Interested in an unofficial Apple Watch app?

[B61]

Just quick info: your location data is much more accurate than original Porche app.
I don;t know how is that possible, but I found out yesterday, when my car was towed (charging suddenly stopped) to the dealer, located 50km away.
When I checked location in your app, it was exact, while Porche app had wrong data, about 10km away from my home.
Today, data at Porsche app still the same saying that my car is unlocked, 10km away from home (yes, I relaunched app more than once)

Anyway, I wish you to sell your app to Porche… do you have any contacts?
Maybe I can pull some strings?

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[electricsidecar]

Just quick info: your location data is much more accurate than original Porche app.
I don;t know how is that possible, but I found out yesterday, when my car was towed (charging suddenly stopped) to the dealer, located 50km away.
When I checked location in your app, it was exact, while Porche app had wrong data, about 10km away from my home.
Today, data at Porsche app still the same saying that my car is unlocked, 10km away from home (yes, I relaunched app more than once)

I've got an article in the queue for the Nuts and Bolts newsletter that will go into the network / caching system powering Electric Sidecar. This system is one of the main reasons why the app feels as fast as it does to use.

Anyway, I wish you to sell your app to Porche… do you have any contacts?
Maybe I can pull some strings?

I appreciate the compliment thank you! At this point I'd just love for Porsche to provide Electric Sidecar with an official API key so that I can finally put the app into the App Store with confidence ?

 

[electricsidecar]

Actually, with that in mind if anyone would be open to sharing a testimonial about the app, I'd love to gather that to add to my pitch deck for the app getting official API access!

If you're open to doing so please shoot me an email at [email protected]. Just a couple sentences about what you like about the app or how you use it in your daily life would be enough!

 

[electricsidecar]

v1.4.0-36 is now out with a new widget: battery history!

You can add this new widget to your phone home screen or lock screen:

Or add it as a complication on your watch:

Or pin it to your watch's "swipe up" widget stack:

Other updates in this release include:

- Very rudimentary German translations. Feedback highly appreciated on any part of the translations (send feedback to [email protected])
- You can now see recalls on the watch app.
- Fixed a bug that was causing trips to erroneously be treated as ongoing after they'd ended.

 

[UKTIVO]

v1.4.0-36 is now out with a new widget: battery history!

You can add this new widget to your phone home screen or lock screen:

Or add it as a complication on your watch:

Or pin it to your watch's "swipe up" widget stack:

Other updates in this release include:

- Very rudimentary German translations. Feedback highly appreciated on any part of the translations (send feedback to [email protected])
- You can now see recalls on the watch app.
- Fixed a bug that was causing trips to erroneously be treated as ongoing after they'd ended.

It’s like Christmas Day every day I wake now. New gadgets for my ultra watch and iPhone. What more could anyone want.
Thanks

 

[bn8959]

FYI I’m still getting crashes on the journey page

 

[electricsidecar]

FYI I’m still getting crashes on the journey page

Working on a fix for that one! Has been a tricky one to reproduce but I think I have a way to build some safeties into the app.

 

[taycan2024]

I appreciate the compliment thank you! At this point I'd just love for Porsche to provide Electric Sidecar with an official API key so that I can finally put the app into the App Store with confidence ?

do you have an unofficial API key, or do you web scrape with the users credentials?

I see a risk that if your app gets too big, Porsche will revoke any kind of access. And then blame it on security or whatever.

anyways, keep up the great work, appreciate it.

 

[electricsidecar]

do you have an unofficial API key, or do you web scrape with the users credentials?

I see a risk that if your app gets too big, Porsche will revoke any kind of access. And then blame it on security or whatever.

anyways, keep up the great work, appreciate it.

The app uses the web OAuth credentials, so it works similar to a specialized web browser in that sense. This auth model is the same as if the app could use an official API key, but to your point I don’t want to put this functionality into the App Store until it has official support; I want Electric Sidecar to be a product people can rely on and the current approach is too fragile for anything beyond a beta testing pool.

That being said, I will likely release a version of the app at some point to the App Store that supports only the Tesla API, because they have released an official api for vehicle access. My heart’s just much more into the app being a Taycan-first product so I’m ok waiting ?

 

[ColinTheBandit]

I have the battery widget for a normal iPhone page but no widget for the lock screen?
Thanks

 

[electricsidecar]

I have the battery widget for a normal iPhone page but no widget for the lock screen?
Thanks

The flow for adding Lock Screen complications is really clunky:

1. Press your phone’s lock button to get to your Lock Screen.
2. Tap and hold the Lock Screen to enter edit mode.
3. Tap “Customize”
4. Tap your Lock Screen.
5. Tap the complications area beneath your clock. This will show the widgets sheet.
6. Search for “Sidecar” to find the app’s widgets.
7. You should see the “battery history” widget in the list.

Which step isn’t matching up with your experience?

 

[electricsidecar]

I have noticed that iOS will sometimes not show the app’s widgets in the list until you restart the phone. I’ll look into if there’s something I can do to force that to happen automatically, but try rebooting if you’re not seeing the new widget after step 6 above.

 

[ColinTheBandit]

I have noticed that iOS will sometimes not show the app’s widgets in the list until you restart the phone. I’ll look into if there’s something I can do to force that to happen automatically, but try rebooting if you’re not seeing the new widget after step 6 above.

Yep, that sorted it, thank you!
Good to know for next time

 

[electricsidecar]

That’s an amazing Lock Screen ?

 

[electricsidecar]

v1.4.0-37 is out now with the following improvements:

- Migrated the entire app to iOS 17's new Observable system. This means that the app is significantly more performant, as fewer aspects of the app UI need to change when data is updated. This most notably improves the performance of the watchOS app's animations when moving between vehicles in multi-car garages.
- As part of the above, I've overhauled the way data is passed around the app. This is expected to resolve one of the main crashers introduce in v1.4.0-24 with the new watchOS 10 design language.
- Widgets now show data significantly faster on first launch.
- The battery widget's design has been tuned to optimize it for the watch and lock screen dimensions, removing clutter and improving legibility.
- Fixed an API parsing error for Tesla vehicles.
- The activity state badge on the trips button is now legible in dark mode.
- The current trip activity (e.g. walking / driving) is now more accurately surfaced to the UI.

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