11 replies to this topic

[beadgc23]

I gave in to curiosity tonight & downloaded "Copilot North America" from the iTunes store. I took it for a drive to a few local landmarks (Autozone, Bars, Gas Stations, Volvo of Westport) and although traditionally I've disliked chatty software it did very well, locking to GPS on a foul night and coping with intentional (and unintentional) route mistakes. It's the most "eyes off" GPS I've used (not many, I've relied on the butt compass for years on my bike) It even took me to a Starbucks I've never seen before. It also lets me play music in the background. Best part - it's $35. It needs an iPhone 3G or 3GS for the GPS, naturally, playing the voice prompts over the dock connector which some will not do. Gets a conditional thumbs up, I'll update if there's something to report.

Also check out "FuzzyCodes" a look-up OBDII code reference for $0. The developer has an OBDII package for $4, but it needs a $150 OBDII WiFi interface...later for that one.

For entertainment I use Pandora, Last.fm, Flycast, RssPlayer and the new NPR news apps, all free, all 98% bug free. If you like discovering music within your taste zone then the first two work just as well as their desktop equivalents and the second two replaced Sirius for me. The last because I still listen to Car Talk, so sue me.

Finally I nominate This as the smartest iPhone car cradle I've seen so far. Going to pick one up after I've done the dash.

[Owned]

The only auto apps I have are a repair cost estimator and Rev2. Rev2 is a very expensive app at $39 but it's fantastic for any OBDII cars. I wish I could put OBDII in my older cars just so I could use it.. It does codes just fine but more important are the gauges and race data it provides. Lap time, gas/brake mapped by GPS over satellite images of the track, etc.. Really helpful if you're into that sort of thing.

[Iloveboost]

Dont forget dynolicious! Gives you quarter mile times, 0-60 times. peak horsepower. super accurate. Also gives breaking cornering and acceleration g forces. great app for 12 bucks.

[beadgc23]

Further - Copilot NA needs a couple of minutes to sort itself out before you start your journey, but once that's done it's very fast to recalculate routes (wrong turnings etc) There's an update coming which will duck the background music under the voice guidance - very necessary feature, the iPhone seems to be on the edge of distortion with loud music while the voice is playing.

Rev2 and the other OBDII packages look great and although $39 is a lot for iPhone software it's peanuts if you think of the R&D time and the current market. Which is crippled by the current high cost ($150 and up) of the OBDII network adapters! I'm hoping that the chinese will get their $25 knock-offs onto ebay soonest, but I suspect that software developers will start locking out any interface but their own premium priced product as is already happening in the USB interface market. This isn't rocket science, people.

Dynolicious and the $2.99 Dynolicious Log Box look smart, thanks for the lead. I'm a sucker for Steampunk-flavored iPhone Apps...

It occurred to me the other night that my iPhone IS my carPC. Add a Visor/Mirror screen and a second aux input to the HU (USA•SPEC adapter has one, thanks!) and a reasonably priced OBDII network adapter, you're pretty much there apart from the storage issue, as 32GB doesn't go very far. If you want disk/USB media, there are $30-$50 DVD/USB/MP3&4/Flash card decks on ebay which might be another solution. Total cost gets up there quickly, however, but it's modular & upgradable.

[Owned]

wagonmafia, on 22 October 2009 - 07:58 PM, said:

Dont forget dynolicious! Gives you quarter mile times, 0-60 times. peak horsepower. super accurate. Also gives breaking cornering and acceleration g forces. great app for 12 bucks.

Rev lite does it free.

[beadgc23]

Owned, on 22 October 2009 - 04:42 PM, said:

The only auto apps I have are a repair cost estimator and Rev2. Rev2 is a very expensive app at $39 but it's fantastic for any OBDII cars. I wish I could put OBDII in my older cars just so I could use it.. It does codes just fine but more important are the gauges and race data it provides. Lap time, gas/brake mapped by GPS over satellite images of the track, etc.. Really helpful if you're into that sort of thing.

Which interface do you have with Rev2?

[Owned]

PLC Kiwi.

[Cal3thousand]

Co-Pilot is also available for Android (G1, Hero, MyTouch3G, etc) and it rocks!

I'm also testing out NDrive and Sygic right now. Co-Pilot is definitely cool and the traffic feature is great. Its not perfect though and can be choppy unless you let sort itself out at first and the maps are not as up-to-date as I would like.

[beadgc23]

Here's another one - aSmart HUD 3D +SpeedCams

Such a cool idea & dirt cheap - full of stuff you may never use but at 99 cents, WTF? The reflective HUD display didn't work too well for me (serious double image regardless of angle) but I have no forward/backward motion in my iPhone mount to experiment with.

[beadgc23]

Cal3thousand, on 23 October 2009 - 07:57 PM, said:

Co-Pilot is also available for Android (G1, Hero, MyTouch3G, etc) and it rocks!

I'm also testing out NDrive and Sygic right now. Co-Pilot is definitely cool and the traffic feature is great. Its not perfect though and can be choppy unless you let sort itself out at first and the maps are not as up-to-date as I would like.

Copilot was clearly written for the iPhone 3GS - just upgraded and all of the lag issues go away! The GS is seriously faster than the G.

The 11/20 epsisode of "The Appcast" podcast has a great review of all the available GPS navigation apps for the iPhone. Co-pilot comes joint first, but with these apps a month could change everything.
GPS NAV review

[beadgc23]

CoPilot NA is currently $25. Another downside - it's all on-phone so you need about 3GB free to install an update.

[mdlimy]

car talk tappet brothers ftw! best part about working in the shop on sunday