Carwings support for non-smart phones

60% of people (myself included) don't have smart phones. It seems to me that an enterprising person could provide a very useful service for these people by providing a way to use text messages to communicate with Carwings and hence the Leaf. I'm particularly interested in being able to turn on the climate control of my car from a non-smart cell phone.

All the major pieces are available. It just takes an enterprising person with the right knowledge to integrate them.

There are free or cheap services that can receive an SMS and send an email someplace or execute a script on a web-server.
There are straight forward ways to receive and email and execute a script.
Nissan provides the carwings web-portal which allows us to communicate with our cars.
Presumably a script could be written that takes the account and password provided in the SMS message, logs into the persons Carwings account and does the desired actions by sending the needed request to the Carwings server in just the same way that a user clicking on its web page would.
If the request requires a response (e.g. asking for the present charge status), it could be sent back via SMS.

Anyone interested in doing this and providing it as a cheap or free service to the rest of us?

I know it rather defeats the point of your question, but you can now get an iPhone 3GS from AT&T for a scant $49... I guess if you don't want the added data plan, that's one thing, bu I think you'd be surprised at just how much you'd like it.

One of these years I'll probably end up with a smart phone, and will likely enjoy it. But I have no need for one, and the monthly data charges sap any enthusiasm to purchase one. On a monthly basis, I feel like we already pay plenty for three cell phones that get relatively little use. For us, this has nothing to do with "affordability"; we're just being cheapskates. (Thankfully, our Ooma "premier" VoIP landline only costs about $10/month.)

So, yes, being able to send simple text message commands to the car might be nice, though not essential.

I dropped my $70 cable TV subscription, and added $30 for a smartphone data plan. It was one of the best decisions I've made in the last couple of years. I can't believe how useful the phone is, much more than I had hoped and imagined.

That's the key, surprising thing. You might think you hardly use your phone, but once you get an easy to use smart phone, that will more than likely change. My wife hardly did anything with her cell until I got her an iPhone. Now she can't put the damn thing down. :lol:

GeekEV said:

I know it rather defeats the point of your question, but you can now get an iPhone 3GS from AT&T for a scant $49... I guess if you don't want the added data plan, that's one thing, bu I think you'd be surprised at just how much you'd like it.

Click to expand...

Well, you can even get "free" smart phones. But that will cost you some $700 in data plans over 2 years.

Esp if you start adding data plans for everyone in the family it gets quite expensive.

Yeah, it's those data plan charges that have kept me away. Plus the fact that my wife says I'm already addicted to computers. At least I leave mine behind when I walk out of the house. Incidentally, we pay $65/month for our two cell phones (like, $32.50 apiece). But at that rate we get no free data at all -- text messages (if we used them, which we don't) would cost $0.25 each. So I wouldn't be much interested in this proposal, either.

Ray

My wife initially thought the Droid was only a toy for me, but we use it constantly for price comparisons while shopping, finding new places to eat while out, navigation in car or on foot, watching videos while on an airplane, finding the parked car (and keeping track of parking meter minutes remaining), as a bubble level while hanging pictures, calculator, flashlight, music player, or even just me reading my email or the "newspaper" while in an EV meeting

I also have a Droid. The LEAF, which I am still waiting for, may cause range anxiety, but the Droid has time anxiety. Maybe I have a bad Droid, but battery life is very poor. Maybe I will need to use the LEAF battery to charge my Droid while driving. May add to range anxiety!

My favorite use for a smart phone is answering those "why is..." questions when you're out and about and they pop in to your head. Instant gratification.

As for charging your phone in the LEAF, don't let that add to range anxiety. An iPhone (for example) draws at most 5W to charge, an iPad 10W. When you're using ~20KW for driving, 2KW for the climate control and 1/4KW for "other systems", your phone is a trivial drop in the bucket...

GeekEV said:

My favorite use for a smart phone is answering those "why is..." questions when you're out and about and they pop in to your head. Instant gratification.

Click to expand...

"Where is..." questions seem especially important to combat range anxiety when you're out driving. Sure the car GPS may tell you "where is a restaurant?" but it's not so good telling you "where is a restaurant I'd want to eat at?" The most efficient use of kWh is not to drive somewhere at all because you found what you need nearby.

However it's worth noting that you can get a smart phone or tablet without a data plan, albeit without the discounted hardware price from the subscription subsidy. http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q="smartphone"+"wifi+only" I have a "cheap" limited data plan from T-mobile and use 3G data only in special circumstances. You'd be amazed how many places offer free WiFi. (Now if they would all offer free recharging too - but that's another thread...)

Finally, noting the OP's desire to remotely turn on climate control... I guess you'd mostly want to do that from home or from the office, so you could just use the web interface from a computer and skip the smartphone altogether. Didn't I read here somewhere that the web interface offers the same functionality as the iPhone app? I sure hope so since the delivery estimate of the Android app is still "Pending."

I have an idea.

Stay tuned.

It's a little different presentation (not even very different), but the same functionality, yes. For that matter, if you've got WiFi access, get an iPod touch. The iPhone app will run on that too... Or even an iPad, though it's not native to the larger iPad screen. No data plan needed.

would a Ipod Touch work for you?
I have the App on my touch - just need a car :|

In places where I have wifi, an iPod touch or my computer will work fine. However, if I go out to a store or restaurant or go running and then want to turn on the climate control, there is no wifi and then the text messaging method would be good. As other people have already mentioned, I am reluctant to pay the monthly data charges for a smart phone. That is why I prefer to get this functionality on a non-smart phone.