«Safe Speed» users manual

1. Limitation of liability

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.



2. General information

The «Safe Speed» program (referred as “program” or “application” later on) designed to help you to avoid risky and dangerous situations while driving. The program monitors speed (via GPS\Glonas) and acceleration (via accelerometer built in to your smart-phone). It also calculates number of parameters based on measured speed and acceleration such as brake way and brake time needed to stop your vehicle from current speed.

Main features:

  1. Measuring and calculation of:

  1. Testing of your vehicle brake abilities. With “Safe Speed” you can measure drivers reaction time, brake system activation time, maximum deceleration during braking. Perform tests on various tires and under different weather conditions - this way you’ll have objective data about your car braking abilities and more reliable values for brake way and traction loss limits.

  2. Informing the driver with color lights, sound or synthesized voice about:

  1. By voice narration of current speed or current brake way.

  2. Zero speed fusion function — prevents wrong speed values from GPS to be processed by the program when the vehicle is actually not moving. This function uses other sensors built in to the phone to detect and correct such situations.

  3. Accelerometer calibration function for precise acceleration readings.

3. Permissions from user and Android

«Safe Speed» will work correctly only when all below permissions are given (please allow all these permissions when asked on first “Safe Speed” start):

3. User interface

The interface consists from number of screens. Most important and often used are "CTRL", "TEST", "PROF", "LIMIT". User can switch between these screens using buttons at the bottom of the screen (on the left of the screen in portrait mode).

Each screen has its own purpose:

On every screen there are several common widgets: «digital clock», battery level meter and GPS satellites meter. GPS meter shows number of GPS\GLONASS satellites currently used for positioning and speed measurement. It also shows small arrow which lights up every time program receive new location from GPS. Tap on any of these three indicators will open main menu.

Main menu consists of:

4. "CTRL" screen


Controls:

5. "TEST" screen


“TEST” screen allows to test braking abilities of your vehicle. Using this screen you can collect objective data which is essential for calculation of brake way, brake time and traction loss limits. Test results are stored in the PROFILE.

You can do one single test or series of three tests. Of course its better to do the series as it will deliver more reliable results.

For testing you need to choose free (from other vehicles) road without climbs and descends. Please make sure that your test will not create dangerous situation on the road for you and for others!

Single test (as well as each test in series) consist from next steps:

  1. Mount your phone inside the car so that its bottom cover is pointed forward – in the car moving direction. The screen must be in vertical plain and also perpendicular to the car’s longitudinal axis. Mount the phone as firmly as you can.

  2. Then it is very desirable to calibrate “no motion” sensor implemented in the program. Such calibration needs to be done once for every vehicle where “Safe Speed” is used. To do that:

  1. Choose current weather conditions with «RAIN», «SNOW» or «ICE» buttons. If there are normal conditions leave all buttons inactive (gray).

  2. Push «SERIES» or «TEST» button while your car is parked.

  3. Program starts telling you that you need to increase the speed.

  4. Upon 30 km/h or 20 miles/h program will tell you that you need to brake after signal.

  5. There will be short «beep» signal.

  6. Start braking immediately you hear «beep».

  7. Continue to brake until full stop of the vehicle.

  8. Program will show the graph (dependency of deceleration from time) and also will show measured values for driver reaction time, brake activation time and effective deceleration.

  9. If you see that program determined time parameters incorrectly then you can use «<» and «>» buttons above the graph to make corrections.

  10. Press «Save results to profile» («SAVE» in portrait screen orientation) to write measured values (mean driver reaction time, brake activation time and effective deceleration) in to current PROFILE. Deceleration will be written to the PROFILE field which corresponds to chosen weather conditions.

  11. Also you can save raw test data in to a file for future analysis. Tap “LD/SV” text above the graph and choose “Save” from opened menu. Resulting file will have name with date, time and word “raw” in its name. Later on you can load saved test data and see it again on the graph. This is useful for analysis of your braking technique and how it is progresses with the time.

Lets look at typical deceleration test graph to better understand all underlying processes. The graph below was taken during the deceleration test on road covered by snow.




The part of the graph between 0 (X axis is in seconds) till point A corresponds to the driver reaction time. Beginning of X axis on the graph corresponds to the start of «beep» signal. We see that after “beep” deceleration doesn’t increase because driver needs some time to understand whats happening, to move the leg from accelerator pedal to brake pedal and to actually start pressing the brake. In this particular test this time is 0.7 seconds.

The part of the graph between A and B corresponds to the brake system activation time. During this time deceleration grows from 0 to the near maximum value. This time is needed to completely push down brake pedal (thus creating nominal pressure in the hydraulic brake system) and for reaction of car suspension system and tires. In this test brake system was activated in 0.3 seconds which is pretty standard value for passenger cars.

The part of the graph between B and C corresponds to active braking stage. As we can see there is some room for brake skill improvement of this particular driver – at the end of 2nd second there is fall in deceleration to 2 m/s^2.

The part of the graph between C and D corresponds to practically stopped car.

Big round points near A and B (and also dotted lines) automatically put there by the program. These points represent beginning and end of the brake process stages described earlier. If program determines places of these points incorrectly then driver reaction time as well as brake system activation time will be incorrect. You can manually adjust positions of the points using «<» and «>» buttons above the graph. Left pair of buttons moves point A, right pair — point B.

Dotted line which is parallel to X axis on 2.8 m/s^2 height represents automatically determined effective deceleration.



6. "PROF" screen




PROFILE is easily changeable container with various program settings. Most important settings are those which defines car braking abilities. It is recommended to create new PROFILE (or choose appropriate existing one) when braking parameters differs from current PROFILE. This could be situations such as:

Each PROFILE must contain deceleration values (for various weather conditions), driver reaction time and brake system activation time. These parameters could be measured using “TEST” screen.

Controls (from top to bottom):

    1. Chosen profile becomes the “current” one and apply immediately for all screens.

    2. All fields of chosen PROFILE are loaded in to “PROF” screen and could be edited.

7. "LIMIT" screen




LIMIT is a setup object of “Safe Speed” which defined when and how program will react on changing driving parameters. One LIMIT could be used in many PROFILEs.

Controls (from top to bottom):

8. "Global settings" screen

Global settings” screen could be opened from main program menu. Main program menu will appear after single tap on “digital clock” widget.




Controls (from top to bottom):

9. "Accelerometer calibration" screen

Accelerometer calibration” screen could be opened from main program menu. Main program menu will appear after single tap on “digital clock” widget.

Embedded accelerometer (phone sensor which measures acceleration) may deliver low accuracy readings due to bad factory calibration, aging and other reasons. To take more precise acceleration readings “Safe Speed” implements in-program accelerometer calibration function.



Calibration procedure:

  1. Open “Accelerometer calibration” screen.

  2. Hold the phone aweigh with your hands. Gently and smoothly turn the phone so that Х arrow is pointed vertically to the ground.

  3. Slowly swivel the phone near obtained (on step 2) position to get maximum «MAX X» reading.

  4. Repeat steps 2-3 for all directions marked by arrows as well as screen up and screen down phone positions.

  5. As a result all MIN and MAX fields should have values (typically) in range from 9 to 11 (-9 to -11). Ideally factory calibrated accelerometer will show 9.82 (free fall acceleration) for all these readings but in real world it is not so.

  6. If some of the MIN/MAХ values are too big (by module) i.e. greater than 11 — probably its because you’ve excessively shaken the phone during the calibration. Hand movements during the calibration must be really smooth. If some value appears to be strange (bigger than 10.5 - 11) zero it by tapping it once and recalibrate given axis.

  7. Save calibration results by pressing “SAVE CALIBRATION”. Other applications on your phone will not know about this calibration and will continue to work as before. Only “Safe Speed” will deliver more precise acceleration reading after calibration.

  8. If wrong calibration was saved and you don’t want to do calibration again then you can press “RESET CALIBRATION” button. After that “Safe Speed” will use no corrections for accelerometer data pretending that calibration procedure was never done before.

RAW” string shows current raw reading from accelerometer. “COR” string shows corrected values. If calibration done properly then “COR” values are in range -9.82 to +9.82 in any phone orientation.

To further check calibration results (after «SAVE CALIBRATION» pressed):

  1. Go to “CTRL” screen

  2. Tap central indicator and choose “Show Acceleration”

  3. Tap central indicator and choose “Fix Horizon”

  4. Now rotate the phone in 3D space – the maximum acceleration you’ll see should be 9.8 м/с2 (free fall acceleration).