Integrate an OBDii dongle with Bluetooth and have the app read it from there.
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OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
71–80 of 82 posts
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Availability and location cannot be solved with a note pad.
A shared AirTag could probably take care of the location issue easily. I assume that in this scenario with exclusively trusted users, trading off privacy for the convenience might be worthwhile.
One design requirement was that the car’s location is only known when it is available, which rules out AirTags.
And sure, relaxing that requirement would make for an easier implementation. But also worse acceptance by users.
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#73For years the family joke has been that when we take a family picture we need to take 5 because I will inevitably have my eyes closed in the first 4.
So I made an IOS app just for us that does face detection and won't take the actual photo until all of the detected faces have their eyes open.
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#74Oh man! I made an app for my family too. They have an antiques/book selling business on eBay so I made an app for them to actually keep track of things as they buy them . That was where their process was breaking down - When did we buy this? How much was it? The sort of things that are semi-difficult to keep track of when you're going to A LOT of estate sales and then basically need to enter all the stuff into a spre…
Why PDF for the data format instead of, say, CSV?
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#75Oh man! I made an app for my family too. They have an antiques/book selling business on eBay so I made an app for them to actually keep track of things as they buy them . That was where their process was breaking down - When did we buy this? How much was it? The sort of things that are semi-difficult to keep track of when you're going to A LOT of estate sales and then basically need to enter all the stuff into a spre…
Why PDF for the data format instead of, say, CSV?
I’m speculating it’s because most phones know how to natively handle PDFs (and not CSVs).
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#76Most of the friction I’ve hit with tiny household setups isn’t “what does the gauge say”—it’s who last updated shared state (trips, refuels, keys) and whether the next driver can rely on it. A rough UI everyone actually opens can beat a neat paper log maintained by one person.
The pencil‑and‑notepad takes make sense once the ritual is already mutual; the failure mode I see is partial adherence, where informal notes silently diverge. A purpose‑built helper can be the workflow, not only the record of it.
I’ve shipped a couple of relatives‑only gadgets; “it worked” usually meant routines lined up across people, not that the tech was flashy.
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#77Good example of over-engineering. This could be easily solved with a pencil and notepad.
It's a personal app, a learning experience, and it was fun for OP to make it. I don't understand people's need to immediately react negatively to anything and everything they see. This isn't Adobe enshittifying their apps, it's just somebody who did a fun project, ffs.
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#78Great writeup and also a great example of where LLMs can step in to help fill the gaps in areas where you don't have as much skill or interest. For instance, your wife used ChatGPT to come up with a name and you used AI to generate the admin flows that you weren't interested in building. Sounds like Flutter was a good technology choice too, given its flexibility across platforms. As a designer, I know how frustrating…
Flutter was good, but now with Liquid Glass™ I find react native (specifically expo) using expo-ui far far better at designing apps that match their native look and feel.
Native look is just a debate among developers, none of the top 10 apps use native look and I never heard any user care either.
Personally I find that it's not using Liquid Glass an advantage, at least I don't need to worry about contrasts.
Re: OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why PDF for the data format instead of, say, CSV?
I’m speculating it’s because most phones know how to natively handle PDFs (and not CSVs).
I actually ended up with pdf because I could brand it and my parents (who are in their 70s) understood it better than seeing a CSV. That was REALLY throwing them off. We went through rounds and rounds with the sharing.
So instead they just get a little image that they can import and then all the data is embedded in the pdf along with tiny images, but it just looks like a little thumbnail file.