IPhone and Android Car Apps

[babybolt]

On my Android cell phone I have SpeedView installed, lets you see your actual speed traveling down the road, good for calibrating a speedometer.  And I have GasBuddy installed which lets you see a map of local gas station prices - this has saved me some serious money filling up my rolling gas tank.

The I-Phone apps might be a little further ahead of the Androids, they have one called Above MSL meant for aircraft use which shows your actual density altitude.  Would be cool for dragstrip tuning and dyno calibration.

There are probably a bunch more apps out there, would be interesting to see what other folks are using for auto related work.

With the rapid advances being made with these "smart" phones, I would'nt be surprised to see a lot more tuning apps soon.

[machoneman]

True, although they can only report conditions external to an engine. Weather factors do affect engine performance as we know. Maybe an app that plugs into a car's ECM via a port and actually affects (tunes) the engine's parameters would be better. 'Course, all modern EFI cars do this already. I'm thinking of custom or aftermarket EFI's like Jay might add to a SOHC or Tunnel Port. I'm not sure if their 'map' takes in (or can take in) all weather related factors and adjust for changes.  

  

[jayb]

The aftermarket EFI systems that I'm familiar with all adjust for weather conditions.  This includes FAST, MegaSquirt, ems-pro, and BigStuff3.  All use air temperature sensors, coolant temperature sensors, and MAP (Manifold Absolute Pressure sensors) to control the fuel delivery.  At Drag Week this year when I changed from the stacks to the tubes with K&N air cleaners on my car, I forgot to plug the air temperature sensor back in after I made the change.  The car ran horribly rich for five or six miles before I figured out the problem.  Apparently when there is no air temperature sensor plugged in, the ems-pro defaults to a condition of -40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was trying to add extra fuel to compensate for the low temperature.

[machoneman]

Good to know Jay. After my posting, I thought about it and doh!

Yes, modern aftermarket must be able to read weather and compensate for it. I was still thinking of the earliest (Ford) EFI controllers that also used sensors, but primarily (i.e. priority) controlled engine functions (ala' Speed Density) via a map.