Find My Car Smarter App/Device

This isn't specific in any way to the leaf by I just received a couple of these dongles today and it's an incredibly good system to help you find where you left your car.



The company just launched on kickstarter a few months ago. So far it will only work if you have an iPhone 4S because it uses bluetooth 4.0 but if you do it's definitely worth the $25.

The dongle connects to your phone automatically when you turn your car on and then the apps records your location when it loses power. It also works just as well if you have multiple cars.

http://www.findmycarsmarter.com/Welcome.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just thought I'd share.

Couldn't a similar app just use the "normal" bluetooth pairing with any vehicle that has bluetooth phone support?

Losing the pairing causes the phone to remember its OWN latest location (still near the car).

No real need for yet another BT transmitter, right?

garygid said:

Couldn't a similar app just use the "normal" bluetooth pairing with any vehicle that has bluetooth phone support?

Losing the pairing causes the phone to remember its OWN latest location (still near the car).

No real need for yet another BT transmitter, right?

Click to expand...

Great idea Gary!

JohnOver said:

garygid said:

Couldn't a similar app just use the "normal" bluetooth pairing with any vehicle that has bluetooth phone support?

Losing the pairing causes the phone to remember its OWN latest location (still near the car).

No real need for yet another BT transmitter, right?

Click to expand...

Great idea Gary!

Click to expand...

Lol, no. The reason this has just come out now is because bluetooth 4.0 has the ability to be very low power. Only an app that uses bluetooth 4.0 has the ability to run in the background all the time(on an iphone) to see when the car turns on and off. The other good thing about bluetooth 4.0 is that it always connects to the transmitter, you don't have to worry about the car having trouble pairing. Hopefully more devices will have BT 4.0 soon.

I've been using the Android app 'Car Locator', which has a Bluetooth plug-in. When it loses connection with the car, it automatically stores the GPS location. Then I can pull up the app later, and it tells me where the car is located, (with a compass-type pointer), how far it is away, then also how long it's been at that location.

This seems to work, but only about 50% of the time with my phone, Droid Incredible II. It seems that I have some sort of BT compatibility with this and the leaf. It is paired, but doesn't always connect to the Leaf's BT. I have other issues with this phone and playing BT music, but that's a different story.

Seems like this could be the one function that would make Carwings useful - showing the location of the parked car on a map.

coolfilmaker said:

garygid said:

Couldn't a similar app just use the "normal" bluetooth pairing with any vehicle that has bluetooth phone support?

Losing the pairing causes the phone to remember its OWN latest location (still near the car).

No real need for yet another BT transmitter, right?

Click to expand...

Lol, no. The reason this has just come out now is because bluetooth 4.0 has the ability to be very low power. Only an app that uses bluetooth 4.0 has the ability to run in the background all the time(on an iphone) to see when the car turns on and off. The other good thing about bluetooth 4.0 is that it always connects to the transmitter, you don't have to worry about the car having trouble pairing. Hopefully more devices will have BT 4.0 soon.

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Huh? I would only need BT 4.0 (and the extraneous little USB Dongle) if I wasn't using the normal LEAF BT connection. Gary's right, if I'm connected to the LEAF via its built-in BT all I would need is an App that is notified when the LEAF BT pairing goes down (which happens when the car is turned off) and then the App logs the current position using the location API. The low-power BT4.0 connection is great for saving power, but functionally it is no different than BT2.0 in terms of the Headset & Audio streaming profiles. The problem is the Operating System, not the version of BT: in the Android OS an App can register for the notification when any BT pairing is lost, in the Apple OS an App cannot register for such a notification without BT4.0.

padamson1 said:

Huh? I would only need BT 4.0 (and the extraneous little USB Dongle) if I wasn't using the normal LEAF BT connection. Gary's right, if I'm connected to the LEAF via its built-in BT all I would need is an App that is notified when the LEAF BT pairing goes down (which happens when the car is turned off) and then the App logs the current position using the location API. The low-power BT4.0 connection is great for saving power, but functionally it is no different than BT2.0 in terms of the Headset & Audio streaming profiles. The problem is the Operating System, not the version of BT: in the Android OS an App can register for the notification when any BT pairing is lost, in the Apple OS an App cannot register for such a notification without BT4.0.

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Yes it would be possible to use bluetooth 2 with a car's handsfree system. It's possible but it's not worth the sacrifices you make on the device side for a small benefit. It would be sort of like using a floppy disk to transfer word a word document. The point of bluetooth 4 is that with low power consumption you can have devices connect and transfer info that you wouldn't have before because it would have used too much energy and not been worth it. While carwings could perform the same function, the privacy implications are probably what prevented nissan from adding it as a feature.

coolfilmaker said:

Yes it would be possible to use bluetooth 2 with a car's handsfree system. It's possible but it's not worth the sacrifices you make on the device side for a small benefit. It would be sort of like using a floppy disk to transfer word a word document. The point of bluetooth 4 is that with low power consumption you can have devices connect and transfer info that you wouldn't have before because it would have used too much energy and not been worth it. While carwings could perform the same function, the privacy implications are probably what prevented nissan from adding it as a feature.

Click to expand...

OK. We must be talking about two different things. Since I consider the handsfree the whole reason for having BT on my phone in the car, I don't consider having the Handsfree Profile active 'a small benefit'. In fact it's the sole reason I use BT on my phone: for safer driving if someone calls me.

Given that one is only going to be in the car for an hour, having a BT Handsfree connection is virtually free on just about every phone (remember BT power is nothing compared to a 3G or Wifi radio), so the 'sacrifices on the device' are negligible maintaining the handsfree profile (streaming is a different story, but it is still small compared to a 3G phone call). The BT radio power consumption peaks when the profile is active (talking on the phone and for the periodic battery & connection info that you see on the screen) and is the same for BT4 or BT2. The BT4 benefit is when there is no data being exchanged as part of the profile and only keep alive packets are being sent to keep the pairing active. Here BT4.0 maintains the pairing for almost free, however since BT2.0 uses very little power to retain the pairing, the difference between the two is only measurable when I stay paired with something for many hours (which is not the case for a LEAF pairing).

So if you're not using the BT Handsfree, well yeah BT4.0 would definitely have an advantage since the BT Profile is never actively transferring data and BT4's low-power benefit can be taken advantage of the entire time the pairing is up. However if you are using Handsfree, BT4 & BT2 power usage will be virtually the same over the hour or so you're paired and Gary's idea gives you the same functionality without the separate USB dongle.

I just tried the handsfree model with the Android simulator and it worked fine: My Car finder app is launched when the BT any pairing is lost, I check which one and if it's the one I care about I save the location. When my App is launched standalone I can show that last location on Google Maps (which means if I was energetic I could write code for some sort of active direction finder to find the car). As noted earlier on this thread, the tricky part is making sure location services actually has a good current location, I know this can be hit or miss depending on the phone. I'll contact a buddy who's got the Apple SDK to see if he can confirm that I'm correct about the pairing dropped notification not being available in normal BT2 iOS.

If it looks like it can be done on an Apple and my buddy wants to do it, I'll be sure he gives Gary a royalty ;-)

Anyone know of an iPhone equivalent app that would automatically log the location of the car based on dropped BT?

DurkaDurka said:

Anyone know of an iPhone equivalent app that would automatically log the location of the car based on dropped BT?

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Yes. It's called find my car smarter.

Sorry, I meant to say that does not require the BT USB and an iphone 4S.

DurkaDurka said:

Sorry, I meant to say that does not require the BT USB and an iphone 4S.

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I know. That was my point. :lol:

Very-Smart Car Finder:
When you park, instead of just locking and blindly heading for the "store", take a brief moment to Stretch (for health), and look around at more distant features of your surroundings, noting how poles, trees, and buildings line up in two more-or-less right-angle directions.

Later, when you come back, do not even look at the cars. Just look at those (remembered) features, getting the objects you chose (in both directions) lined up as they were when you "stretched".

When they line up, THEN look for your car. You will probably be standing right near it!

Practice a couple of times and you will be amazed at your accuracy.

And, it helps keep your brain healthy as well.

garygid said:

Very-Smart Car Finder:
When you park, instead of just locking and blindly heading for the "store", take a brief moment to Stretch (for health), and look around at more distant features of your surroundings, noting how poles, trees, and buildings line up in two more-or-less right-angle directions.

Later, when you come back, do not even look at the cars. Just look at those (remembered) features, getting the objects you chose (in both directions) lined up as they were when you "stretched".

When they line up, THEN look for your car. You will probably be standing right near it!

Practice a couple of times and you will be amazed at your accuracy.

And, it helps keep your brain healthy as well.

Click to expand...

LMAO. My daughter used my wife's car the other day (which doesn't have a GPS) and complained she couldn't get anywhere b/c her phone was dead and she couldn't use GoogleMaps.

Yes we are truly enabling a society that can't do anything that everybody 40yrs ago could easily do without any batteries...

padamson1 said:

Yes we are truly enabling a society that can't do anything that everybody 40yrs ago could easily do without any batteries...

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You realize that you just said that on an electric car forum right?

In the Olden Days people would bicycle to the store, or walk to school, or to the moving picture show.

Now, there would not be much left of the "modern" world if we lost electricity, or had a massive EMP.

But, having "EV" is sweet, compared to having gas!

coolfilmaker said:

padamson1 said:

Yes we are truly enabling a society that can't do anything that everybody 40yrs ago could easily do without any batteries...

Click to expand...

You realize that you just said that on an electric car forum right?

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Well now that you mention it...no I didn't...GP.

However I still believe we rely too much on machines to do things that we could easily do on our own or with non-powered technology (portable phones, tablets, trash compactors, electric assist bikes, GPS, Kindles, vacuum cleaners, ...). They are wonderfully convenient devices, but we should be able to live without them but for some reason nobody can.

Are we really in such a hurry that we can't spend 10secs when we get out of the car to imprint a memory so we can find it later?