Episode: 1123
Title: HPR1123: Move! Bike Computer
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1123/hpr1123.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:23:06

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Hello, this is Frank Bell, and today I would like to talk about the MOVE VIP computer application
for Android. This was inspired by the suggestion on the HDR webpage to talk about your favorite
Android app. And I must say, I think that the MOVE VIP computer is indeed my favorite Android
app. It's a little application that is designed to track time, speed, and right of a
bicycleist and then to display the statistics and to display the root against the background
of Google Maps. As a preface, I guess I would say an average bicycleist, most of my life,
I put you much grew up on a bicycle, I grew up in the country, the nearest house was almost
a quarter mile away, and the bicycle was my ticket to the mobility until I got to be 15 years
old and get my driver's license. And the fact that I was able to get my driver's license at a
15 probably gives you a hint that I am an old gadget. I've written a bicycle off and on to most
of my life, the primary determinant of whether or not I'm bicycling at a particular time is
the amount of traffic that surrounds me and how flat the terrain is. When I lived in
northern Pennsylvania, I bicyled quite a bit, it was flat, the particular spot that I lived in
was away from the traffic, and it was beautiful, broad, flat suburban streets where you could
safely bicycle without being in fear of your life. When I moved to northern Delaware, not
so much, you don't really notice it when you're driving a car, but upper Delaware,
between Wilmington and Pennsylvania, is quite killer, you notice it when you're on a bicycle.
There are low hills until you try to pedal up them on a bicycle. And now I'm back in the flat
lands of Virginia Beach, Virginia, tucked away in the corner of the development around the
golf course where the bicycle is safe, and the scenery is a traffic, and the traffic is low.
The bicycle I currently have is a Fuji Sports 10 that dates from the mid-70s. I got it
from an outfit called the Urban Bike Project in Wilmington, Delaware. The Urban Bike Project
among its other endeavors will take donated bicycles and being located in not the worst
area, but certainly not the best area of Wilmington, teaches the local children how to
care for and maintain bicycles. And with a child reprobeses, I'm using that term very
loosely. They don't go out and buy new parts and stuff like that, but basically spruce
up and maintain. If a child reprobeses a bicycle himself or herself, they can get to keep
it. That's part of their goal is to put bicycles into the hand of people who appreciate
and who need them. My son actually was volunteering there. I think because he liked a couple
of the girls who were volunteering there and got me interested in it, and both of us bought
used bicycles from them at a point reasonable price. I think I paid $75 for mine, and he
paid about the same for the one that he got. When I finished getting it up to speed after
I moved here and decided that this was a great area for bicycle. It occurred to me that
it would be fun to keep track of where I went and how fast I got there. Not that I'm racing
for speed, but more just for curiosity. So I had seen cases for sale and bike shops, cases
for holding eye junk, eye phones. So it occurred to me that perhaps if people were
using eye phones on their bicycles, perhaps it would be something in the Android market.
So I searched for free apps, and I found two. One was something called map my ride. It seemed
to have more downloads, so I figured I did that a try first. I went to install it, and then
when it displayed the permissions that it wanted, and I always read that permissions display
when I'm installing a new application, it said it wanted access to my contacts. I stopped
right there. I didn't read any further. I could think of no legitimate reason for bicycle tracking
software to want to know who I was emailing, telephoning, or texting. So then I tried this
other one, moved by computer, and I've been happily using it now for over a year.
The way it works is that it accesses GPS satellites, and on the screen it will display how many
satellites it's connected with, and using the GPS data compute your route and your speed.
And then when you're done, you can look at your speed, your route, the time you spent, and
have that information plotted on Google Maps. When you first started up, if you do not have
your GPS turned on, it will prompt you to turn on GPS tracking in the phone. I normally do not
keep GPS turned on on my phone. I maybe I've watched too many episodes of NCIS. I don't
have a use for it, so why use it? I turn it on and off when I need it. Once it starts
and the GPS is on, it takes between 30 seconds and a minute, sometimes a little longer to
establish a connection with the GPS satellites. You know that it's connected when the
GPS is on the screen for displaying time and speed, and what not, pull in with numerals.
Then press the menu button on the phone, and select record track. At this point, it will
ask you if you want to continue your previous track. If you're out on a long ride with friends,
or where you might stop for lunch or something like that, I can see a use for continuing the
GPS track. What I do is I normally set out, I ride around for a while, and I stop, so
I almost always select no, and start the track on you. Then I put the phone in its case,
put the case in the bag on the bicycle, and I take off. When I'm done, I take the
case out of the bag, I take the phone out of the case, unlock the screen, and press the
menu button, then press stop, and the track will be saved. The next thing I normally do is
press the menu button, and I press tracks. Then I see a list of my tracks, you can use
the top of the list, and I can touch the one that I want to look at, it will just slide.
While you're viewing the track, you can press the menu and get several different options.
The two most significant would be to show the stats, which displays them in a box,
superimposed on the map, or send the stats. I will normally press send the stats,
the application will present me with a list of applications I have on my phone for sending
stuff, such as Facebook, Google Plus, and my nail client, K9Mail, Gmail, and so on.
I normally just email through them to myself, where later on, I pick up the email on my
laptop, and enter the data into the spreadsheet, just for curiosity.
I do want to mention, when it records your speed, it then will present that information in
three figures, your average speed when you're moving, your top speed, and what the application
calls the gross average speed, which is the speed calculated, including any time you spent
standing still. And when it presents your time, it presents the time, again, in three categories.
The total time, from the time you started recording to the time you stopped recording,
you're either time, the amount of time you spent standing still, whether you were sitting
at a stop sign, or a stop for a drink of water, or whatever reason, stop to chat with a neighbor,
or take a picture of that kitty over there, and your active time, which is the time you
actually spent in motion. I sometimes also will take pictures of the various maps.
I don't use a screenshot to do that. I look at this, getting some kind of screenshot capability
on the phone, and decide that it was more trouble, or more money, or both, that I wanted to
devote to it. I have no desire to root my phone, if I had two of them, maybe I might want
to root one. I got it to be a phone, and to use it, not to be a laboratory, and to that
second. So I usually get out my camera, I set it on shutter, priority, which is the only
way to get a good picture set the phone against a dark background, usually the screen of
my girlfriend's laptop, which is gone to sleep by then, take the picture, and then I'll
pipe the picture into the gap and manipulate it to get a nice little map. There's a link
in the show notes where you can see some of these screens, the regular screen, the tracking
screen, a picture of a track, stats, and so on, so you'll get a sense of what this application
looks like. When you're in the normal application mode, and you press the menu button, one of
the options is settings. I do want to point out the most important settings, one is measurements.
By default, it's set to metric, which makes sense to the developer as a European. You can
also set select US, or notical. There's a rotation set where you can set whether when you
rotate the phone, the application rotates on the screen. The developer recommends locking
it to portrait, and I think that's assigned recommendation. When the application is in portrait
mode, more information feels appear on the screen than when it's rotated to landscape mode.
You can also change your display color in the settings menu. Selecting the color item,
display a color wheel, and you have for all practical purposes an infinite choice of colors
for the text on the screen. By default, when I got it, it was set to blue when the developer
added the color choice to the menu, I experimented with it, and I find for my purposes, at least
the optimal color seems to be green, that seems to provide the best contrast for me against
the dark screen. There are a number of other settings on the settings menu. They are very
concisely, but also very thoroughly described in the user's guide and the frequently asked questions,
and there'll be links to both of those documents in the show notes. The application has a small
footprint. The application itself takes up 640k of my phone's memory. The data, of course,
will depend on how many trips you have, but the data footprint is actually very, very small.
Also, since the maps are provided by Google, the data is simply the information for plotting
the maps. I do want to mention, although it is called mood by computer, the developer says you
can use it for any activity that involves motion, running, skiing, hiking, probably
not swimming. I don't think I suggested swimming. I have even tested it in my vehicle as I was
driving around the area last week doing errands and thinking about doing this podcast. I figured
I'd turn it on. It did quite a nice job of tracking my route and my steam as I ran my errands.
Frankly, it was quite a revelation to discover how much of my 13 mile track I spent sitting
stop at Red Lives. This was a very nice old application as well behave. It doesn't nag.
It does exactly what it promises and does it very, very well. If you want to email me, you can
email me at Frank at PineViewFarm.net. PineViewFarm is all one word. No spaces, no punctuation.
And my website is www.pineviewfarm.net. Thank you very much.
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