ADV Speedo

ADV Speedo is designed for the adventurous traveler who needs a GPS speedometer capable of being used in the roughest of terrain — perfect for mountain biking and other off-road motor sports. The interface of the app uses no menus that could distract the user or be difficult to set while in use. Instead, the app uses simple “gestures” on the screen to make all app adjustments.

— Swipe right in the middle of the display to change background colors.
— Swipe left on the display to exchange foreground and background colors.
— Swipe down to lower screen brightness.
— Swipe up to increase screen brightness.
— Press and hold to switch between US and Metric readouts.
— Tap three times to reset the odometer to zero.
— Place two fingers down and twist to flip the screen upside down.

Screen brightness is a safety concern. ADV Speedo allows you to control brightness without having to dig through the phone’s system settings. The device’s brightness is recorded when the user enters ADV Speedo, and that entry brightness is returned when the user either backgrounds or terminates the app. Within the app, you simply swipe up or down to lower the screen brightness while the app is in use.

We also designed ADV Speedo so that it could be used for navigation day or night. With simple left and right swipes, you can change background colors or switch between foreground and background colors that best fit your current needs. The black background is much easier to see in the dark and, when used in combination with the screen brightness adjustments, provides the user a broad range of settings to allow the app to adapt to your needs day or night.

Applications that are designed to support all device orientations (portrait and landscape) have a tendency to “flip” when used in very rough terrain. Vibrations alone from some motorcycles will cause the screen orientation to change without warning. We coded ADV Speedo to display only in landscape mode both for safety reason and to avoid the random screen “flip” while in use.

In fact, ADV Speedo is written as a “landscape left” only display with the Home button on the left. However, beta testing showed that some users needed to have the power cord connected on the right. We added a “twirl” gesture (two fingers down on the screen, and “twist”) to allow the flipping of the display. Once the display is flipped to the other landscape orientation, ADV Speedo then locks the display in that landscape setting. That two-finger gesture is the only way that the phone’s display will ever change orientations on you while in use regardless of how much you jostle the phone.

ADV Speedo is also coded to disable the auto-lock feature on the phone while the app is in the foreground. The screen will always stay on when you are using ADV Speedo. You can be assured that the phone will not "time out" while you're using ADV Speedo as a navigation tool.

We have added an odometer to ADV Speedo for those adventurers who need a basic mileage readout. Tapping three times on the screen will reset the odometer to zero. The odometer stops calculating mileage when the app is terminated, but it will continue to record mileage when the app is backgrounded. This background mileage recording can be useful when you simply want to record the distance traveled without otherwise using the display.

When you background or terminate ADV Speedo, all of your settings are recorded. These are restored for you when you launch the app again. The screen colors you were last using come right back, and the odometer is returned to its last saved value.

ADV Speedo does need permission to access your location to function. Your location information is only used for establishing your speed, altitude, and direction. The only location information that the app stores is total distance traveled.

In all, we are very happy with how ADV Speedo turned out, and we hope that you will be equally excited about using it.