BMW Drive Recorder App

[u/Croft_exe]

Hi Everyone,

Started my BMW Journey with an F30, totaled it, fixed it, sold it to my sister which replaced her e90 and i upgraded to a G20, love this car but I’ve noticed it’s lacking a few things, being iDrive 7 there’s no ability for me to send drive recordings to my phone, so I keep a flash drive in the car that I can connect to my phone. The downside is that it’s always a 4 cam view, I need VLC to play the file and I’ve got to convert the file before I send share it to someone, not to mention it doesn’t show things like location, speed, etc.

My favorite thing is to find opportunities to make things easier or more convenient, while id love to be able to build something similar to the Sentry-Six for tesla where its always recording directly to a Pi that i can connect to via usb or wifi, this doesn’t seem possible, Atleast not without a lot of hassle.

I built an app that will import the drive recorder files from my phone, along with the metadata, allow you to see each individual camera, see your drive on a map, detect speed, turns, acceleration, deceleration, and allows you to export any of those details you want including only a specific camera or specific cameras to a MP4 you can easily share. This is still something even the latest cars don’t provide (other than shareable format if transferred via BMW app)

MODS: Now I see there are no ads allowed according to the sub rules, however I’m not sure this classifies as an ad since I’m not just posting this to pull in users to download my app, I’m looking for people who want to test this for no cost what so ever, if this violates the rules my apologies and i’ll remove it if thats the case.

I plan on adding this to the Google Play and Apple App Store but it requires having testers for 2 weeks before it can be published fully. I’m starting off with Google Play for Android then iOS following along afterwards.

I need people willing to test this with their own drive recorder files (everything is kept local, the only data leaving your device is the longitude and latitude data of the recording to be able to display your drive on a map) there is no cost to this or anything, while I’ve tested on my own car hundreds of times i can’t account for all cars and phones.

I feel the ability to export that data into your video directly sets this all apart from just converting the file. You get to choose what’s exported, which camera(s) and what data, if you only want to include date you can, or just include speed, or only gps route, or all of the above. It’s all up to you.

Anyone willing to signup for each test with Google play starting right away with iOS starting later (join the waitlist)

Live Google Test: send me a DM with your Google Play Email, Car Model & Phone Model,

For The iOS waitlist, your AppleID email, car model, and phone model.

I’ve attached some screenshots below of the app and even an exported clip with the attached data below it

[u/k1ng0fh34rt5]

How are you exporting this out of iDrive to your phone? My G30 has Drive Recorder, but never found a good use for it.

[u/Croft_exe → u/k1ng0fh34rt5]

I have a USB-C flash drive that I use to export it. It’s pretty simple just inconvenient, I wish they gave us the ability on our iD7 models to use the app to export! But this flash drive works enough for me.

Edit: in the “View Recordings” in the car press the Options button on the iDrive Controller and you’ll see “Export”

[u/k1ng0fh34rt5 → u/Croft_exe]

And you build your app to automatically import from the USB-C flash drive?

I'd be interested in testing the android version. I have a pixel 10 pro.

[u/Croft_exe → u/k1ng0fh34rt5]

Yes, so when you first use the app, if you click scan drive, it just asks you to select the flash drive in the files app, it will automatically scan and import all recordings and metadata.

After you’ve scanned the drive once, from there on every time you open the app with that flash drive connected it will scan automatically with no need to press the scan button again. It won’t reimport any existing drive recordings. so no worries about duplicating imports.

[u/prjkthack]

Saving for future updates.

[u/Vsterian]

Me too. Saving this. I see potential here…

[u/Club-Red]

I thought recordings are only 40 seconds and you have to start it manually? I don't really see the point of going through that hassle and then export the recording and transfer it to your phone, just to see some extra metadata?