DAE51D

I installed my G4 last Sunday. Since then it's been an interesting and exciting experience. I revel in knowing I'm probably the only guy in all of Seattle, WA to have one, and I enjoy showing it off to my friends -- making them jealous of course. Below is a list of bugs, shortcoming and features that I strongly feel need to be addressed in future versions of StreetDeck. I am really impressed with parts of this product, and other's I think to myself, "don't they actually USE their own product, because these seem obvious to me". I don't mean any of this as a slight to the outstanding achievement that is StreetDeck (especially for a v1.1 product).

I've been a coder for nearly 20 years. I've programmed everything from web tools to 3D games. Lot's of GUI and useability experience. Before anyone tells me to create my own skin or mods -- I didn't just plunk down $2000 to write fixes. If you open source the product, I might be more inclined. In my opinion, these are flaws that the core product should address, not features per se.

INFILL G4 HARDWARE:

• more power to the USB ports, or more USB ports in the back
• needs illuminated eject and power buttons. opening the display, you can't see them at night.
• the harness should have the ends pre-stripped like the (toyota) adapter harness was. it's tedious to have to snip all those wires.
• the fan is a tad noisy. it's better when all sealed up in the car, but you can still hear it. if you're an audiophile listening to soft passages (like classical or something) this is a problem as you can hear the fan humming along.
• the eject button is too easy to hit. it should be a double tap or long hold or in the upper right corner.
• holding the volume up/down does change the volume, but the indicator "meter bar" on the right doesn't update until you release
  
• {10/03/2007} When you go into suspend, the fan should shut off or go into a very slow spin if any cooling is needed. It's too loud to keep running and it's just a waste.
• {10/03/2007} There should be an external line in on the G4. There is a software setting for it, but no HW way? For example, to hook up an external 1/8" of a Zune or something that a friend might bring in the car.
  
• {11/05/2007} The clock/date keep needing to be reset. It's starting to really become annoying. Just today I had to set it manually TWICE (on the way to work, then again when i got in the car after work). I've owned maybe 20+ Windows computers in my life, and I've NEVER had a single one forget the date/time like this.

STREET DECK:

• overall, I think the buttons are way too wide and waste valuable screen real-estate
• in many cases there could be two columns of buttons
• some buttons are way too thin (like the setup/configuration screens)
• the version shows as 1.1.0.0, however I installed 1.1.0.0d (the 'd' should be displayed or stop using the letter and just call it 1.1.0.4)
• the onscreen keyboards should be QWERTY ! or at least have an option to show it as such
• related to G4 hardware, it's too easy to hit the eject button. perhaps a confirmation dialog before opening? or make eject a double tap or long hold action.
• my mute button doesn't work?! it 'chirps' but doesn't actually mute sound
• selecting the camera causes a catastrophic lockup or BSOD. usually I see something about "vtdisp.dll". I don't have a camera installed even.
• the huge "Mute" text is just silly. it looks so out of place and awkward. Why not make the upper right speaker in red, and show the classic icon of a speaker in a circle with a line through it.
• toggle fullscreen is always on top. that's irritating when you want to quickly switch to XP desktop to fire up you WiFi or something. There should be a button to "minimize".
• when returning from standby, SD should remember EXACTLY the screen you were in
• eye-candy feature: when I press keys on my real USB keyboard, light up the SD keys on the virtual keyboard
• all keyboard/searches should HIDE the keys/letters that I can't choose (like the 'contact search' does). it really helps when driving as you don't have to hunt and peck so much.
• the text in some setup screens is really big and in a box that makes it scroll - huh?! why would you think that was good?
  
• {10/03/2007} dimming (night mode) does not go nearly dim enough. the screen is so bright at night, it's blinding -- thank God the Scion tC has that shade I can pull down. The settings should allow me to set the dim all the way to black if I want.
  
• {11/05/2007} There needs to be a button or gesture to blank the screen. This thing is just to brite at night, and as mentioned in the bullet above, the night mode slider does not allow you to make the screen dim enough. The blank screen mode should honor gestures (so i can switch tracks FW/RW, etc) but NOT go out of 'blank screen' mode until I use some gesture to return to normal mode again.
• {11/05/2007} I'm not sure who maintains the Wiki, but I've tried several of the plugins and they don't install -- they only crash my StreetDeck. I've also tried a few skins and NOTHING has worked -- I'm still stuck with the default one.
• {11/05/2007} I finally found the "voice recognition" section of Street Deck, sadly when I tried to start it, it said something about 'training the microphone on the next screen', then it puked about some module/plugin not being loaded. *sigh* Is this supposed to work?

OTHER FEATURE REQUESTS:

• I strongly believe you need to read "outlook.pst" files. directly. I want to see my tasks and calendar whenever I turn on SD. plus the contacts could be used with the PHONE module.
• WiFi indicator. This should be a simple icon (think winXP wifi indicator in taskbar). the icon should illustrate signal strength and be a button that either wraps (ideally) or at least triggers the windows wifi applet so I can get online quick and easy. bonus points if the icon shows ESSID, IP, WEP. ideally if this module lets me connect via the SD GUI, it should have an option to filter out secured AP's and an 'auto-hop' feature would be great!!!

RADIO:

• Why only 10 presets?
• Ability to name presets (ideally also a 'station name' in lieu of RDS) I want to be able to see "90.5 WBER - Dance Music", etc.
• move the 'Add' button to the left, freeing up a 'button space' for the next bullet item
• instead of only showing 4 radio buttons, show 5 that are 1/2 width
• if (# buttons == 10) then button.label = 'delete'. (it's silly it still says 'add', but then alerts when i try to)
• I should be able to use the visualizers with radio (I can for CD and MP3)
• categories would also be nice feature

MUSIC:

• Queue music menu should remember where I left off and show last or current song in display list. it's frustrating that it always resets to my first alphabetical MP3 or #1 CD track
• the gray bar with the song is too big and truncates the track name. it needs to adjust the font dynamically, or just pick a smaller point size font. also, the timing seems set too fast or something as it's very choppy and not smooth at all.
• the 'now playing' screen (with the album cover and 1-5 stars) should show genre, total track time, time left, etc.
• the 'now playing' screen should have ALL the play, pause, FF, RW, stop, next, prev, etc.. visible all the time, why do I have to make it float up from the bottom, there's nothing else on that page but a big blank area.
• the floating controls needs a "play/pause" button (like VIDEO module has). Yes, I know you can use gestures, now. it's not intuitive or consistent to not have pause option.
• the visualizer needs a way to change. AFAICT, the only way to change it is to keep toggling in and out of 'now playing' / 'visualize' mode. that's annoying. how about if you use a next/prev gesture on the top of the screen it switches visualizer, and anywhere from middle down (same gesture) works as it does now.
• visualizer should overlay the artist, track, length, stars. this should be an option to set the time between displays (and at the start of each new track). it's annoying to have to switch out just to see what the song is i'm hearing.
• as mentioned with the RADIO module, there should be two columns of 5 1/2 size buttons when you enter this module.
• there needs to be a dedicated "CD" button on the left side. scrolling to the bottom of some list is counter-intuitive. button should only show if CD is in drive.
• the same could be said for an "iPOD" button on the left too. button should only show if iPod attached.
• when I search for a song and select it, DO NOT auto-play, give me a menu with 'Play Now', 'Play Next', 'Add to Playlist', then when i click the left arrow (upper right) it should take me back to the same search results!
• if a track is selected to play next, it should indicate so next to it
• if a track is in the playlist queue, it should show the # in line
• I have 15000 songs, 1300 albums and 940 artists... there has to be a better way to search. holding the down arrow stops after six screen fulls. always. (bug). Take a queue from the way the iPod works here. holding the arrows should start slow then accelerate, then just show big alphabetical letters superimposed till I stop on one. Even better would be to let me just use letter gestures on the search screens. So if I swipe "M", it doesn't jump to the MUSIC module, it jumps to the first artist/song/album that starts with "m".
  
• {10/03/2007} Deleting a song puts you in some limbo state. You have to go back to select the music again, but you don't know where you were because it resets the list to the top.
• {10/03/2007} When in the song detail page, when you pull up the controls bar, as you press FWD/BKWD, the big gray bar shows up which is annoying b/c you're already on the song detail, you don't need to see that again.
• {10/03/2007} The little bargraph EQ that plays over a track name is FAKE!? That's so dissapointing.
• {10/03/2007} There needs to be a way to 'pin down' the control bar so it doesn't go away.
• {10/03/2007} The Visualizers need to a way to show the current track info superimposed over them all the time, or possibly with a timer so every x seconds the song info will show up again and again.
• {10/03/2007} if you have the control console up and in the queue'd music view, it doesn't change the queued music track listing!? it should jump to and highlight whatever song you just FF/RW to!
• {10/03/2007} what is the distinction between the highlight and the bargraph EQ anyways. bargraph seems to be song that's playing, but the highlight just seems useless.
• {10/03/2007} I could not figure out how to play an audio CD that I had in the drive which was stopped. I tried to choose "D:\" but nothing happens. I had to eject and re-insert the CD.
• {10/03/2007} On now playing screen, there is 'add all by _____' there should also be 'view all by (artist/album)' buttons so that you can pick and choose songs easier.
  
• {11/05/2007} there's an extremely annoying bug whereby if you pause a track, then turn the car off (i.e. suspend SD), when you return and power up again, the playlist is empty and the nowplaying is empty. in other words, you cannot just un-pause the track you previously paused! you have to go back to view queue and choose a track and do all that again. what's even worse, is you don't know WTF you were in the list.
• {11/05/2007} when re-indexing, click silver details bubble on top, it goes to a detail page that shows you more information, yet the silver bubble thing is still showing too, and worse, it overlaps the text of the detail page. the silver bubble should go away.
• {11/05/2007} It's silly that I can't use the audio visualizers in "non-test" mode!! Every stereo that you can buy now has some kind of visualizer. This is so stupid. ...So, it's okay that I have to look at the screen to navigate menus, and I can also look at the GPS/maps to watch street names, look for next turns and distances, etc, but having a visualizer show random colors or a frequency bargraph is somehow less safe. This logic is flawed.
• {11/05/2007} There needs to be a FF (and RW) buttons in addition to the slider. When you're listening to a long track (like a DJ set which may be an hour or two), the granularity of the slider is not fine enough. you touch it and it jumps like 15 minutes or more! I just want to FF (and HEAR the track at the same time) like if it were a CD player, so I can start playing again when I audibly hear the FF track changing to a new song.

VIDEO:

• Generally okay. I haven't tried a real DVD, only movies on the hard drive.
• I did press the DVD button and it goes windowed and locks up. VTDISP and VTMINI.SYS errors then a nice B.S.O.D.
• the search button says "Save", which is confusing.
• YouTube module would be nice feature.

PICTURES:

• the little swoopy upward arrow (which i read as previous screen) sits over the first picture on each screen. that's nice and all, except when you press it, the picture that it's covering shows, rather than going 'back'... at least that's how I expect it to work and am confused by it.
• the "1 out of 33" at the bottom never changes? it should be what _page_ I'm on and should tell me something like this: "page: 2/7 pictures: 33"
• if you search for some pictures, then view one, then use the prev/next buttons, you're not limited to the search results?!
• the picture name, date, etc in upper left is way too small a font and white color is even harder to see. maybe a font with some shadow to it would stand out more
• previous and next gestures should change picture, not music (or implement my 'visualiser idea' above, where the screen is divided so top half is prev/next pic, bottom half is song)

VEHICLE STATS:

• "Graphs" should be the topmost button and on by default when the module starts
• what good is this 'Relay' thing? it shouldn't show up unless i have 'relays' or whatever I'd need to actually use it
• ability to record all the sensors (think blackbox on airplane). reset the log file each time SD starts
• my Elmscan5 shows me like 8 pages of data using the ScanTool freeware, but SD only shows me a handful of them
• also the font is way too big (again)

NAVIGATION:

• There desparately needs to be a way to pre-download all the textures, at multiple magnifications, for a given region. Say, input a ZIP code and a radius (50 miles). This could be a command line tool or whatever, as you'd only do it from home or something once in a while anyways. no pretty GUI needed.
• I only have the 8 tiles or so around my house (where I was connected online at the time i fired up the GPS), but now if i switch to hybrid mode anwhere else, SD just shows the same tiles of my home area, yet I'm nowhere near that area! WTF.
• need ability to mark current location as a favorite. As in, you drive somewhere (not a created route), then you want to "pushpin" that spot.
• the actual route/pathing needs some work. I was leaving my gym and just for fun had SD navigate me, and it was WAY WAY off base as to the best way to go. TomTom never has any problems, and that's running on my Treo650 smart phone!
• SD is too damn persistent. I purposely ignored the path it told me to go (knowing my way was better), and it must have 're-routed' and insisted that I turn around or various other things to get on the path it wanted me to take earlier. It wasn't smart enough to re-route a new path trajectory. One thing I found really disturbing was that at one point, it literally wanted me to jump on the highway only to get off in like 1 exit, yet if I just drove straight (as I *do*), I would be about 2 miles shorter distance, as the highway curves around.
• seriously, TomTom. It pretty much rocks -- although SD is much prettier I do have to say.
• the "character" compass indicator is kinda lame looking. it should be a better font, and it's also not centered/lined up correctly.
• and it's astonishing that you can't navigate to a contact's address. Again, I can't sress enough how you should be using/reading outlook.pst files integrated into SD more.
  
• {10/03/2007} There needs to be a way to have the GPS voice talk over the music. Starting and stopping the music is just irratating.
• {10/03/2007} Most of the map text (like street names) is upside down?!
• {10/03/2007} The POI icons should be vertical planes, not flat on the road -- look at how TomTom does this.
• {10/03/2007} The search button is 'red' but in other search modules (music, video, etc) the button is silver.
  
• {11/05/2007} using the tool "SDMapCache" (http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/digi...e-cache-2.html), I painstakingly downloaded the tiles (16 & 15 zoom) for my area. Now when I drive over 40+ mph, the stupid tiles pop in like they want to work, then they pop out again because apparently I'm moving too fast for this G4 to keep up or something and they haven't completed loading (even though they look like they have to me!) That is so lame. I can't think of any reason the tiles should ever NOT load, even if i changed direction or something, those tiles are still valid!

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http://daevid.com/gfx/tC
Infill G4. StreetDeck.
Installed 09/17/07