Way to pass COVID-19 Locked-Down-At-Home time #352

"RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars" (rallydarkstrike) 03/23/2020 at 19:29 • Filed to: Torque Pro, covid-19

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Tweak your Torque Pro OBDII app layout!

I spent 40 minutes earlier looking through all the settings, themes, gauge options, etc and this is what I’ve come up with so far. I’ve had it for about 2 years now and use it ocassionally for fun and for diagnosing issues, but this whole being stuck at home thing gave me time to sit down and properly look through it all.

When I’m using it, I have it resting leaning in my gauge cluster. It blocks the lower half of the tachometer and it blocks half the fuel gauge as well, hence why I have them on the display. There are probably other interesting stats I should put on here, but this is my current layout so far!

Anybody else use Torque? How are you folks passing the time?

CB > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 03/23/2020 at 19:38

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Essential service means I’m just on regular days off. So I went grocery shopping, saw the way the world was, and actually felt pretty good about living in a town of 280.

Nom De Plume > CB 03/23/2020 at 19:47

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With a population of +1 Husky.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > CB 03/23/2020 at 19:48

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Yeah, Mahone Bay is maybe 300-400 in the winter....lots of summer homes here, but otherwise it’s mostly older folks and not very many of them.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 03/23/2020 at 19:58

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How is your refresh rate even functional with that many things operating at once? I keep it to a max of like 3 just to get a better than 1Hz refresh rate. Anything beyond that is near useless for real time monitoring lol. Ive found the number one use of Torque for me though is just coolant temp. That is the most vital tool in my toolbox sometimes seeing as the Miata has a completely useless coolant temp gauge. The Miata has “the car is cold”, “the car is normal”, and “the car is already broken” as its only indications. At least the subaru will move the gauge ever so slightly, toward cold when going down long hills and toward hot when really pushing it up a hill in the heat with the AC cranking. Meaning I might actually trust that one to warn me of impending doom. 

Gerry197 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 03/23/2020 at 20:43

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I live in large suburban area in a county with over 3 million people (San Diego). Honestly didn’t seem that different from any other time, people still about, but in smaller family groups or single , walking their dogs, jogging, riding bicycles but keeping a safe distance from non-core family members.

Other than no toilet paper at my local supermarket/Costco/Walmart & super cheap gasoline, it could be just any other day.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 03/23/2020 at 21:22

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Dunno? It seems slightly laggy, but no worse than some older factory digital/LCD dashboards I’ve seen in some cars.

I do wonder though - I don’t use a Bluetooth OBDII adapter, I use torque with a WiFi OBDII adapter...maybe that makes a difference?

Yeah, the Accent has the same annoying styling temp gauge...well....Humdrum doesn’t, but other Accent trim levels did. It’s a gauge, but pretty much the needle moves to a certain place for ‘engine cold’, another place for ‘engine normal’ and another place for ‘engine hot’. I’ve thought about doing a gauge cluster swap sometime to get the gauge even so because it’s just nice to have the visual reference.

My style :

Temp gauge set :

If I was doing a swap though, I’d get the latest style of gauge cluster from a Kia Rio of that generation. The Accent Rio are the same car underneath the different bodywork, so Rio gauge clusters are actually the same with different faces. The later Rio cluster has some cool styling to the gauges with red/white backlighting and red/silver faces! Wouldn’t match the lime green backlighting in the rest of the car, but it would still look cool. :)

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 03/23/2020 at 21:23

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Definitely depends on your reader. I have one of those shitty $15 OBD bluetooth scanners. So naturally its not very good. But gets the job done if I just put tacho, throttle position, and engine temp through it. 

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Gerry197 03/23/2020 at 21:28

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Pretty spare here, the province is not in a State of Emergency, so nobody is out and about.

HammerheadFistpunch > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 03/23/2020 at 21:53

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I get about a 1/3rd that data from the cruiser

HammerheadFistpunch > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 03/23/2020 at 21:54

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Do you have faster polling turned on?

HammerheadFistpunch > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 03/23/2020 at 21:59

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This is a simplified lazy version of the better (more comprehensive) version installed in the cruiser. I modified the theme to ditch all bezels. Makes it easier to stack gauges and makes it look a little less...Netscape navigator.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) 03/23/2020 at 22:02

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I have this one:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00WPW6BAE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > HammerheadFistpunch 03/23/2020 at 22:04

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See, to me, I prefer the bezels as I find it makes it easier for me to differentiate between different gauges at a glance. If I had one like yours, with the way my brain works, it would all just blur together when I glanced at it, lol