Carnot GPS and Tracking


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Hi,
I purchased Carnot device from Amazon. More info on https://www.carnot.co.in/

I will not write on how to use the app as the product website covers it all. This will be just a quick review with pictures.

Highlights on the device in short
1) GPS tracker
2) Car health Monitor
3) SOS Call in case of accident
4) Towing Alert
5) 24X7 Roadside Assistance
6) Fuel efficiency calculator

Review:
The device when i bought was priced at 5999. Bought it from Amazon and the buying experience was good. The installation of the device takes about 10 mins. Few seconds to plug in the device to the OBD port and the rest on downloading and configuring the app mines was ios version, available for Android as well.

This is the startup screen when you open the app. It shows you the parked position of your car on the app.
Parked.PNG

As soon as you start the car, the app goes into trip mode, which means that it will record your trip, the route you drove on with kilometers covered and fuel efficiency
Dist_Mil.PNG

The app also displays 3-4 parameters from your car which is Battery health, Coolant and Engine oil status(confusing as i don't think the engine oil quality is read by any sensor within the engine or please fill me in if there is any)
Car_Data.PNG

The app can also(remotely) scan for any errors in the vehicle(basically the P codes from OBD) this feature i liked the most as the device is also equipped with a SIM card with data pack(don't know which service provider carnot uses) and the phone can communicate over the data channel to the device in the car.
Error_Scan.PNG

There is an option to connect the device with your phone over bluetooth but as my phone is already connect to the bluetooth of my car i have not chosen this option. Although bluetooth sync is faster than data link.

Geofence and Ignition Alerts:
You can set a geofence alert on your phone through the app. It works by plotting an area on the map which is your frequented location. For e.g. I have set geofence for my home and office. So whenever i exit/enter my home or office the app pops up a notification that the car has enter/exited your geofence location. This is a very good security feature, consider a situation when you are at home and in case of theft/break in if your car is put on ignition mode or started you will get notified with a ignition alert along with the geofence alert if thief some how exits your geofence area with the car.

Tow alert: It sends you a tow alert when the engine is off but the car is moving. You can track on the map where your vehicle has been towed. All this depends upon certain factors, the device must be in its cellphone reception area, the car must have a clear satellite reception for gps reporting.

Speeding alert You can set custom speed alert. I have set to 120kph, if i cross this it will pop up an alert.

Driving Scores The app continuosly gathers data from the device and on your recent trip it will give out a driving score. As you can see above in of the screenshots, you will see i got a driving score of 72 on a short 1.3 km trip. This can feature can act as a catalyst to change your thinking towards safe driving. I liked this.

The team carnot is planning for a major upgrade to display more information from the car as at present only 3 vital parameters are displayed. The updates are expected to be released by year end.

Overall i have mixed feeling about the device. I was more interested to have more information related to car from the device which i think they are working on. But then, I also have a piece of mind as the car is now more secure as this adds 2nd level of security and moreover if odds are against you and a theft occurs, you can still track your car on the map. The tracking feature also comes in handy if you lend your car to someone and you want to check are headed to the same place they were talking about[evil]
 
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Thank you for posting the review. People like you actually help lot of people in taking decisions.

Is seems some what similar to Mahindra Ecosense app. However Carnot seems to be providing more features.

Tow alert: It sends you a tow alert when the engine is off but the car is moving. You can track on the map where your vehicle has been towed. All this depends upon certain factors, the device must be in its cellphone reception area, the car must have a clear satellite reception for gps reporting.
Ha ha, this is funny assumption. So if some one is porting his car through ferry route, he would constantly get reminders. For in future release they can use gyroscope sensor to detect tows.

Questions on connectivity
I am assuming when you are away from vehicle, it is using GPRS to push data to cloud so that you can view it on your local devices. Am I correct?
I am assuming it is using BT to connect your device when you are inside the car. Now certain cars do have BT HU (Head Unit) as well. So is it possible to connect via two devices from mobile phone? i.e. HU and Carnot.
 
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Ha ha, this is funny assumption. So if some one is porting his car through ferry route, he would constantly get reminders. For in future release they can use gyroscope sensor to detect tows.
After going through their website I gathered that it has a built in accelerator so presumably it can distinguish between towing and passive movement.
Questions on connectivity
I am assuming when you are away from vehicle, it is using GPRS to push data to cloud so that you can view it on your local devices. Am I correct?
I am assuming it is using BT to connect your device when you are inside the car. Now certain cars do have BT HU (Head Unit) as well. So is it possible to connect via two devices from mobile phone? i.e. HU and Carnot.
It has 2G SIM inbuilt and pushes it's data to https://psx95.cloudant.com/acra-carnot/ (according to decompiled apk). Yes it has BLE 4.1 but I don't think the phone can connect to both HU and Carnot simultaneously.
 
Thread Starter #4
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After going through their website I gathered that it has a built in accelerator so presumably it can distinguish between towing and passive movement.

It has 2G SIM inbuilt and pushes it's data to https://psx95.cloudant.com/acra-carnot/ (according to decompiled apk). Yes it has BLE 4.1 but I don't think the phone can connect to both HU and Carnot simultaneously.
One device at a time either HU or Carnot, it's a race, if you have paired your phone with HU and carnot, in my case HU wins.

When not connected to BT it gets data from the server.

Thanks carcommentor for extracting that link from the decompiled apk. Although the link looks like a webservice and needs credentials to login.
 
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Thread Starter #6
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It does need credentials. Unfortunately, it is hardcoded in the apk [roll]. In fact the update report https://carnot.cloudant.com/acra-carnot/_design/acra-storage/_update/report link too has credentials in apk. Note that it has no bearing on user data as the credential of users are not stored anywhere in apk.[:)]
View attachment 228405
View attachment 228406
Very bad design to hard code the uri, it makes more sense if they could have done by using the environment settings instead.

Nevertheless, the app if not too good, is not bad either. Just waiting for an updated version as promised by them in a month or two. But still good to have, at least the tow feature will come to the rescue if ever i am stuck into that situation.
 
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