Car insurance apps like Allianz BonusDrive and ADAC Fahr und Spar cannot access to DriveDot

Bug Reports
#1

REPRODUCIBILITY: Always
OS VERSION: 4.5.0.24
HARDWARE: Xperia 10 III
UI LANGUAGE: English, German
REGRESSION: new

DESCRIPTION:

BonusDrive insurance app from Aptitude cannot connect the DriveDot device which is used to check if you are in the car driving to follow your driving attitude.

PRECONDITIONS:

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

  1. Install the app
  2. Give required access rights asked in the dashboard page of the app
  3. Location services and Bluetooth checks stay red

EXPECTED RESULT:

All checks in the BonusDrive dashboard page should be green.

ACTUAL RESULT:

Location services and Bluetooth checks stay red (see attached images)

MODIFICATIONS:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bildschirmfoto_20231023_001
Bildschirmfoto_20231023_0011080×2520 172 KB

#2

there is no support for bluetooth in the Android Appsupport

2 Likes
#3

The way Bluetooth works on SailfishOS devices is that SailfishOS itself is in charge of handling bluetooth devices, and if it is some standard device (audio, input), it forwards the standard interface to Android AppSupport.

This doesn’t work with custom things like CAN bus / OBD-II spying devices.

It only works with standrad peripherals, like bluetooth speakers and headset (SailfishOS handles the Bluetooth connection, and then Android only sees a generic audio output) or keyboard (SailfishOS handles the Bluetooth connection, and then Android only sees a standard input).
Even with those devices, the Android Apps don’t talk directly to the bluetooth interface (e.g. it’s not possible to upload custom equalizer settings to bluetooth speakers, it’s not possible to upload custom “touchscreen emulation” macros to a gamepad, it’s not possible to upload firmware update).

So, in SailfishOS, it’s not possible to let your (already privacy-screwing) car to share part of that tasty customer spying data with your insurance company so that they to can profit and earn tons of money by reselling it elsewhere.

For the location tracking, you would need to install something like microG and additional NLP providers to assist the GPS-tracking. (Would also work by installing the official Google Play Services, but I have no experience with that).

4 Likes
#4

And by the way of a BTW, Waydroid has pretty much the same limitation. I was hoping to use an OBD adapter to change my door chime to Rolls Royce mode, but no way without an actual Android device. :frowning: My assumption is that most/all of these special purpose devices want to talk Serial Port Profile so they can use a custom protocol of their own devising. Makes sense in a way, I suppose…I seriously doubt the Bluetooth working group has any interest in putting resources into developing a (e.g.) OBD profile for such a niche operation…

#5

Also windows subsystem for android doesn’t have Bluetooth support

2 Likes
#6

Specifically for Waydroid, a possible work around would be to use an additional bluetooth USB dongle:

  • tweak udev rules and bluez’ config, so the host Linux’ (in this case: SailfishOS’ ) bluez doesn’t touch the USB device and leaves it alone.
  • tweak the LXC configuration so that the Bluetooth USB dongle is made accessible inside the container (the sameway some video device are made accessible).
  • Android has a driver for USB Bluetooth and can use that as its.

This ensures that each OS (SailfishOS and Android) has its own Bluetooth receiver, which avoids several issue with sharing Bluetooth between OSes (such as having a way to share the Bluetooth keys of each paired device).
There are some people who have actually played with this type of ideas.

Purely in theory Jolla could also do something similar with Android AppSupport / aliendalvik. But as that tech is closed source, it would require them putting some of their own dev resources on that, and this doesn’t make any economical sense (they would be waste dev time on a feature that is very hackish and only solves the problems of very few people).

2 Likes
#7

Modern “Windows subsystem for Android”, if I am not mistaken basically boils down to “Windows subsystem for Linux, but the exact Linux distribution running in the container happens to be AOSP” (As opposed to Ubuntu or some more classic GNU/Linux).

And modern WSL2 is basically just the actual real Linux Kernel running in parallel of Windows thanks to some lightweight HyperV stuff (it’s much closer to running Linux atop of Xen, or the cooperative CoLinux, than a full blown VMWare/VirtualBox style VM).

In that setup, very little low level hardware is handed out to the Linux kernel.

1 Like
#8

Hi,

It seems that there is no way to access non-standard BT devices at all.
Just another info, I noticed that BonusDrive app doesn’t communicate with the device.
Instead, only check its existence without the OS needs to pair with the device.

About privacy, the tracking is over the phone GPS. The app tracks your position, speed, acceleration through location services. As Google Maps is working OK, I don’t expect any problem on that part.

All in all, this app saves me 150€ annually and would be nice having it working on Sailfish OS :frowning:

Best,

#9

Actually there have been reports in the recent months that gps in android apps works for some apps and for some it doesn’t, even on the same device. Might be that there is a problem. Sorry that I don’T provide a link to the discussion, I didn’t find it right away.