Measurement of acceleration in order to compare with published data
• Measurement in order to compare with the data of other users with the same car
• Measurement for analysis of manual gear shifting by the driver.
• Measurement before and after repair or tuning to assess the effect of
• View statistics on a targeted brand of car when choosing a car

development Plans of the project we have a lot. the Most obvious is the extension to other mobile platforms: Windows Phone and iOS. The site also requires major redesign and refinement of the functional. The main idea of the app is its simplicity and brevity. However, there are a number of options that should be added: and race for 402 meters and displays current speed, etc. Investments in the promotion of the project would also be useful. The main question is — will the service be in demand in Runet. If Yes, nothing prevents to do the same on the world market. At the moment the project is damp, it is rather "pilot". So maybe you shouldn't treat it too picky. We would like you to appreciate first and foremost the very idea, to the realization of which there is no limit to perfection.

Thank you for your attention.

Links.
Link to the project's website
Link to Google Play
Article based on information from habrahabr.ru

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