LEAF Link for iPhone/iPad/etc - available on the App Store

[baronvonshush]

I used it today to start the A/C, sent two different destinations, one using a Google search and one entering a street address manually. Worked flawlessly.

Awesome, I love to hear that. :mrgreen:

Hopefully I'll have some time this week to get to the suggestions that have been made. More ideas are always welcome!

 

[Deleted member 5796]

So I've used it a lot on my 3 different devices (iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone) it has been working great on all three devices. I really like how it starts up showing the data it had last, then the last update from other devices and then finally the automatically updated data.

I've used the iPad and iPhone to send data to the car. It has worked well so far. I have a couple of suggestions.

1. it would be nice if when you do a google search, it sorted the responses by distance, better if you show the distance too.
2. it would be cool if the download in the car would have the car say "press pause and hit set destination" It wouldn't be bad if it could announce the location too.

 

[rslatkin]

I like the app so far!

I suggest disabling or graying out the "Start Charging" button when the car is not plugged in.

 

[baronvonshush]

Version 0.9.78 is posted to the server. Changes include:
- Added preference to show 80% charge time (thanks adspguy)
- Added preference to have the car speak instructions when reading the feed info (thanks again adspguy)
- Detect when a charge command fails (i.e., when not plugged in) and display an error
- Clear any displayed error when refreshing CARWINGS info or sending a new command
- Retry getting latest status for a few seconds at startup in case the network takes some time to come up (thanks yet again adspguy)
- Better handling/checking of whether the user has already setup the info feed in CARWINGS: now it doesn't pester you until you hit Send, and it always gives you the option to send anyway
- CARWINGS unfortunately does NOT report the connection type when you are plugged in but not charging; updated the plugged-in text color to reflect this ambiguity

I suggest disabling or graying out the "Start Charging" button when the car is not plugged in.

I actually made it the way it is on purpose. Basically it eliminates one of the annoyances from the Nissan app: if you know you are plugged in, but your latest status is a little old, you don't have to wait for a status refresh cycle (could take a minute or more) to send the charge command. Same thing with the climate control commands. In any of these cases, if the true status is not what's currently displayed, nothing bad happens by sending a command that might not make sense (i.e., Start Charge when not plugged in).

1. it would be nice if when you do a google search, it sorted the responses by distance, better if you show the distance too.

Yes, that would be nice. I've wanted it to be this way from the beginning. Unfortunately, Google doesn't provide any way to specify that results should be sorted by distance. When you search for places near a location, Google takes the location only as a "hint" - it doesn't actually return only the closest results. It may preferentially include results that are farther away but that it thinks are more relevant or prominent. There's no way to tell it not to do this and sort strictly by distance.

In general, the first 5 (or so) results in a search should be nearby but are not guaranteed to be the closest matches. The results list returned by Google also doesn't include locations, so I would have to individually look them up to get distances and do the sort myself. I'm not sure if it's worth the extra latency to do that, but I'll think about it.

Hmm, maybe Bing provides sorted closest matches...

Thanks everyone for the continued feedback!

 

[Deleted member 5796]

I've updated to 0.9.78 and it is working great!

I did find an interesting problem.....

When I google searched the local Costco and sent it, it worked great. It reads out the location, address, and then instructions! Fabulous.

However, when I search for a local produce company "a russo and sons", the google search comes up with the correct place. When I select the search result and send it I get the message "failed to identify the contents" and it doesn't have the address. The search result has the name "A. Russo & Sons Inc." perhaps it is choking on the "&"

I tried editing out the & and it worked fine when sent to the car

 

[baronvonshush]

Version 0.9.89 is updated on the server. Changes include:
- Graphics - new icon and launch screen!
- Touch "Finish At" or "Range" labels to toggle 80%/100% or distance units
- Finished demo mode
- Added theme "Plain" with default iOS colors
- Removed Glacier Pearl theme - sorry, it just doesn't look good at all
- Moved themes to "Paid Features" section
- Added "Login" button in the Info/Settings screen when typing CW username/password
- Touch the navigation feed url in Info/Settings to copy it to the clipboard
- Fix: if Google search timed out, the search table would always say "Searching Google..."
- Fix: the search bar wasn't always visible after selecting a contact with multiple addresses
- Many other small tweaks and fixes

As mentioned above, I added a "Paid Features" section to the Info/Settings screen. These are basically minor perks that I plan to offer in exchange for "donations." The price levels I envision are:

- A single theme: $0.99
- All themes: $1.99
- Ability to sync recent navigation items/places between all your iOS devices (not implemented yet): $4.99
- Ability to set a charge timer (not implemented yet): $9.99

Each level would include all features in lower levels. I'm open to any feedback on this or suggestions for other things. For now, beta test versions have all paid features available. I hope to have the sync and charge timer features implemented by later this week.

However, when I search for a local produce company "a russo and sons", the google search comes up with the correct place. When I select the search result and send it I get the message "failed to identify the contents" and it doesn't have the address. The search result has the name "A. Russo & Sons Inc." perhaps it is choking on the "&"

Yes, that is on my todo list for the server side. It seems that either CARWINGS or the car itself is not very tolerant of any characters other than ascii alphanumeric and selected punctuation. So I'll need to filter anything else out.

As always, thanks for any feedback!

 

[dandrewk]

Mike - updated, looks good, but the app icon hasn't changed.

 

[Deleted member 5796]

Mike - updated, looks good, but the app icon hasn't changed.

it changed for me on my iPod touch running ios4.2. It did not change on my iPhone 4s.

 

[baronvonshush]

Mike - updated, looks good, but the app icon hasn't changed.

it changed for me on my iPod touch running ios4.2. It did not change on my iPhone 4s.

I meant to mention that. iOS appears to cache app icons pretty aggressively, and I'm not exactly sure what will force it to get the new icon. On my non-development iPad I had to restart the device to get it to use the new icon. I'm not sure if there are other methods to do this.

 

[dandrewk]

Yep, a simple power cycle did the trick. Icon looks nice!

 

[Stanton]

So how long until we can download an "official" version from iTunes? Looks like it's getting close.

 

[baronvonshush]

So how long until we can download an "official" version from iTunes? Looks like it's getting close.

I'm hoping to submit it to the app store by the end of the month. At that point, it's up to Apple as far as how long their review process takes.

The major items I have left are help/documentation and finishing the in-app purchase stuff (including implementing sync and charge timer). If the latter look like they'll be more involved, I may postpone them for a later update, but I'd rather get everything completed for the first version. There's also a handful of minor tweaks and fixes on my todo list, but nothing too big there.

 

[rslatkin]

LEAF Link is working great for me so far. It's much nicer to look at than the official app, and sending destinations to the car is working really well.

I think you should consider removing the splash screen. The iOS human interface guidelines suggest using a launch image that looks like the first screen of the application, so there is a seamless transition when the app loads.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/IconsImages/IconsImages.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Avoid using your launch image as an opportunity to provide:
An “application entry experience,” such as a splash screen
An About window
Branding elements, unless they are a static part of your application’s first screen"

 

[EricBayArea]

It has been working fine so far. I have yet to send myself a destination though - hopefully this weekend I'll try that. A few suggestions:

-When I am plugged in and charging, the "Start Charging" button is still present/illuminated. I would suggest either graying it out or remove it all together when the car is charging.
-I know its gimicky, but when the car is charging it is nice to see some type of animation indicating that it is charging as opposed to the current "Trickle", "Normal", etc.
-I know that in the setup/information screen you can switch the default charge time calculation to be 80% or 100%. It may be nice to have that setting be on the main screen so one could change it at-will when looking at the main screen?

Minor suggestions but that's all I've got for now-

 

[dandrewk]

-I know that in the setup/information screen you can switch the default charge time calculation to be 80% or 100%. It may be nice to have that setting be on the main screen so one could change it at-will when looking at the main screen?

Eric - that functionality was included in the most recent version. Simple touch the "80% in" and it changes to "Finish in", and vice versa.

 

[EricBayArea]

I'll have to download the most recent build, sorry.

 

[EricBayArea]

Another thing I noticed as today was the first day I've tracked a charge through your app...

When I plugged my car in at work (trickle) I set the charge timer to end at 4:40pm. As always the car's timer is optimistic and it just finished charging now at 4:00pm. However, a few hours ago I checked via your app and LEAF Link estimated I would reach 80% at 5:20pm (it was currently charging at that time).

I'm not sure how you are calculating 80% but you may want to re-look at the algorithm.

 

[baronvonshush]

I think you should consider removing the splash screen. The iOS human interface guidelines suggest using a launch image that looks like the first screen of the application, so there is a seamless transition when the app loads.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/IconsImages/IconsImages.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Avoid using your launch image as an opportunity to provide:
An “application entry experience,” such as a splash screen
An About window
Branding elements, unless they are a static part of your application’s first screen"

I've debated over this a lot. As a user, I am frustrated when apps take this guidance too far, providing a launch image that is an exact copy of the main screen, including all buttons and controls. This is detrimental to the user experience because there's no way to tell if you're looking at a static image that isn't responsive yet, or if the app is truly loaded and ready to go. Most of Apple's own apps do it right by showing a "blank" interface with buttons and text removed, but even their Calculator app gets it wrong.

That said, you got me thinking about using a more subtle approach which would be more in line with Apple's guidelines. I came up with something that I actually like a bit better than the currently released version. Now to decide whether to change the icon to match...

-When I am plugged in and charging, the "Start Charging" button is still present/illuminated. I would suggest either graying it out or remove it all together when the car is charging.

Two reasons why it is still available in this situation (and is always available, regardless of status). One is that if you are charging on an 80% charge timer, sending a remote charge command switches the charging session to go to 100%. Just like pressing the timer override button in the car.

The other reason is that you may have plugged in the car more recently than the latest status update in the app. If the button were disabled at this point, it would require a whole status refresh cycle before you could send the charge command. Since status doesn't exactly come quickly from Nissan/CARWINGS, this would get tiresome quickly. I assume the user knows better than the app can guess.

-I know its gimicky, but when the car is charging it is nice to see some type of animation indicating that it is charging as opposed to the current "Trickle", "Normal", etc.

I'll give it some thought. I was kind of hoping the different colors would make it stand out enough at a glance, but I can see that an animation would catch your eye even better. But then do I do the same when climate control is on (I believe the Nissan app does)?

When I plugged my car in at work (trickle) I set the charge timer to end at 4:40pm. As always the car's timer is optimistic and it just finished charging now at 4:00pm. However, a few hours ago I checked via your app and LEAF Link estimated I would reach 80% at 5:20pm (it was currently charging at that time).

I'm not sure how you are calculating 80% but you may want to re-look at the algorithm.

The app just reports what it gets from CARWINGS. For the 80% estimate, it simply subtracts 1.5 hours (normal charging) or 3.5 hours (trickle) from the CARWINGS estimate. These numbers are based on what I see consistently see in my case when I've completed an 80% charge. Obviously YMMV.

What I think happened here, though, was that the CARWINGS estimate was simply a bit pessimistic at the time you checked it. I see this a lot myself. For example if I start charging at noon, it may estimate completion at, say, 5:00. Then I recheck at 2:00, and completion is estimated at 4:20. The answer you get from the app is only as good as what it gets from CARWINGS. I'm not terribly interested in trying to outsmart CW - I figure I'd get it worse as often as I got it better. :?


Thanks again for the feedback!

 

[EricBayArea]

Thanks for answering all of my comments. I see your points about the charge button always being present - I guess I've never attempted using it in that fashion.

As far as the charging colors go, I suppose it makes sense now that you say it, but when you have nothing to compare the colors nor words to, it is hard to know what they mean on their own. In lieu of an animation, perhaps an indicator of the options will help someone better understand without instructions:
trickle | normal | fast
trickle | normal | fast
trickle | normal | fast

I meant "pessimistic" when I said Carwings was being "optimistic." And knowing that you're getting the info from Carwings directly, I too would not suggest trying to outsmart it.

 

[baronvonshush]

Version 0.9.95 is updated on the server. Just a minor update this time:
- Launch is slightly faster by moving some initialization to the background
- New icon and launch screen. Less colorful / more understated than the previous graphics, but I like it. Matches the overall look of the app better.