Speedometer 55. Voice coach.
Speedometer 55 includes a voice coach that announces track distance, duration, current speed, and altitude while you record a GPS track.
When enabled and configured, the voice coach will announce active track distance and duration as well as current speed and altitude.
In the current version, the voice coach only runs when a GPS track is being recorded. This ensures that the coach provides exact and reliable information, whether the app is running in the foreground or background.
The app gives a hint whether the coach is enabled or disabled (disabled by default). When you tap on the MENU button, the “NEW TRACK” button shows you the current tracking settings, including the voice coach:
The Settings button inside the NEW TRACK button provides a section to configure the voice coach. Here is the voice coach configuration screen:
By default, the coach is off and some configuration is pre-populated for you, like an enabled announcement every 5 minutes of tracking and a disabled announcement every 10 miles or kilometers. Until you enable the voice coach, all of this stays mute and inactive.
This way of configuring things enables you to set up multiple voice coach “triggers” without having them active and then switch only those that you need for a specific situation. Driving and skiing, for example, are quite different activities that need quite different sets of triggers.
The “+” button on top allows you to add more triggers.
Tapping on a row with a trigger allows you to configure its specific parameters. Here is a screen for a time trigger:
And for the distance trigger:
There are no limits on the number of triggers you can have, though there are minimum limits of 20 seconds for a time interval and 100 meters (328 feet) for distance. Of course you can still shoot yourself in the foot by configuring and enabling triggers that overlap — the app will queue the announcements with a reasonable timeout and discard the most outdated ones as new announcements arrive. But why would you configure it this way? :)
This is basically a voice coach foundation in the current version. Input from Sven and Tim was used for the design and I believe it should be flexible enough to accommodate adding speed triggers in coming versions, as Sven requested.
This is it for the voice coach for the moment, but let me highlight where else the app can give you some noise and how to control it:
Fuel and driving range monitor.
I’m all in for adding new trigger types and subjects to tell in the voice announcements. Please feel free to suggest them at support@blocoware.com or via the star button in the app!
