We’ve got some exciting news! For our trip around Tasmania by Cabin & Car we’ve teamed up with Gofar to track our journey, our kilometers and our fuel efficiency. Have you heard of Gofar? GOFAR is like a FitBit, except instead of counting your fitness and steps, it monitors your car.
The dongle does the heavy lifting for you and this is installed in the diagnostic port of your vehicle. This is also known as an OBD2 port, and this is available in most vehicles built since January 2007. It’s the same port mechanics use to get information from your vehicle each service. It is literally plugged straight in and only transmits when your vehicle is in operation.
Justin’s been using his Gofar for almost a year now, predominantly for tracking business use of his car for tax purposes. It’s really easy to install in your car and after installing the app on your phone, works away in the background requiring little to no input.
You just need to purchase the Gofar Dongle and optional Ray device, available at www.gofar.co. The app is free and works for both iPhones (from 4s and up) and for Android phones (most phones running Android 5.0+).
Using Bluetooth, it transmits this data direct to your phone meaning every time you turn on your vehicle it captures key data like fuel economy, distances covered, departure and arrival locations, acceleration and braking. Now putting up Justin’s hand – he’s a data geek. So this sort of information and capability he just had to have!
For our trip around Tasmania by Cabin & Car we’re going to be using the Gofar to track our journey. We’re going to be able to see how far we travel, the routes we take, what we spend on fuel and even our CO2 emmissions. Each time we purchase fuel we can enter the receipt details and this is then used to calculate our cost per trip. It’s pretty awesome stuff! We see a lot of family travelers online with spreadsheets and map software, we’re going to let the Gofar do it’s thing for us.
The first thing we had to do was install the app on our phone. We’re going in Steph’s car, the Kia Carnival 2007, so it made sense for us to install the app on her phone.
Once installed there is an easy setup process that takes you through what to do. The overall process took about 5 minutes.
We installed the dongle just under the steering wheel, mounted the ray to the dashboard and connected them with the included cable. That’s it! We were all set and now it just comes down to some calibration. Callibration is required for the device and app to get used to your vehicle. This will give it the best accuracy for vehicle speed, performance, acceleration and braking.