Do you want to save petrol/gas/benzine call it what you will but as prices go up Im sure the answer is Yes. Well this App can help you do that. It promotes safe driving by monitoring, in real time, your driving and giving instant feedback on how you are doing. By moderating your acceleration and braking you can save up to 50% of the fuel you use. The art of increasing you fuel efficiency is called Hypermiling. This App warns you both visually, by changing colour, and via sound using beeps when you are accelerating too hard and braking too hard both of which waste fuel.
New to v1.1: After a user request I have added sounds (quite annoying sounds) so that when you stray into the amber, red or black zones the App emits beeps. The more beeps the more unsafe you are being. You can turn off the beeps by changing the volume setting on the device.
There is another use for the App as well. You may be concerned about your driving or the driving of a son or daughter and you need some way to get across to yourself or them that they are driving in an unsafe manner. Its not easy to do since without proof every statement of yours about unsafe actions can be countered with Well I didnt think it was. But now with the Driving Monitor App you can have your proof. It is an objective analysis of the motions of the car. It detects such events as overly sharp turns, heavy acceleration, hard braking & fast lane changes and shows the driver in real-time when these events occur. Placed at the periphery of the drivers vision the changing colours of the screen subtly inform the driver when they are being dangerous and when they are being safe. The beeps also indicate when the driver is being unsafe.
The system has four levels of safety settings: Green, Amber, Red & Black.
When the screen is green then you are driving carefully. For the screen to be green you have to have the last 50 reading within the inner circle.
When the screen is amber then you are probably still driving safely but not so much so that you can keep all the dots inside the inner circle.
When the screen is red then you are being unsafe. Some of the dots have strayed into the outer ring.
When the screen is black then you really are being unsafe bordering on dangerous. It is quite hard to drive so that the accelerometer registers enough force to change the screen black.
You cannot always stop yourself from straying into the red or black zones (to avoid a crash would be a good reason) but they should be the exception not the rule.
To start recording just select Start & the App will start to save the colour changes.
To stop recording just select Stop. You will be prompted to Cancel the Stop, Save the recording made or just stop recording & not save.
When recording is not active then the Charts & Preferences buttons are enabled. When recording is active they are disabled. It would not be safe to access these other screens when driving.
Charts takes you to a new screen that shows the last 30 recordings made. You can swipe left to right to see older recordings than this.
The chart is made up of 30 bars across the screen. The newest are shown on the right. The older to the left. Each bar is made up of up to 4 coloured b&s.
The size of each b& is a reflection of the amount of colour changes there were while the recording was active. So the more green & amber the better. The more red & black the worse your driving was.
You should be aiming to increase the amount of green & amber & decrease the amount of red & black.
Prefs takes you to the Preferences Screen. Here you can change the setting of the App to increase or decrease various sensitivities & to indicate whether the device is being held vertical or horizontal.
You will need a cradle to hold the device vertical or horizontal while driving. It will need to be visible (say under the rear view mirror)