I posted this over on reddit, but I figured this might be a better community to ask so sorry if you've seen this already on r/tasker or r/android auto.
My parents just purchased a new 2017 chevy spark with android auto (I'm not sure of the version of android auto but I can check if necessary). I'm a pretty broke just out of college student and I'm looking to do something nice for my Dad for the holidays that won't break the bank. Because of this I was wondering if there was anything I could script for tasker that would automate navigation, music playback or something along those lines using NFC tags. There is a weird thing with the Spark they purchased in the sense that it doesn't have a microphone button on the steering wheel, but it does have a microphone. You just have to activate it by pressing the touch screen icon on the Android Auto head unit. Despite being a baby boomer, he's very tech savvy and will likely automate his whole house if he gets into the whole tasker thing.
If anyone has any other low cost quality of life improvement ideas for tasker in addition to the android auto integration I'd love to here them!
Related
I found this article and I told myself that a developer could find his happiness there
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/10/NoiseDetection/default.aspx?loc=en
Citation
"You're sitting in the local coffee shop on a sunny afternoon, peacefully enjoying a quiet moment, when your phone starts to ring. It's set, of course, to full volume and the ring is so loud you nearly spill your coffee. So you turn it down.
Later that day, you're waiting at a bar for a friend, but he's nowhere to be seen. He'd forgotten which bar you were meeting at and called to see where you were. Unfortunately, you missed the call because you didn't hear your phone ring. The problem: the ring volume was still turned down and wasn't loud enough to hear in the noisy bar.
This is fairly ridiculous when you consider that current mobile phones have as much processing power as the first PC I used for multi-channel audio recording. It would seem that with today's intelligent mobile devices, which are capable of doing so many things and accessing so much information, this problem should not exist. However, everyone who has a mobile phone has experienced this problem in one form or another.
The obvious way to solve the problem is to remember to change your volume settings. The option to change the ring volume is presumably to deal with the acoustic differences in various environments, but the functionality does not really do that. Devices should be able to act with a little more common sense. It's simple: I just want my mobile phone not to ring too loudly in a quiet environment and to ring audibly in a loud place.
This article addresses the possibilities and practicality of a Windows Mobile® application that automatically adjusts the Pocket PC's ring level based on the ambient noise in its current environment. The functionality of this app prevents the phone from ringing too loudly or softly, saving me from embarrassment and missed calls. In this article, I'll use this problem as an introduction to Windows Mobile development using Visual Studio® 2005 and C#."
WOW! This would really be a great solution!
No more dicking about with profiles and Volumes hehe!
Sadly, despite the immense processing power of today's phones, they are slower than the cell phones 10 years ago. Why? Fine, we're doing a lot more with them, but still, if i can put linux on my P400 and surf the net and play 3d games and even change the screen orientation within less than a quarter second... then why can't my phone do that... and maybe even do it better?
Is it too much to ask to have a zippy menu interface and nearly instant screen orientation changes?
Sorry, this rant is a bit off topic. You are entirely correct. Our phones could have been doing this for at least a decade... but sadly, only companies like apple seem to want to invest in innovative products (I own a kaiser, not an iphone... so dont get on my case with an apple rant, ok?)
How will this help when the phone is in your pocket and it either hears nothing so rings very quietly, or hears a thunderstorm of noise from the keys and change it is rattling around with?
while(!(linux)){wm} said:
Sadly, despite the immense processing power of today's phones, they are slower than the cell phones 10 years ago. Why? Fine, we're doing a lot more with them, but still, if i can put linux on my P400 and surf the net and play 3d games and even change the screen orientation within less than a quarter second... then why can't my phone do that... and maybe even do it better?
Is it too much to ask to have a zippy menu interface and nearly instant screen orientation changes?
Sorry, this rant is a bit off topic. You are entirely correct. Our phones could have been doing this for at least a decade... but sadly, only companies like apple seem to want to invest in innovative products (I own a kaiser, not an iphone... so dont get on my case with an apple rant, ok?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My,,, haven't we grown impatient over the years. I can remember when a dial up modem and a 9600 connection were killer.
Hi, everyone.
tl;dr: Phone calls kill the music player (presumably due to low memory), although the navigation keeps going. How can I stop it killing the music?
Bit of background.
I have a Milestone currently running CM7. I like Android 2.3, and I'd like to keep it if possible, but I would consider switching to any ROM that supports 2G/3G switching in Tasker (which means no stock ROMs) if it'll solve this problem.
I use my phone to provide music in my car because I use it almost constantly for navigation. I have a Tasker profile set up so that when I plug something into the headphone socket (including, for example, my tape deck adapter because I'm too poor to get a proper car dock) the phone asks if I want to go to car mode. On selecting this, it switches to 3G only (so as not to interfere with the speakers), turns off wifi, fires up GPS and starts Car Home, as well as activating some auto-respond and reading aloud profiles to deal with SMS. From there I normally hit Navigate and then get some music up either in the default player or Spotify.
So I was trying this out yesterday. Since updating to CM7 my phone seems to be able to more reliably keep music playing, whereas it'd often close the music app at the end of a song with CM6 (Spotify, oddly, was more reliable). Good. Until I get a phone call, at which point it kills the music player entirely, although the navigation does come back at the end of the call.
This makes sense. The call is more important than the navigation which is more important than the music so it kills the music. Thing is, I'd like to keep all three going. I hate driving without music and leaning over to fiddle with my phone while driving is going to get me killed one day.
I've used zeppelinrox's guide to supercharge my phone and I'm running with Auto Memory Manager at 6, 8, 24, 26, 28 and 30. I haven't bulletproofed the launcher... yet. Thing is I'd be happy for the launcher to die while I'm in my car so I'm not sure I want to do that. It's also running overclocked to 900MHz max on the interactive governor (or was, I've just this minute switched it to smartass but I doubt that matters).
My phone, incidentally, is doing nothing in particular right now and has 44MB free (I have a bunch of home screen widgets but I don't think I'm being excessive).
That's not a lot, it's probably not enough to run a music player, navigation and a phone call. I get that. But a phone with 256MB total RAM should be able to handle those three tasks simultaneously.
Here's what it does in my car that I care about (in priority order):
Taking calls.
Navigation.
Music (either the Android app or Spotify).
Tasker (sitting on my "in car" profile but not actively doing things unless I receive an SMS in which case it auto-replies).
Receiving text messages.
Car home.
Receiving emails.
Here's what I think it's doing that I don't care about:
Syncing Facebook/Twitter.
Software updates.
Home screen widgets.
Whatever else Android does when it's idle.
I've just had the notion while typing this that having Tasker disable sync while in the car might be a good move (to stop emails, Facebook and Twitter). This might free up extra memory. I don't know enough about Android to be sure of this, but I could give it a try. I'd rather not have to though because emails are sometimes important enough to pull over and deal with, or at least have my passenger read out. Facebook and Twitter aren't, obviously.
Any other tips? Would it be possible to build a script in Tasker to raise the priority of things I commonly use in my car and drop the priority of everything else? I'd also like to bulletproof my launcher while in normal use but not so much while I'm in the car.
Thanks.
First a workaround.
You can add a short cut to the music player in Car Home (the google car home you can, anyway)
So at least you have a big easy button to hit to run it.
You can also try and bulletproof the app with a gscript.
Yep, got the music apps in Car Home. I like the Google one, the Motorola one is useless.
I don't know how I missed that thread but I shall give it a go. Cheers.
It's hit and miss but apparently it works pretty good for the music app
I am really trying to like this phone even after the mango update..
But I can not understand a few things..
The Volume on this phone is crap There is no way in hell it will ever wake me up using the alarm, My droid I was able to set whatever I wanted to any ringtone or alarm ( my own music) and I was able to make the volume loud enough to actually hear it..
Microphone input why can we not use the microphone anywhere there is a input field? why can we only long press the windows logo or use it for sms? evidently it is built into the OS just fine for voice to txt why not use it across the whole os on any text input field?
No flash?
GPS navigation is piss poor unless you dump 35$ on the Garmin suite.. believe me i have tried every trial and free app this week and they all do not compare to Google maps free on the android..
Also again SOUND unless you drive with NO fan on in the car, no music, and windows rolled up and on a quiet street you will not hear the GPS telling you where to turn.
Battery life:
wow all you have to do is send a few messages and browse the web for less then 5 minutes and you are at a 1/4 power loss ...
Think it is time to head back over to android land where i was able to use the microphone for a lot more voice input...
was able to set ringtone to music I liked and was ABLE TO HEAR IT
was able to HEAR MY alarm clock
was able to HEAR the gps software that was superior and FREE
You could have saved yourself a lot of time, stress and possibly money by reading the posts in this forum which have discussed the points you mentioned about dozens of times.
I feel your pain, I bought a HD7 on launch day and sold it a week later. There weren't any reviews available back then but now, almost a year after launch, all the issues in your post at widely known.
When did you get your HD7?
re: Volume - I've never had an issue with this
re: Nav - GPS Tuner.com's "Turn By Turn" is great and cheap ($5.49 Aussie - Less everywhere else in the world)
re: Battery life - I find it the same as every power hungry smartphone I've owned... I'm used to charging once a day
A lot of the other issues you state will likely be resolved soon... But most you list are WP7 issues rather than HD7 issues...
Perhaps android is more suitable...
Marketplace Link
windowsphone.com/s?appid=ea8097b5-65b8-442a-a66e-4d2eb2cff5ec
Hi, this note to signal the release of my Vehicle Sound Simulator for Windows Phone 7 !
Using this app (if possible, connected to your car AUX input), you can simulate 4 vehicles true engine sound while driving.
The App use GPS speed along with accelerometer to enhance your driving experience and entertain your kids !
Currently available vehicles are:
Motorbike
Train
Jet
Helicopter
When steering, you'll experience skidding tires, plane stall alarm, and train rail sound.
Trial version is limited to only 2 vehicles, and 60 seconds of fun.
After this time, you'll have to restart the app.
To enjoy the full experience, please support me buying this app !
More vehicles coming soon.
Some suggestions for the best sound experience:
Find a place where the phone is firmly attached to the car and cannot shake.
If you displace phone position, change vehicle to recalibrate.
Connect the phone to your car aux input
Start the app or change vehicle only when stopped and not driving.
If you find any trouble, or have suggestions, don't hesitate to contact me from the about page. Attached some screenshot
Have fun !
Giulio Fronterotta
not really fun... it miss acceleration state
it has only idle and running state
i hope next update you add it
thanks by the way
Cannot understand
Hi abdelamine,
I cannot understand your statement. This App simulate the engine acceleration, did you try it in a car ? Acceleremeters are used to simulate the acceleration and compensate the low GPS precision, the running engine is simulated in a real manner. The only thing missing, probably, can be the gear changin, but this is a behaviour I'm working on. Can you explain better what you mean for missing "acceleration state" ? However, thanks for your comment.
Hey people.
I have ordered a BMW motorbike, which has a wheel interface on the left handlebar.
This wheel controls various things on the bike, but also a seperate sat nav unit (Garmin something or other)
Anyway I have found a device called wunderLINQ which will convert the handlebar wheel interface into keyboard input
It has Up, Down, Left, Right, Enter and Escape.
It also sends data from the bike (tyre pressures, RPM, speed, etc etc)
I know some vehicles have android auto without a touchscreen (Mazda and audi at least) and I wondered if there was a way to get the android auto app on my phone to act like this?
Cheers,
Tom.