Auto Buddy Android App

[AndyCr15]

You may have seen my 'Bikers Best Friend' app, this is basically the same but renamed for cars.

A handy app for all vehicle owners, be it for locations, maintenance logs, to do lists, MPG calculations. Hopefully everything you could need.

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GARAGE

- Add up to 8 vehicles to your garage
- Get MOT and service warnings
- track how long (time and miles) since you replaced certain parts of the vehicle
- Fuelling logs Record miles, litres and price
- MPG for each vehicle (as you add fuelling details)
- The cost spent on each vehicle

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MAINTENANCE

- A Maintenance log, log any work you do on the vehicle
- Include any costs in the log, for total costs to be tracked
- Mark Maintenance as Service or MOT or leave as just a regular log
- Select parts replaced and it tracks how old they are (miles and date)
- Add historical work, don't worry if you've owned the vehicle for years and just got the app, set the date the work happened and it's logged

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TO DO LIST

- Log future work that needs doing
- Record the quoted/expected price of this work
- Include a URL so you can find parts later

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ANNUAL REPORTS

- Fuel and Maintenance
- Different stats like pence per mile
- Average tank
- Miles Per Gallon

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LOCATIONS

The app is preloaded with
- UK race tracks
- Upcoming Auto Shows
- Biker Hotspots in the UK like Ace Cafe, Rykers and Loomies.
- Traffic, downloading live traffic data and see it on your map
- Your own favourites. Add and remove as you wish.

All these are listed by proximity to you.

Any of these locations can be navigated to (by linking through to Google Maps)

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CLOUD BACKUP

If you're using Android 6.0 and above and have App Data backup turned on, your data will be backed up to the cloud each day.

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PERMISSIONS

Location... for the map usage.
Storage Access... at present the traffic data is downloaded to your device, then parsed.

From the few reviews I've had, people like the logging on maintenance jobs. Personally I like that and logging fuel ups, which then gives me annual reports including a total cost per mile (add maintenance and fuel costs per mile)

I've been working on it a couple of months now, so it's stable and reasonably bug free.

I'd be keen to know your feedback.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androidandyuk.autobuddy

 

[Cleisthenes]

Well done for making such an app, I have no where near the know how to do something similar.

If I'm being cynical, what would you say that your app offers over a competitor such as Fuelio?

 

[AndyCr15]

I've never used Fuelio, didn't even know it existed. From a quick look at its play store listing, it does look a very complete app.

 

[BananaDunka]

If you can implement an import function to import already stored data from say Fuelo, then I’d give this a go for a few weeks and see how it compares.

As it stands, I have 2.5yrs of data stored in Fuelio, and manually putting those back into a new app will be too time consuming!

 

[xs2man]

If you can implement an import function to import already stored data from say Fuelo, then I’d give this a go for a few weeks and see how it compares.

As it stands, I have 2.5yrs of data stored in Fuelio, and manually putting those back into a new app will be too time consuming!

Thats a great suggestion. I beleive you can export feully data as a csv, so it might not be too difficult for that. I have many tens of thousands of tracked miles already on there.

The format is plain text CSV (comma-separated values). The first line contains column names and text is in quotes. The columns included are car name, model, mpg, odometer, miles/km, gallons/litres, price, city percentage, fuelup date, date added, tags, notes, missed_fuelup, partial_fuelup, latitude, and longitude. For a more detailed look at the format, take a look at our import format.

What I really want, and would no doubt be too complicated, is an app where I can just take a picture of a receipt and the app extracts all the fuel /date info from the picture, and all I then enter is the miles (I actually just take pics now of the receipt with the trip comp in the background, and fill in the details later just now). Of course, that's really just me being proper lazy.

 

[AndyCr15]

If you can implement an import function to import already stored data from say Fuelo, then I’d give this a go for a few weeks and see how it compares.

If you want to upload a backup, I could take a look. If I can convert it to a JSON file, it should be reasonably easy.

Thats a great suggestion. I beleive you can export feully data as a csv, so it might not be too difficult for that. I have many tens of thousands of tracked miles already on there.

I have loads of info in Fuelly too. Luckily I don't do many miles so I moved over the last couple of years to my app. I don't see where the option to export Fuelly info is? **EDIT** Sorry, found it now.

 

[BananaDunka]

Yeah you can export to csv, backup to cloud etc so the import ability would definitely be doable.

I've installed the app anyway just to check out how it looks and functions. Few things stick out.

1: The icon doesn't fit in with the rest of the apps, it's too basic and has no transparency:

2: Perhaps the ability to change colour scheme, because purple with dark text is hard to read

 

[BananaDunka]

If you want to upload a backup, I could take a look. If I can convert it to a JSON file, it should be reasonably easy.



I have loads of info in Fuelly too. Luckily I don't do many miles so I moved over the last couple of years to my app. I don't see where the option to export Fuelly info is? **EDIT** Sorry, found it now.

Sure thing, do yo have an email I can send it to?

 

[AndyCr15]

The colour scheme is annoying me, in that I would have thought it should be very easy to change. In one xml file you define Primary, Primary Dark and Accent. Surely I can just change these when someone selects a different theme... no, apparently not.

Dark text, the hints are kinda meant to be less obvious. I'll have a fiddle and see if I can make them lighter though.

The icon is quite basic, as unfortunately that's not something I'm good at. I'm might look for a designer at some point to make me one. I can hopefully do a transparent background though. **EDIT** Made transparent already.

Send the file to ** removed now used ** and I'll see what I can do. If I don't get to it today though, it might be a while as I'm off to Santa Pod tomorrow. I appreciate you taking a look though and giving some feedback

 

[BananaDunka]

I'm sure someone here can do an icon design Applying material design to apps should be easier on Nougat iirc, but I've no experience in actually making an app.

Just don't ask in GD unless you want... Something else.

Have sent the CSV by the way.

 

[AndyCr15]

Thanks, I'll see what I can do with your data. I'll let you know once I've looked at it and implemented to import code!

 

[BananaDunka]

Thanks, I'll see what I can do with your data. I'll let you know once I've looked at it and implemented to import code!

 

[AndyCr15]

Well, in some ways it was easier than I thought... the getting JSON from csv was anyway, using this site. Very nifty.

Then there were all kinds of hurdles. Firstly, Fuelio only asks for your odometer when you fill up. I use the trip counter. Wasn't too hard to sort. I had noticed one of the reviews says it calculates MPG wrong... which I found maybe why as it you use the miles the odometer suggests you've used, with the rest of the info in that log, it's one step out... if that makes sense? Anyway, got round that. Got round the completely different date format.

it was actually quite a fun challenge

Mrk, I'll email you a new apk with the necessary code and the two url's to use. Thanks.

**EDIT** It's funny, when I see someone else has a much more complete app than me, looks better, probably better functionality, it's a little disheartening in some ways. Then I remind myself I've only been doing this for a few months, they're a pretty big setup (I think) and will have been doing it for years. I then have a challenge like this and it reminds me, the main reason I'm doing this is because I enjoy it! If I can make an app I use myself, then all the better!

Initially I couldn't think why you might use my app over a 'better' one. Then I realised the reason would be that I'm hear and listening to suggestions!

 

[Cleisthenes]

Initially I couldn't think why you might use my app over a 'better' one. Then I realised the reason would be that I'm hear and listening to suggestions!

That's a perfectly good answer! I trust mrk's opinion so will see how he gets on. I'm not using Fuelio at the moment but I'd definitely be happy to give yours a try if data can be moved to and from!

Good luck on your app journey by the way

 

[AndyCr15]

Thanks I might have to do more code, as different places will export in a different format, but now I'd done it once, it shouldn't be too hard to import other data. Unfortunately I don't have the know how to do it all within the app. I would need to be sent the exported data to configure.

 

[badgeruk]

I Might take a look at this. Just got my first android phone ( I miss windows phone already ). Also just downloaded the app tools so I can port my own personal apps over so just getting my head around the differences android and windows apps at the moment.

About the Icon, can you just change the white to transparent or almost transparent dark grey ? That might improve it in the short term at least.

 

[BananaDunka]

I've given the updated apk a go Andy and replied back. Perhaps a bug in compatibility with my phone or something as pasting the URL into one of the input boxes populated the other with the same URL and nothing imports.

Or maybe there's supposed to be an import button beside the box that's not showing up for me? I'm on a Galaxy S8 by the way, so the resolution is non standard by default.

Happy to continue testing though, as you say, it's quite fun!

With fuelio I always enter the odo reading every fill-up, so haven't had any issues with MPG accuracy as it appears to be in-line with what the trip computer says.

The issue with Fuelio is if you make a typo with any entry, then all values after that are skewed, and finding the offending entry weeks later can get a bit tedious to correct it!

I think your app may well end up being ideal if you do continue to develop it using forum member's feedback

As for the date format being wrong in the other app, I actually use the American format everywhere! It just makes logical sense when shifting throughout date sorted lists whereby the year and month are first

 

[AndyCr15]

Have replied to check how you're entering the urls. Just tap 'Fuel' or 'Maintenance', enter the url and press enter.

For my app the odometer reading is optional. If you don't enter it for a while, it finds the last one and adds all the fuels since then to work out what it should be.

I've had many great ideas from forum members already from when I first posted about it as 'Bikers Best Friend' in the Bikers forum, so looking forward to seeing what else people suggest. I want to keep it relatively simple though

When it exported, the date went "2017-07-27" and mine uses "27-Jul-2017". Wasn't actually too hard to sort. Dates seem very odd in java though, Strings, Dates, Calendars, MilliSeconds... it's all quite odd how much you have to convert things around.

 

[BananaDunka]

Looks like pressing enter on the keyboard results in it wanting to add a new line instead of accepting what's already been input, sent screenshot accordingly!

 

[AndyCr15]

Fixed

I've had a small breakthrough in my Regular Reminders app, although it syncs well with your Google account using a Firebase online realtime database, I've wanted for some time to work out how to export the SQLite database that the info is stored in. This evening I've cracked it!!!

Really I wanted this more for Auto Buddy though. I think there's too much info to be dealing with an online Database, and in fact at present I'm storing it all in SharedPreferences, which I have been told I should do for such large amounts, but I hadn't learnt about SQLite when I started this app. So, now I can backup and restore an SQLite database, I just need to go ahead and change all the code to store the app data in one! I'm actually not sure if that's an hour or a days job! I'd best wait to my next day off to be safe

Anyway, I'm just rambling. For the user, it wont really make any difference, except the export and import of data facility. As it stands, as long as you're on Android 6.0 and have app data set to backup, you'd be fine anyway, it auto backs up shared prefs every night and would put it all back on a fresh install. (Not dared test it yet mind...)