If you have an Android smart-phone and a bluetooth car kit you can make your phone automatically less distracting while driving and not miss any calls.
There has been a lot of talk in the media recently about banning the use of mobile phones while driving. Using your phone while driving has been considered alongside drinking and speeding as a major cause of deaths on the road. Consequently in Australia it is against the law to use your phone while driving unless the phone is fixed in a holder and being used hands-free (ie. if you touch the phone at all you can be booked).
In the past I have been guilty of checking a text or even an email at the traffic lights and the main reason for this is hearing the phone beep and having a compulsion to check it. One solution would be to put the phone in the boot. It would still connect to the bluetooth car kit so I would be able to receive calls but since I often use my phone for satellite navigation, I have come up with a better solution. My phone automatically goes on silent after I start the car.
The key to this is Llama Location Profiles (click here for more help with Llama) and a bluetooth car kit. Using Llama you can create an event to occur when your phone connects to your bluetooth car kit.
We have two cars, both with bluetooth car kits built in to the radio. The first step was to tell Llama to look for connections to either car kit. Add a “Bluetooth Device Connected” condition and select all bluetooth car kits so that no matter which car kit it connects to the event will be active. Then add a “Profile” action to switch the phone to silent.
Now whenever you connect to a bluetooth car kit your phone will go on silent. What this means is that all notifications (text, email, facebook, twitter, games, etc) will be silenced but when someone calls you, your car kit will ring.
The only task left to do is to create an event that will take your phone off silent once you get out of your car. The event will be almost exactly the same except you will add a “Bluetooth Device Disconnected” action and the “Profile” action should set your phone back to Normal (or Loud or whatever you prefer).
The above is the simplest way to do it. With the flexibility of Llama you can make it much more sophisticated. For example:
- When I am at home my bluetooth is off.
- When I leave home my wifi turns off and my bluetooth turns on.
- When my bluetooth turns on, if I am in my car, my phone will automatically connect to the car kit and then go silent.
- When I get where I’m going my phone disconnects from the car kit and comes off silent.
- When I start my car to come home my phone reconnects with the car kit and goes silent again.
- When I get home and switch off my car my phone will disconnect from the car kit and come off silent, my wifi will turn on, my bluetooth will turn off and, if I was using SatNav, my GPS will turn off.
…and this can all happen without even taking my phone out of my pocket!
I love Llama 😉