Welcome to the Factory

Welcome to the Factory! This is our engineering blog. The name comes from being an F1 fan, where drivers always thank everyone back at the factory. So, why not name the PitStop engineering blog after a factory?

The goal of the Factory is for us to build in the open and have a way to communicate with folks in a longer format. We’re two car guys building the app we need. I race in SCCA and also have seven vehicles, mostly projects. I need something that can track all the tasks, maintenance, setups, tunes, etc., for each of my vehicles.

What is PitStop?

That’s what PitStop is aiming to do: be the best car app for car enthusiasts. There’s currently nothing out there to help you track your builds, maintenance, and tasks while also showcasing all the work you’ve done. Your builds can have public profiles so your friends can follow the changes, updates, and dope pictures you snap. Tasks like oil changes will be automated via drive telemetry tracking if you choose to connect your OBD-II adapter. We’ll also track when your car throws check engine lights and offer advice on how to fix them. You’ll even be able to review your drives and their telemetry.

For motorsport enthusiasts (like myself), you’ll be able to track your setups and associate those setups with telemetry from your on-track runs. In the future, you’ll be able to share and collaborate on these with your crew chief, tuner, or driver coach to make changes. And those changes will all be saved so you can see what setup you ran previously.

Oh, and it’s flexible enough to work with R/C cars, karts, and even silly things like a lawn mower (I actually use PitStop for all of these! 😆)

What’s the current focus?

We have been building this and dogfooding it for about six months as a prototype. The current state is something that is decently ugly, has lots of UX issues, and implements only the core MVP features:

• Drive telemetry tracking (via OBD-II with custom PID support)
• Tasks (which can be automated via drive telemetry or due dates)
• A very basic build profile page to show off your dope build

We feel good enough about what we’ve been using to start properly designing it. So, that’s exactly what we’re working on now. It’s time to fix all the UX issues and make it look a lot better. We have the core functionality for the most part; it’s just hard to use.

This is a little peek at the new designs, which I’m super excited about!

Join the TestFlight

If you want to jump in and help us make this better, as well as get access to future premium features for free, join our TestFlight betas. Every bit of testing with various vehicles and insights from other car enthusiasts is invaluable to us. We’d love to chat!