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05 Dec 2025 • Rob

Everything We've Shipped Since January

It’s been a while since our last post! We’ve been heads-down building. Like, really heads-down. Since January we’ve pushed over 700 commits across PitStop and RaceRelay (our custom OBD-II library) and shipped a ton of features. PitStop has evolved from a rough MVP into something that actually feels like the app we set out to build.

Here’s everything that’s landed.

Table of Contents

OBD-II & Drive Features

Routes & Telemetry

Build Management

Social & Community

App & Infrastructure

What’s Next

OBD-II & Drive Features

CarPlay Support

This was a big one. If you’re anything like me, you despise phone mounts. CarPlay is the way. Now you can start and stop drives right from your car’s screen without fumbling with your phone.

PitStop shows up as a CarPlay Driving Task app with two tabs:

Record Tab lets you start and stop drives right from CarPlay. You can select which build you’re recording to, and while you’re driving, you get live telemetry on the screen: speed, RPM, coolant temp, throttle position, distance, duration, and your max speed for the session.

Routes Tab lets you browse your saved routes and tap to navigate. It opens Google Maps with waypoints sampled along your route. Super handy for spirited drives you want to repeat.

One thing I learned the hard way: Apple is very restrictive with CarPlay Driving Task apps. No map access, no custom drawing, just basic templates. We can’t show a live map during recording (that’s reserved for navigation apps), but the telemetry display works great for keeping an eye on your engine while you drive. We’re working on getting the CarPlay map entitlement from Apple, and once they bless us with it, we’ll add a proper live map to the recording screen.

DTC Capture During Drives

Here’s where it gets interesting. PitStop now scans for Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs) every 60 seconds while you’re recording a drive. If your car throws a check engine light mid-drive, we capture it automatically.

When you view the drive later, you’ll see all the DTCs that were active during that session, grouped by type:

  • Active codes are currently triggering
  • Pending codes have been detected but not yet confirmed
  • Permanent codes are stored and survive a reset

This is genuinely useful for tracking down intermittent issues. You know how it goes. The check engine light comes on, you drive to the shop, and suddenly it’s gone. Now you’ve got a record of exactly when it happened and what codes were thrown.

This has already been super helpful for a few of my street builds and tunes. Being able to see exactly when a code got thrown and what was happening at the time makes diagnosing issues way easier.

Auto-Stop When ECU Turns Off

This one sounds simple but makes a huge difference in day-to-day use. Previously, if you forgot to stop your drive before turning off the car, PitStop would keep recording GPS data until you remembered to stop it manually. Not great.

Now there’s a setting to automatically stop the drive when your car’s ECU turns off. The app detects when the OBD connection drops (because the car is off), and if you’ve enabled auto-stop, it ends the drive for you with a little toast notification.

No more coming back to your phone an hour later wondering why it’s still “recording” a drive that ended ages ago.

Build Info Sync

This one is pretty sweet. PitStop can now automatically sync data from your OBD-II telemetry to your build’s info fields. Set up a sync preset for mileage or fuel level, and after each drive, we’ll update it based on what we captured.

But here’s where it gets really useful: you can tie tasks to build info. Set up a mileage sync and create a task to change your oil every 5,000 miles. PitStop will track your mileage automatically and remind you when it’s time. Or sync your fuel level and set a task to check your oil after every fill-up. Build info can be anything, and if you’ve got telemetry for it, you can probably sync it and automate a task around it.

You can choose to auto-accept updates or require approval. When approval is required, you’ll get an in-app notification with the proposed value. Tap to accept, dismiss, or edit it before saving.

Live Cockpit HUD

The active drive screen got a complete redesign. Instead of a basic recording indicator, you now get a proper cockpit-style HUD with live telemetry. Speed, RPM, temps, throttle. All updating in real-time as you drive. It feels a lot more like a purpose-built driving app now.

Track Mode GPS

For the motorsport folks, there’s now a Track Mode setting that uses high-precision GPS data. Street driving uses road-snapping for cleaner routes, but on track you want raw accuracy. Track Mode disables the smoothing so your racing lines are captured exactly as driven.

GPS Only Mode

Sometimes you want to record a drive but your OBD adapter isn’t connected. Or you’re in a vehicle without OBD-II, like a vintage car or a go-kart. GPS Only mode lets you record drives using just location data. You can even connect or disconnect OBD mid-drive and the app handles it gracefully.

Custom PID Discovery

Not every car speaks the same OBD-II language. PitStop now auto-scans for supported PIDs when you connect and tracks which ones your vehicle actually responds to. This means we can show you exactly what data your car can provide and avoid wasting time polling unsupported sensors.

You can also add custom PIDs for manufacturer-specific data that isn’t in the standard OBD-II spec. If you’ve got a tuned car with custom sensors or you know your ECU supports extended PIDs, you can add them and PitStop will capture that data during drives.

Offline Drive Recording

Drives now persist locally even if you’re offline or the upload fails. We rewrote telemetry storage to use SQLite instead of JSON files, which is way more reliable and faster. If something goes wrong during upload, your drive data is safe on device and will sync when you’re back online.

We also added a “pending drives” view so you can see what’s waiting to upload and manage stuck drives if needed.

Routes & Telemetry

Route Planning

We added a full route planning system. You can save routes with start/end locations, distance, estimated duration, and tags. Associate them with specific builds for easy organization. The Routes tab in the app lets you browse your saved routes and jump straight into navigation.

For folks who have favorite backroads or scenic drives they like to revisit, this keeps everything organized in one place.

Interactive Telemetry Charts

After a drive, you can explore your telemetry with interactive charts that support pinch-to-zoom and pan gestures. Want to see exactly what your throttle position was at a specific point? Zoom in. The charts also sync with the route map, so as you scrub through the telemetry, a marker moves along your route showing where you were.

We also added telemetry heatmaps on routes, so you can visualize things like speed or throttle position overlaid on your drive path. It’s genuinely cool to see where you were on the throttle hardest on a canyon run.

Build Management

Subtasks

Tasks now support subtasks. Breaking down a bigger job like “rebuild suspension” into individual steps (order parts, remove old components, install new, torque to spec, alignment) makes it way easier to track progress. Check them off as you go.

Imperial & Metric Units

You can now choose between imperial and metric units throughout the app. Speed, distance, temperature. Everything respects your preference. We also did a bunch of work to make sure unit display is consistent everywhere, which sounds trivial but wasn’t.

Expandable Photos

Tap on cover photos or profile pictures and they expand to full-screen with pinch-to-zoom and drag-to-dismiss. Small thing, but it makes browsing builds way nicer.

Social & Community

Discover Builds

You can now search and discover public builds from other PitStop users. Search by build name, username, or just browse what’s out there. It’s the start of making PitStop a place to find inspiration and connect with other enthusiasts.

Following Feed

Follow builds you’re interested in and see their activity in a dedicated Following feed. When someone you follow adds photos, completes a task, or logs a drive, you’ll see it. Your garage feed stays focused on your own stuff with tasks prioritized, while the Following feed shows you what’s happening in your automotive circle.

Likes & Threaded Comments

React to photos, notes, drives, and tasks with likes. Leave comments, and now those comments support threading. Reply directly to someone and the conversation stays organized. It’s starting to feel like a proper social platform for car people.

In-App Notifications

There’s now a notification bell in the app. When someone likes your stuff, comments on your content, replies to your comment, or follows your build, you’ll see it. Tap a notification to jump straight to the relevant content.

Privacy Controls

With social features comes the need for privacy. You can now set visibility on individual entries. Keep some things private while sharing others publicly. Your build can be public for followers while specific maintenance items or notes stay private.

App & Infrastructure

RaceRelay OBD-II Library

All the OBD-II magic in PitStop is powered by RaceRelay, our custom Swift library we built from scratch. Most OBD libraries out there are either abandoned, poorly documented, or don’t handle real-world edge cases. We needed something rock-solid for PitStop, so we built it ourselves.

RaceRelay now supports:

  • Comprehensive OBD-II modes covering Mode 01 through 0A with ~80% of the spec
  • Advanced diagnostics including pending DTCs, permanent DTCs, freeze frame data, and O2 sensor tests
  • Multi-ECU support to talk to 9+ ECU types (engine, transmission, ABS, SRS, etc.)
  • Custom PIDs so you can define your own with formulas for manufacturer-specific data
  • Automatic protocol detection that works with CAN, ISO, SAE J1850, and other OBD-II protocols
  • Reliable reconnection so you can connect and disconnect repeatedly without restarting the app
  • Connection health monitoring with real-time RSSI, success rate, and connection quality metrics
  • Mock adapter mode for full simulation during development and testing

The connection reliability work alone was a massive undertaking. Bluetooth OBD adapters are notoriously finicky, and getting them to reconnect cleanly after disconnection was a serious challenge. RaceRelay now handles all of that gracefully.

Complete iOS Rewrite

This one isn’t user-facing, but it’s huge. We completely rewrote the iOS networking layer to use Apollo with GraphQL. The old approach was getting unwieldy and making it hard to add features. The new architecture is cleaner, faster, and way easier to build on.

We also migrated image storage from Google Cloud to Cloudflare R2, which gives us better performance and lower costs.

Instant App Loading

The app now uses a cache-first loading strategy. When you open PitStop, it instantly shows your data from the local cache while fetching updates in the background. No more staring at loading spinners every time you open the app.

We also made drive uploads 40x faster by bypassing some caching overhead that was designed for reads, not high-throughput writes. Drives now save almost instantly with a satisfying celebration animation when they complete.

New Landing Page

We redesigned the landing page with a motorsport-inspired aesthetic that better reflects what PitStop is about. There’s also a comparison page showing how PitStop stacks up against other apps like Sidecar for folks evaluating their options.

What’s Next

We’ve got some exciting stuff in the pipeline.

In-App Navigation

Right now, when you want to navigate a saved route, we kick you out to Google Maps. That’s fine, but it breaks the flow. We’re building in-app turn-by-turn navigation using MapKit so you can navigate your custom routes while recording a drive, all without leaving PitStop. Voice guidance, turn instructions, the works.

Crews

This is the one I’m most excited about. Soon you’ll be able to create a Crew, your own car group. Invite your friends, plan meetups, and go on live group drives together. Think of it as a private car club within PitStop. You’ll be able to see where everyone is during a group drive, coordinate meetup spots, and share the experience together.

We’re building PitStop for car enthusiasts, and car culture is inherently social. Crews are how we bring that to life.

Push Notifications

We’ve got in-app notifications working, but proper push notifications are coming. Task reminders, social activity, and eventually smart triggers like geofencing to automatically suggest starting a drive when you leave home.

And More…

Some other things on our radar:

  • Heart rate capture via HealthKit for track day folks who want to see how their heart rate correlates with their driving
  • Geofencing drive triggers to auto-start drives when you leave certain locations
  • Trip linking to connect multiple drives into a single trip (drive to the store, drive home = one trip)
  • Reassign drives so you can move a drive if you accidentally recorded it on the wrong build
  • Web app parity to bring all these iOS features to the web

Try It Out

If you want to get in on any of this, join our TestFlight. We’re a small team and every bit of testing with different vehicles, OBD adapters, and use cases helps us make PitStop better for everyone.

We’d love to hear from you. What features matter most? What’s working well? What’s not? Hit us up!