Can’t remember where you parked your car?
Don’t worry! Your iPhone will, AUTOMATICALLY!
General Questions:
Why is an iPhone 5 or 4S required?
Our system utilizes a new technology called Bluetooth Smart.
The iPhone 5 & the 4S both support Bluetooth Smart.
Is an iPhone 3G/4/iPad supported?
No, an iPhone 5 or 4S is required.
How close do I need to be from my car in order for Find My Car Smarter to locate my car?
Unlike your keychain car remotes/fobs which require proximity to your car to operate, the Find My Car Smarter system saves the location of your car as you turn off your ignition or after you walk about 10 feet away from your car (for those car models that do not power off the cigarette lighter with the ignition). If you lose your car, launching the app will display where you last parked your car and your current position to help you get back to your car.
Will this app work in a multilevel or underground parking lot?
A GPS fix can not be reliably achieved under these conditions. You can try this for yourself by opening up Google Maps in one of these multilevel parking structures. You'll likely find that the accuracy is as wide as the entire parking structure.
If you use the Find My Car Smarter App in a multilevel or underground parking lot it will still attempt to get a location fix for 3 minutes and save the most accurate location. A shaded red circle indicates the accuracy of the saved location.
For best results, park in an above ground uncovered location.
What are the differences between the "Find My Car Smarter" and "Find My Car Smarter Pro"?
The Pro version can be used with 3rd party Bluetooth Smart devices, the standard version requires the Find My Car Smarter device sold here.
Additionally the Pro version, support logging functionality to keep track of where you have parked, how long you've parked and the miles driven. This is intended as an aid for those who need to track their mileage or billable hours.
What limitations does Find My Car Smarter have?
In mobile devices system memory is extremely constrained and in order to deliver a responsive user experience iOS aggressively terminates applications that are not running in the foreground. If our application has been terminated from memory, we are unable to save your location when you park.
As a work-around for this our system enables an iOS service to monitors Cell Towers. With this service, as you drive and a Cell Tower handover occurs this notifies and re-launches our application such that it is ready to save your parked location.
In conjuction with Cell Tower Monitoring, we also leverage a similar service called Geofencing. Setting up a Geofence around the locations that you frequently park at such as home and work, will also re-launch our app as you enter or leave these locations.
Even with these workarounds there are still corner scenarios where our app may not get relaunched and fail to update the location of your car.
Disabling Bluetooth or entering Airplane mode will also prevent our app from saving your parking location, until Bluetooth is re-enabled and the connection has been re-initialized by our app.
Questions about Bluetooth:
Can I use the Bluetooth Hands Free Kit already in my car?
Bluetooth Smart is the marketing name for Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy. iOS is architected such that third party developers must use Bluetooth Smart in order to incorporate new features into iOS. Bluetooth Classic, used by your car's hands free kit, does not support the features that are needed for this app to work.
Will this app interfere with my car’s Hands Free Kit or Bluetooth headset?
No. Your iPhone supports connections to multiple Bluetooth devices simultaneously.
Questions about the Find My Car Smarter Device:
How does this Find My Car Smart Device get powered?
The power comes from the your car's cigarette port and a USB car charger is needed. Alternatively if your car has a built-in USB connector that can also be used to power the device.
How does the Find My Car Smarter device get any power when my car is turned off?
It doesn't need power when you're parked. The Find My Car Smarter device gets powered on when you start your car, the app will wirelessly connect to the Find My Car Smarter device. When you park your car and turn off the engine the Find My Car Smarter device will get powered off. The app will see that the wireless link has been broken and save the car's current position.
What happens if my car's cigarette lighter doesn't power off with the engine?
In this scenario you won't get the optimal usage. Instead of saving where you parked, it will save the location where the Bluetooth link was broken as you walk away from your car. This will be around 10 feet away.
Can my phone be paired with multiple Find My Car Smarter devices?
Yes. The app supports being paired with multiple devices for multi-car households. The location of each car will be separately. If there are multiple drivers, you can enabling Dropbox syncing so that all the drivers can be kept aware of the parked location of each vehicle.
What happens when two iPhones are paired to a single device and you park your car?
The Find My Car Smarter device can only connect to one single iPhone at a time. If two iPhone are present when you start your engine and both are paired to a single device, then only one of the iPhones will get the updated location when you park. The iPhone that saves the location of where you have parked your car will depend on which iPhone connects to the device first. In most cases this will be random. A way to mitigate this is to enable Dropbox syncing.
Questions about iOS:
Won't the app running the background kill my battery life?
No, when you are stationary within a ~1 km (~0.62 miles) area, such as at home or at work, the app is asleep and there is no additional power drain.
However, our app does utilize a form of background location monitoring which listens for changes in cell towers. We use this location change to determine that you are driving and to prepare for when you park.
Some power consumption occurs after you park your car and the GPS is enabled to save the location of your car. Under good conditions, Find My Car Smarter can complete this process in about 5 seconds and then go back to sleep. The power usage is equivalent to opening the Maps App and finding your current location.
Generally, running this app in the background will not significantly decrease your battery life. However, drivers who drive long distances and park their cars frequently (e.g. pizza delivery person) may experience a noticeable decrease in their battery life.
Will the GPS always be running the background?
The GPS is only turned on only after you have parked your car and only for the duration required to get your GPS location.
Why does the location services indicator always show up in the status bar?
This is to indicate that Find My Car Smarter is using a form of background location monitoring, this is done by monitoring cell tower changes rather than using GPS.
If I power off or reset my phone do I need to re-launch the app?
The app will automatically relaunch itself after you've driven a few miles even after a power cycle. The intention is to have a set it and forget it system.
Why doesn’t the Find My Car Smarter Device show up in Settings->Bluetooth?
Bluetooth Smart devices will not show up in the Settings->Bluetooth page. Please launch our application to pair with your device.
Other questions:
Dropbox is a free service that lets users easily share information (i.e., documents, music, files, etc) in the “cloud.” When Dropbox syncing is enabled, your car’s location is automatically posted to the Dropbox servers. This allows anyone with access to your Dropbox account to view the designated car’s location on their own personal iPhone. For example, a couple who lived in the city and shared a single car would be able to locate the last location their partner parked this shared car by using Find My Car Smart with Dropbox syncing enabled.
Do I have to share my Dropbox account & password in order to use Dropbox syncing?
To avoid disclosing your personal Dropbox account, simply create a free Dropbox account specifically for the purposes of sharing your car’s parked location.
How do I setup a Parking Meter or Street Sweeping alert?
1) From the main screen tap the parking meter icon in the upper left.
2) Tap the “Add a New Hotspot” button
3) Name the Hotspot & setup a radius for the Hotspot
4) Select the type of Hotspot either Parking Meter or Street Sweeper
When Parking Meter is selected an alarm will be set when you park during the hours of enforcement. For example if you park in the hotspot radius between 9am & 6pm.
When Street Sweeping is configured an alarm will be set to go off prior to Street Sweeping starting. For instance you might want to set an alarm to move your car on Mondays at 6am, if you happened to park in a hotspot.
5) Setup the Timer with the amount of time you typically put in the parking meter.
6) Setup the Enforcement times.
Can I use Find My Car Smarter with a motorcycle/boat/bike?
As long as you can supply power to the Find My Car Smarter Device you can use it with many different types of objects.
Troubleshooting:
I'm having troubles with my device.
Please try power off your phone and then back on, as recommended by Apple.
First, try this simple step.
You can resolve many software issues simply by restarting your iPhone. It’s quick and easy. Just press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds, then drag the slider to power off. Turn on your iPhone by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.
Next try plugging the Find My Car Smarter Device into your laptop and launching our app.
Otherwise, please send us an e-mail.
