Mobile Template

New feature to Blogger is a template for mobile devices. Having had a look on my Android phone the format is much easier to read. The videos and maps I have don't reformat so there is a small amount of side scrolling for some posts. However it should make reading any Blogger based blog (assuming the owner has opted to activate the template) much easier.

Dynomaster

Why is it I find things to play with on my bike when I don't seem to have it?! Quite by accident I discovered a program for my Android phone called Dynomaster by Trackaroo (click title to go to website). In short it is a program for dyno-testing your vehicle, bike, car, truck you name it. Seeing as I don't have my bike back yet I can't run this on it. Even more annoying is I can't even test the software with my hire bike; as my road is currently sheet ice from all the snow we have had recently.

Currently the software is at version 0.3 and isn't available to buy in the UK. That means you are stuck with an 18 day trial version. I wish programmers would put this sort of information on the apps description. Otherwise I would have waited until I got my bike back or was able to get out on the hire one.

Still it has an interesting amount of options. Able to give you 60ft, 1/4mile and 1/8mile speeds. It seems that once you have done a run you can also input your own Elapsed Time (ET) to determine other information such as your 0-60 time. The data can then be outputted to Twitter, Google Earth or as a XLS spreadsheet for use in Excel or OpenOffice. Within the program you are able to view graphs for you crank power, wheel power and speed. Another graphic will show you your G levels in any given direction.

Possibly one of the more interesting abilities of this software is that it is able to speak the speed and time information to you. Granted not the most amazing feature but as a biker you can't see the screen so this, as long as you have a way to hear it in your helmet, is a great way to know when to start and stop.

That main reason that some people may want to use this for is, as its name suggests, to find out what your vehicles power is. Anyone who has been on a 'proper' dyno may well ask how can this figure it out if it isn't actually connected to the bike. Not that I will be able to tell you in detail, but with the information provided as you set up the software, it can mathematically figure out what the power is based on speed, distance, time taken etc.

Once I am able to get onto a bike without the risk of sliding off it on my ice rink, er, road, I'll try to give a more complete review of using Dynomaster.

[UPDATE]
The program has now gone to version 0.4 and has reset the number of days to 30 when I downloaded the update.

Click Here for details on the V0.4 update.

CoPilot Live 8 for Android

Having brought an Android phone (the HTC Magic) I was keen to find a replacement for the satnav software I had on my old N95 for use on my bike. The only option it seems is ALK Technologies CoPilot Live 8. Searching Android Market I came across it in two flavours, UK maps and full European maps priced at around £25 and £55 respectively. Quite a good price overall for what promises to be a full satnav program. Unfortunately it does come with some caveats but before we get to them lets look at some of the more positive aspects. Firstly it is cheap so it can be forgiven for some of the problems. The actual rendered display is actually very good with full anti-aliasing giving a nice smooth appearance, with a good layout. Menus are reasonably clear, although we now start to go downhill from here on in.


The menu structure is very confusing. Although the buttons are large and describe themselves well, there are just too many layers and it is hard to remember how you reached a certain options later. It can also be very unresponsive if there is anything running in the background. So much so that I recommend that you download TaskKiller so that you can get rid of everything else running beforehand. Instructions come through very clearly with the included female voice, even more so when using headphones. The instructions themselves aren't always that clear in terms of their directions. Quite often you will hear a 'keep left' (or right) instruction when in reality it is a turn you need to do. However one of the biggest issues with instruction clarity has to be roundabouts. As I am on the bike I can't see the screen and rely on clear vocal guidance, something CoPilot isn't good at. Approaching one roundabout I was told to take the 7th exit, not an issue as I have seen large ones before with many exits. This particular one only had three exits, not including the one I was entering from. The roundabout in question is the Crooked Billet on the A30 by Staines. The A30 goes across the middle of it and the system seems to have counted the entrance points to the 'fly through'. As I couldn't see the screen so had no idea which junction it actually meant, I also couldn't pull over to get it out to look so took a best guess (got it wrong too!). After a small trip through and around Staines I ended back at the roundabout with CoPilot telling me another exit that doesn't exist. This time I could stop and pull over to see on the map that I actually needed.

Probably the biggest issue I have with the instructions is the distances that you are told about the upcoming change. They are preset at 2 miles, 1 mile and 500 yards. These are way too far unless you are on a motorway. I mean, how many side roads in a town can you pass in 1 mile? Or even 500 yards? Quite a few it seems. Then it will sometimes tell you as you are almost on the junction (normally when you are at speed) that you need to turn, or it will tell you almost straight after the 500 yard warning. Another problem with having these preset distances is if you have one manoeuvre straight after the previous one within 500 yards. Once again it will sometimes says “do this, then do that” but most often it will tell you nothing until you hit the “ahead do this”. Which can be too late if you say at a roundabout that you need to go right on and stuck in the left lane. As a last problem with this is the time difference the distances are depending on the speed you are going. A 1 mile warning at 60mph is a minute in time, but at 30mph it is 2 minutes and that is just too long. The system needs to either have finer gradings on the distances, I would say 50, 200, 500 yards and a mile, or be time based so that you would get a 1 minute warning, 30 and 15 seconds and maybe a 2 second warning as you approach the turning. The advantage of the time system is that the distance would change depending on the current speed (or the average speed from the last minute or so). Another plus side for time based warnings is that it doesn't matter if it is miles or kilometers.

If you are expecting to run this off of the phones battery be prepared to need a recharge soon. It will last about 4 hours then you'll need to find power. To be fair this seems to be true of any phone with satnav with the GPS sucking power and the screen being on all the time. You can change a setting that will adjust when and where the screen is on for to help conserve the battery. Otherwise pluging it in is the best option. One of the more annoying aspects is when the battery does start to get low and Android wants to warn you about it, CoPilot crashes and quits. The same is true if someone tries to call while you are navigating. This may be due to the lack of memory and Android kills tasks to free memory up. However maybe CoPilot is using a little too much memory and resources. If, like me, you want to be able to listen to music while you ride then you can't with your phone while navigating, it just stutters and stalls. This could well be from the memory problems mentioned above, but I can't see any reason why CoPilot couldn't integrate with Android's built in media player to be able to play music which then pauses as navigation instructions are played.

Lastly we move onto the PC software that supports the device. Firstly when you connect to the PC you do not need to have CoPilot running. In fact you can actually remove the card from your phone, insert it into a card reader and the software will pick it up. This wasn't something that was particularly clear. Once you have it connected you have access to all the additional POIs, voices and maps etc. Aside from the map section you can expect tons of nothing in the rest of the areas. There is nothing there, at all, nada. I tried to add the camera database from PocketGPS which the software said it had sorted and sent to the card. Upon running CoPilot again it came up saying it was integrating the POIs, took ages doing it, then I couldn't find them in the POI list.

As a cheap satnav for a phone you already have it is okay, not great and certainly not brilliant. It does what it needs to do without any bells or whistles you may have come to expect from the likes of TomTom. In a pinch it will do, but you do need to be able to see the screen to make sure the instructions even make sense and you will need to plug it in if you plan a long trip. Visually and auditory it is great, the graphics are very clear and look good. The voice quality is very good and the voice comes through clearly, so you can clearly hear a bad instruction! The supporting PC software is lacking in content and doesn't seem to really do anything that you can't actually do on the device anyway. POIs, other then the built in ones, don't seem to work at all.

Overall it is a cheap and cheerful satnav that is full of problems but does what it needs to do... After a fashion.