Detect Driving w/o Car Dock

[Becca]

Is there a way to program Tasker to detect that I'm in a vehicle,
based on if my speed is faster than 15mph?
I would like it to switch to a Driving mode and also incorporate some
sort of delay so that it won't switch out of this mode when I'm at a
stop light. I don't currently have a car dock to use the Dock option,
only a phone holder.

Thanks in advance!

[UncleMike]

There's no speed detection, if that's what you're looking for. If you
have a Bluetooth device in your car you could trigger on a connection
with that, using the Bluetooth Connected context. If you don't have
one you might want to consider installing a cheap one.

[jasonl99]

It won't get you the speed thing, but here's what I do:

The following conditions mean I am in my car:

1) Not connected to work wifi
2) Not connected to home wifi
3) Plugged in

That might be a quick fix for you for now.

[Paul van Rossen]

You could experiment with calculating the difference between %LOC and
the value %LOC had 10 seconds earlier, don't know if possible
though :)

[kpantz]

Depending on what you want to do in your driving mode, you could get
around this with a task/widget combo. For me, all I need is for the
phone to have the keyguard off, speakerphone on and brightness set
pretty high. To achieve this, I have a task that first toggles the
Keyguard and displays a popup telling me if Driving Mode is On or Off,
which in this example is really just the inverse of the Keyguard
setting. Then, I look at the just-changed %KEYG value to determine
what to do with the other settings. I use actions with IF to set
speakerphone on and brightness high if %KEYG is off; the opposite
happens if %KEYG is on.

This gives me a one-touch "Driving Mode." Could be a lot worse, and I
don't have to shell out for a car dock (not sure if there's even one
out there for the Incredible yet, and it's probably close to $50 if
one is!).

HTH

On Jul 26, 10:50 pm, Becca <caribbhoney...@gmail.com> wrote:

[UncleMike]

Depending on how your device sits in your phone holder, you may be
able to use some combination of power and orientation to accurately
detect when you're in the car. Something like:

Context: Orientation Standing Up
Context: Power Any
Load App: Car Home

[Becca]

Thanks for the tips, everyone!
I love Tasker's flexibility. I'll give the widget and gesture features
a try.

[claycourtdad]

There is an app called speedometer which I downloaded for this very
purpose. It does a good job of figuring out speed. I was planning to
create a profile that uses variables from Speedometer when the speed >
20 mph and I am connected to my bluetooth, disable the keyboard and
reply to all SMS/emails with an email that says "I'm driving". Great
in theory but after 20 minutes of driving with speedometer my battery
dropped from 80% to 20%. My next thought is to simply check if I am
connected to my car bluetooth, then it knows I am in the car.

On Jul 26, 10:50 pm, Becca <caribbhoney...@gmail.com> wrote:

[James Boland]

Im guessing Speedometer uses the GPS to figure out your speed ? That
would explain the battery drain.

A speed condition would have to use multiple triggers to incorporate
but it could be done pretty easily.
The main one is the accelerometer. If that notices a certain G force
for about 60 seconds then it means that you arent standing still,
unless you move very erratically.
The second would be orientation. It would need to be within a small
range of values to allow for some movement. You dont really need to
specify a range if you use a dock or leave your phone on the dashboard
but it would be needed for those who keep their phone's in their
pocket. As far as I know, the accelerometer uses an X Y Z axis to
register what orientation the phone is at.
The last trigger would be a charging/docked condition from your car
charger. This is mainly for people who drive themselves and not for
those who use public transport or cycle.

Im not sure about the accelerometer but these should be pretty battery
conservative as opposed to using the GPS.

[BossMan]

> The main one is the accelerometer. If that notices a certain G force
> for about 60 seconds then it means that you arent standing still,
> unless you move very erratically.

I don't think it's a good approach for detecting the "in-car"
position, as you would have to either accelerate or brake for one
minute, which is not likely to happen. If you're cruising on a
motorway with the same speed your accelerometer will give you zero
reading and the profile would exit. Not to mention the profile would
exit also if you're e.g. stuck in a traffic jam without moving for
only a minute.

I think orientation + power (optionally: + bluetooth headset/car
connected) is a) enough and b) more reliable than detecting movement/
speed.

Still, the easiest solution is to use a car dock tough ;-)

BR,
A.

[Jon Bray]

If you have one of the newer phones which can detect NFC stickers you can purchase one of these very cheaply (couple of dollars) and purchase the NFC add-on for tasker (about a dollar).  Use a (free) NFC writer from google play to write some text (like "car mode") to the sticker and place it on your phone holder.  Now when you put the phone in the holder it will realize where it is.  Just trying this out on my Nexus 4 and seems to work quite well (only issue is that if it jiggles in the holder your task might be toggled twice - guess you could set/check a %bCarModeActive flag to get around this.

[Marcelo Piquet]

I set the phone to know its is on the car just setting the usb-charging power option (it's the only place I use an usb charger). Whenever the usb power is charging, my phone knows I am at the car, and then I set the speaker on, load maps and unlocked screen...

[ed woods]

Becca,

Their is a variable I believe %LOCSPD which shows the GPS speed. So you could create a profile that checks that forces checking the current gps and then compare the %LOCSPD variable to see if it is greater than 15 and if it is then turn on your car mode or which ever mode you would like.

[Dan Shuck]

Autolocation is a plugin for tasker that does just what you describe. It detects and determines if you're walking, ina vehicle, or even the orientation of the phone.