question about FuelPad
 

Guys, I have a question about using FuelPad. I would like to understand how it works(accurately). Simple issue, if everytime I fill the tank when there is still 1/3 of petrol in the tank, I wonder how this has been taken into account to calculate MPG??? I wonder if i am missing any very simple logic???

Many thanks

Re: question about FuelPad
 

I'd like to know more about how this nice-looking app works too.
At the moment I have a little notebook in my car:
When I fill up, I record date/mileage/price/litres.
When I start any trip, I record date/mileage.

It'd be great to transfer this to fuelpad but I can't find enough info about how it works to know that I'm doing it right.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

When you tell it how many kilometers you have driven and then how much petrol did you have to add to be back in full tank, it's easy to calculate. It only works when you fill the whole tank. It's very accurate in the long run (compared to cars' own displays).

Re: question about FuelPad
 

thanks zillertal, so the trick is to fill to a full tank every time, isn't it?

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Of course.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

The next version (0.90) will support not full tanks also and you will be able to edit those afterwards also. Fuel consumption is then calculated for the first full fill.

0.90 is in extras-devel and will probably be promoted soon to testing.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Are there any plans to record for miles as opposed to kilometres? An option in Settings, perhaps?

Re: question about FuelPad
 

There has been for quite a long. Just change the unit system to either US or Imperial.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

No plans, 'cos it's already there in, as you suggested, Settings. You can either use the unit system to switch wholesale between SI, Imperial and US or, as I have, select the Select Individually so I can enter fuel in litres but get consumption in mpg (ie Imperial).

EDIT: Bother, beaten to the punch... that'll teach me to pull out my n900 and check exactly what the dialogues say before posting...

Re: question about FuelPad
 

thanks guys

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Maybe many of you haven't noticed that the online help from the N8x0 version is available here. The UI is a bit different on N900 and there has been some changes and there are some new features. Nevertheless, you should be able to get the general idea from the old documentation.

Unfortunately Nokia decided in its great wisdom that you don't need online help with N900 and therefore I haven't yet figured out a reasonable way to include the documentation with the N900 version.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Who is the developer of this app? It's really great.

I'd like to request two features:
1) Here in Brazil we use to measure consumption in km/liters, no liters/100km. Would you please add this option as a column and to the report?
2) Here we can mix ethanol and gasoline in any proportions, and different quantities of each will cause different consumption. With 100% ethanol you can drive 70% as far as with 100% gasoline, but ethanol costs today R$ 1.5 / liter and gasoline costs R$ 2.4 / liter. Could you add an option to how much I filled with each combustible?

And I'd like to know if it is possible to localize this app. If it is, I'd like to translate it to Brazilian Portuguese.

Thank you again for this great work!

Re: question about FuelPad
 

I am the developer. The development is hosted in maemo garage. You can find there a facility to request new features (use the tracker link). Both of your requests have already been requested but I haven't had the time to add those.

Localizing is possible. Fuelpad has already localizations to English and Finnish. Please contact me either by e-mail or PM.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Thanks very much for bringing us such a useful app :)

I started using FuelPad the day I picked up my new car, and one thing I've been wondering about ever since then is whether or not I should have made a new record for the tank of gas that came with it?

In the end, I decided to create the record and see how things progressed from there, but it does make the table look a bit odd because the first entry reads like this:

2010-02-27 | Km: 1 | Trip: 0 | Fill: 60l | l/100km: - | Price: 0.00 | Price/km: 0.00

Any thoughts? Is it throwing off the rest of the calculations in any way you can see?

Re: question about FuelPad
 

The way I have designed it is that you enter the first entry like you did. The trip and fill of the the first entry is not taken into account when calculating the total consumption but the price is taken into account in total cost (quite often your get the car with quite an empty tank and you need to pay for the first tank yourself). If you enter the first overall distance like you did, the statistics gives you then the exact distance that you have driven.

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Good to know -- thanks! It didn't seem to be throwing anything off, but as I say it was something I was curious to know for sure.

It's a fantastically helpful and well thought out app :)

Re: question about FuelPad
 

Youre missing a very simple logic

You fill the tank of your car and put the miles into fuelpad
You drive any number of miles, 1, 10, 1000
You fill your car again, and put the miles AND the volume filled into fuelpad

See, fuelpad doesnt care about the 1/3 left in the tank - you drove some distance, and used some fuel, you find out how far you drove by looking at the odometer. You find out how much fuel you used by looking at the pump (because when you started filling there was e.g. 50 litres of EMPTY SPACE in your tank where fuel used to be, and after you filled up again, you know how big that empty space was, because you just filled it with fuel


Technically, you dont need to fill each time, you just have to make a fuelpad entry when the level of fuel in the tank is at the SAME level as it was the last time you made a fuelpad entry

If you had a SUPER ACCURATE fuel gauge that told you exactly when you had a half full tank you could stop the car, enter the miles, fill up, drive til its empty, fill up, drive til its at exactly 50% again and enter into fuelpad

The thing is, most gauges are so inaccurate that the ONLY GOOD POINT OF REFERENCE is when the tank is full (because you know the fuel in the tank is at the same level as a week ago, because you can see it in the filler neck :) )

Re: question about FuelPad
 

You can do this already, but it might be a bit confusing. SUppose this time youre filling 70%eth/30%gas:

Fill some ethanol, enter a new record:
MIles: your car odomoeter miles
Trip: ignore (fuelpad calculates)
Fill: how much ethanol you filled
Price: How much $ you paid for eth
Not Full Tank: YES (TICKED)
Notes: 70%eth/30%gas

Fill some gasoline, enter a new record:
MIles: your car odometer miles again, same as before
Trip: ignore (fuelpad calculates)
Fill: how much gas you filled
Price: How much $ you paid for gas
Not Full Tank: NO
Notes: 70%eth/30%gas

You now have:
total $ for this time
total litres for this time

This is the first record, there is no MPG

Drive

Fill again, lets say this time 80/20


Fill some ethanol, enter a new record:
MIles: your car odomoeter miles
Trip: ignore (fuelpad calculates)
Fill: how much ethanol you filled
Price: How much $ you paid for eth
Not Full Tank: YES (TICKED)
Notes: 80%eth/20%gas

Fill some gasoline, enter a new record:
MIles: your car odometer miles again, same as before
Trip: ignore (fuelpad calculates)
Fill: how much gas you filled
Price: How much $ you paid for gas
Not Full Tank: NO
Notes: 80%eth/20%gas

You again have your totals for this time

but the MPG relates to the mix you had LAST TIME because that is the fuel you used to travel up to this mileage

If you want to easily work out your best $/km cost you'll need to wait for a bug I just filed to be fixed :) but remember the price/distance column related to the fuel you bought LAST TIME