[bffmike]

So I'm an iOS developer in my day job and was thinking I'd write an app called "Sunday Drive" that lets you plan a drive with multiple way points. This is an app you'd use to find and plan fun drives. It is not an app for getting you from point A to point B as fast as possible. It would instead give you the route that is the "funnest" possible. Some possible features:

See most/least planned roads on routes
Roads rated by skill
Roads by sights (forest, desert, ocean drive)
Roads by landmarks/stops
Services
Great caffe/restaurants on a road/route
Routes by available time

What would you like to see in such an app?

 

[LongBeachJim]

I'd like to see a feature which routes old highways. Sometimes I see these old roads running parallel to modern highways and interstates. Some are architecturally rich with old defunct gas stations and houses. I suppose the trick is figuring out entry & exit points, as many have been chopped up over the years. It might be fun traversing 2-3 states on such roads.

 

[Woolson12#]

Great idea bffmike!! Are you in the states? Would like to see road conditions or at least indicate if gravel or paved.

 

[RBH58]

Wow. This is a cool idea. I'd like to see it "real time interactive" so that people actually on a route can flag "police presence" at a particular date/time or permanent radar. Typically great driving roads are road revenue cash cows. Especially here in the Nanny States of Australia.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/camouflage-cops-go-undercover-to-spring-speed-trap/news-story/f91b52902af0fc11967eaba16dbeaa34

 

[Chaddy]

Sounds like a great idea. BMW have an App called Ultimate Drive I used a few times, similar concept.

 

[hefbadr]

Would be great to have it "State Specific" where a day trip is possible within a day's time frame so one could access interesting roads with stop overs and return home in the same day.

 

[ameridan]

Sunday "One-Tank" tours. Sounds like an excellent idea Mike! I don't agree with the State specific though. Here in the Chicago area, we've got to go into Wisconsin to find fun roads. I think dialing in the amount of round-trip miles is more appropriate, such as 300 miles or whatever you can do on one tank of gas.

 

[Stewie]

Definitely gonna need something that has a live update on where radar traps are or something like that... :O

Great idea though ! Patent it quickly !!

 

[Greg]

So I'm an iOS developer in my day job and was thinking I'd write an app called "Sunday Drive" that lets you plan a drive with multiple way points. This is an app you'd use to find and plan fun drives. It is not an app for getting you from point A to point B as fast as possible. It would instead give you the route that is the "funnest" possible. Some possible features:

See most/least planned roads on routes
Roads rated by skill
Roads by sights (forest, desert, ocean drive)
Roads by landmarks/stops
Services
Great caffe/restaurants on a road/route
Routes by available time

What would you like to see in such an app?

This is a brilliant idea.

Greg

 

[fiathead]

That's a fantastic idea. It would be great to be able to send the route file to others. Each fall, I run our local Italian car club through the back roads south of Indy. It would be helpful to be able to send them the route in advance. Another feature that would be nice is to include an export to GPS capability for Garmin and other dash mount GPS's.

 

[bffmike]

Great idea bffmike!! Are you in the states? Would like to see road conditions or at least indicate if gravel or paved.

I'm in the U.S., in the Bay Area. To start off with, I think I'll allow people to comment on or tag parts of a route, similar to how SoundCloud lets you comment on a particular part of a song. This would allow the community to annotate such things as gravel/paved. Not sure how I'd do road conditions though I'm pretty sure in the US there's some open gov't database that has that info.

 

[bffmike]

That's a fantastic idea. It would be great to be able to send the route file to others. Each fall, I run our local Italian car club through the back roads south of Indy. It would be helpful to be able to send them the route in advance. Another feature that would be nice is to include an export to GPS capability for Garmin and other dash mount GPS's.

Yes, it will have GPX support since fun routes will be community-submitted. I was also thinking of allowing users to "follow" other users to see their maps & notes specifically.

 

[DanRodemsky]

Great idea! There are some dedicated motorcycle GPS units that show you the fun roads, not the shortest distance. Lately I have been using the Waze app on my phone. It allows users to point out police, accidents and other hazards. I'm assuming yours would be a phone app and not compatible with the Fiat nav system. I'm still debating forking out $500 for an SD card, buying a bike GPS or just sticking with my phone.

 

[bffmike]

Great idea! There are some dedicated motorcycle GPS units that show you the fun roads, not the shortest distance. Lately I have been using the Waze app on my phone. It allows users to point out police, accidents and other hazards. I'm assuming yours would be a phone app and not compatible with the Fiat nav system. I'm still debating forking out $500 for an SD card, buying a bike GPS or just sticking with my phone.

I say skip the $500 and use Waze. It's much better. Wish I hadn't splurged on the navigation myself.

 

[fiathead]

I'm not a fan of in-car nav systems. Eventually, they become obsolete and sometimes that happens sooner rather than later. My wife has a 2011 BMW 535ix with a nav system that's out of date and I won't even think of spending the $200 they want to update the maps because in it's best day, it was still nothing more than mediocre. I can run Garmin's Navigon on an iPad mini with a bluetooth GPS receiver and get a much better system for much less trouble. Even my 3 year old Garmin unit is better than the OEM one on the Bimmer.

 

[RBH58]

I have a Pioneer Navteq system in my BRZ. Most of the time it has no idea where it is or where it's going. I paid $2k extra for it and Google Maps craps on it.

 

[kpoling]

Flathead....our updates are free.

 

[steve6225]

I am a heavy Google Maps user on Android. One thing that I do quite often on long trips is to set Maps to avoid highways. I wind up on back roads and in quaint little towns. Sometimes I wind up in some sketchy areas, but that is part of the adventure. I have seen more of the Northeast avoiding highways with Google Maps than I ever have before.

Your app sounds great... the best feature you could add to it is... The ability to run on Android!

 

[ameridan]

Flathead....our updates are free.

His wife's free updates probably ran out in 2014. The free updates are only for 3 years.

 

[Stelvio]

Great idea! There are some dedicated motorcycle GPS units that show you the fun roads, not the shortest distance. Lately I have been using the Waze app on my phone. It allows users to point out police, accidents and other hazards. I'm assuming yours would be a phone app and not compatible with the Fiat nav system. I'm still debating forking out $500 for an SD card, buying a bike GPS or just sticking with my phone.

Space is at a premium in our cars and I am not sure where you could put another display. Now that an EBAY seller is offering an SD card for $225, I went that way. See my post under technology. Our Nav App does allow you to customize routes somewhat by choosing to avoid highways and gravel roads as well. You can also tweak your route to avoid any other roads you select. Not everything we want as it doesn't find curvy fun roads, but ideally, any improvements would be integrated into our navs,