Developers geek talk – part 3

In the previous episodes of developers geek talk I explained a bit how the hardware you use is terrible for actual software development. Sitting in a cold car, often at night with a laptop is no fun, and the process is slow. The http gateway changed a lot in that respect. We can now test new features in CanZE without having to leave the desk. So code, upload to the phone and it will get to the car over WiFi through http and in the car itself it is still using a real ELM327 KONNWEI 902 dongle. More about an alternative approach in another episode of geek talk.

Another benefit is that CanZE can now be run in an Android Studio emulator. Here you see an emulated Nexus phone running CanZE on my Ubuntu laptop showing the latest Climate screen. I went outside while it was running an pushed my hand against the outside temperature sensor that is mounted under the right side mirror. We can now test different screen sizes and orientations too without actually owning such devices. All this has never been possible as the Android emulators do not support Bluetooth. Also, we can quickly test different language settings without messing up our own devices.

So now you know why the latest release of CanZE asked for network permissions: next to using Bluetooth to get raw data from the car, it can use WiFi or even the Internet over the cell network to get that data through a gateway.