Hello # (englisch)

    Thank you all for your help.

    ABRP is a nice addition. Even when BLE dongles will be supported we still need to update the battery percentage when we are outside the car.


    As this is a beta. We still ask to discuss the new

    Features and provide feedback. As it is not convenient to speak in 3 different forums I ask users to provide feedback in the forum accepting all the languages (Italian, Spanish too). We are all comfortable with auto translate tools and it’s nicer than repeating everywhere the same things.


    Glad some of your are sharing the news here. Thank you for that.

    • Neu

    Great to see this app now released officially.



    Thinking about a possible Android port: is the part for the backend comms (REST api and token handling) packaged in a library, which could ease a possible porting? In a way, I'm thinking of having a common backend handling while the frontend/UI would need system dependent parts.


    Not having looked at the project (since I don't do iOS development), is this something you considered in the app design?

    • Neu

    Hi Dot,


    There's no library officially provided by Smart. They discuss it, but as any big corporation it might take a while.


    You will find a Python library made by DasBasti: https://github.com/DasBasti/pySmartHashtag he created it mostly for his project for Home Assistant: https://github.com/DasBasti/SmartHashtag .


    Personally, for Hello # we took example on the work from Marco at https://github.com/marco79cgn/ios-scriptable-widgets . I found it easy to experiment with his script in JavaScript directly in Scriptable on iOS and on Postman (also uses JS)


    If what you mean is having a common Backend between android and iOS, I don't think we would be able to create it in Hello # as everything is written directly in Swift and swift UI. While Android requires Library in Java, C++ or Kotlin. A C++ library is too much work for me, sorry and Java and Kotlin don't work on iOS.


    If Hello Smart is so slow, we think it's because they use a tool to make apps that works equally on Android and iOS, and their Adobe SDK. Hence slow on both. We are convinced that only a Native app like Hello # can offer the right responsiveness we all want.


    We would encourage an Android project to start in native, to make the best of it. Java or Kotlin. And focus on making the Android app the best app.

    We can still share good UI ideas, but the core components are too different.


    A lot of our coming efforts will be on Widget, Siri Shortcuts, Live Activity.... all those will take a lot of our free time and are really specific for iPhone.


    If someone starts a projects on Android, I would gladly help with answering any question and providing advice on what we went through. We can share critical parts of the code in Swift for them to rewrite for Android.


    I would suggest to start by showing all the data from the car just to master the access to the API and its signature encryption.


    I can share the Car Images and the model names. I made Proxy servers for caching them, so when a car stops being available from smart, we still have the images and names in our DB.

    • Neu

    thanks, that's useful advice and i agree with it. I get the point on programming language differences making a joint backend handling very difficult.


    I'll look into the possible rewriting of swift code into Java. Indeed, having an initial viewing of data would be a good start.


    I'll drop you a PM to get things started. Thanks