I had seen a tutorial showing how to use AutoInput and AutoVoice to create a system that could grab the ETA information from Google Maps and send it as a text message to someone to let them know when you would be arriving. It looked pretty good, but, A) I really don't ever need to do that, and B) I know for a fact that voice commands are ...ineffective in a convertible with the top down cruising along at 70 with the stereo blasting.
If you're one of the 22 people who have read the first installment of this adventure "Adding Tech to a Z3 Using an Android Phone", you might remember that I ended that by saying that I really wanted a fully voice controlled interface. Well, I actually did have that at one point. I spent a good deal of time during the first few months of 2014 building it. I used AutoVoice in continuous mode on my phone to create an always-listening system that could capture and interpret voice commands and send them off as AutoRemote messages to the tablet to be executed. It was really pretty full-featured and could switch apps, start navigation, control music, search for and play specific songs, and so on. All in all, it recognized about 30 different commands. And it worked perfectly...in my home office, where I created it.
In the car, however, it was another matter. The first warm spring day that I could get the car out, I backed into the driveway, fired up the system, and began testing. Even with a good Bluetooth headset and the car not even moving, my commands were recognized about one out of every ten times when the stereo was on, even when I was speaking quite loudly.
There's a nice elderly lady in our neighborhood who still brings me cookies once in a while because she feels sorry for me. She had seen me sitting in the car yelling "Torque!", "Maps!", "Torque!", "Damn it!", and became convinced that I have Tourette Syndrome. Needless to say, I abandoned voice control in favor of what I'm using now.
Anyway, although I didn't take away anything directly from that tutorial, it got me wondering if there was some other way to catch and use the ETA information. Turns out, there is.
In addition to displaying that info on its own screen, Maps also creates a notification that contains essentially the same thing. By using AutoNotification I'm able to capture it, massage it into a more compact format, and display it on the main screen. Like this:
Even though this might not seem like that big of a deal, it's very useful for me since 90% of the time when I flip over to the Maps app, it's to see this information.
You see, I live in one of the fly-over states and most of my road trips include directions like: "...Continue straight for 87 miles, then turn right and continue straight for 64 miles...". I don't really need to check those directions very often. About the only time I actually use the turn-by-turn information is when I'm skirting the edge of a city. (Defined as any place with a population of more than 5000.)
So having this on-screen all the time keeps me from switching apps as often, which is safer and doesn't annoy my wife as much.
I'm not necessarily thrilled with how it looks at the moment. It seems a bit crowded and messy, but I think if I were to have it switch places with the connection icons, it would look better.
Something to do this winter while I'm eating cookies.
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