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ShoddyDrive Updates

ShoddyDrive is a product of ShoddyTechGarage LLC.

ShoddyDrive is now publicly released. These notes track the documented path from earlier alpha and beta telemetry foundations into current public-release work around dashboard reliability, AppBridge resilience, polling validation, diagnostics trust, and safer in-vehicle UX.

Latest documented update: May 20, 2026.

Public release is live for ShoddyDrive v1.0.0 (186)
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What changed in plain English

ShoddyDrive is already public, so recent work is about making the launcher steadier and easier to trust during normal use.

  • Telemetry and AppBridge behavior have been tightened so live updates feel more consistent.
  • Dashboard and release-note polish make the app easier to understand without digging through older beta history.
  • The public release identity stays stable while post-release fixes continue underneath it.

Release history

This timeline reflects the documented milestones currently present in the workspace-backed site copy.

May 20, 2026 - v1.0.0 (186)

Public release Build 186 Telemetry and AppBridge consistency
  • Improves telemetry screen and repository flow consistency.
  • Tightens AppBridge source-client behavior for more stable real-time updates.
  • Continues post-release stability work without changing the public v1.0.0 release identity.

May 13, 2026 - v1.0.0 (185) Public Release

Public release Build 185 AppBridge and telemetry stability hardening
  • ShoddyDrive v1.0.0 (build 185) is now publicly released.
  • This release hardens AppBridge telemetry-source handling and polling validation.
  • Metric-state reducer refinements improve real-time telemetry stability during active use.

May 5, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (184)

Beta Build 184 AppBridge source handling and reducer stability hardening
  • Hardens AppBridge telemetry-source handling and polling validation for steadier cross-source runtime behavior.
  • Refines metric-state reducer logic so real-time telemetry updates remain more stable under changing source conditions.

May 2, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (183)

Beta Build 183 Navigation cue handling and telemetry validation hardening
  • Improves navigation signal and cue handling across dashboard flows for steadier in-drive guidance behavior.
  • Hardens telemetry diagnostics and polling validation so real-time updates stay more stable under mixed runtime conditions.

May 1, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (182)

Beta Build 182 Shell/dashboard media-dialog and launcher/settings polish
  • Polishes shell and dashboard media-dialog flows for a cleaner in-car interaction path.
  • Improves settings behavior plus launcher-target handling for a more consistent day-to-day experience.

April 29, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (181)

Beta Build 181 Startup and debug-export consistency with telemetry regression hardening
  • Improves startup and debug-export consistency for cleaner launch and support workflows.
  • Strengthens telemetry-source regression coverage for steadier launch and diagnostics behavior.

April 29, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (180)

Beta Build 180 Navigation-panel and routing consistency hardening
  • Improves dashboard navigation-panel behavior for smoother day-to-day use.
  • Improves root routing consistency and adds stronger regression coverage for steadier navigation flows.

April 28, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (179)

Beta Build 179 Polling validation and source-path regression hardening
  • Improves telemetry polling validation for steadier live signal behavior.
  • Strengthens source-path regression coverage to reduce signal-path instability across updates.

April 28, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (178)

Beta Build 178 Telemetry arbitration hardening and UI flow refinement
  • Hardens telemetry source arbitration and polling validation for steadier cross-source behavior.
  • Refines Assistant, Setup, Quick Launch, and Settings UI flows for a cleaner day-to-day experience.

April 27, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (176)

Beta Build 176 UI polish and consistency pass
  • Delivers small UI polish updates for cleaner visuals.
  • Improves day-to-day interaction consistency for a steadier overall feel.

April 27, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (175)

Beta Build 175 Navigation/media UX and launch routing polish
  • Refines dashboard navigation and media panel UX for a cleaner day-to-day driving flow.
  • Improves root external-action routing so launch behavior is more predictable and consistent.

April 26, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (174)

Beta Build 174 Dashboard and telemetry flow refinement
  • Refines dashboard and telemetry UI flows for cleaner panel behavior.
  • Strengthens cross-source OBD telemetry handling so live updates are more reliable across supported sources.

April 22, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (173)

Beta Build 173 Maintenance-focused refactor
  • Delivers a major maintenance-focused refactor to reduce regression risk and improve flexibility for future updates.
  • Internal structure and integration surfaces were cleaned up to support safer iteration going forward.

April 22, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (172)

Beta Build 172 Telemetry hardening and UI consistency pass
  • Hardens telemetry behavior across AppBridge, Bluetooth ELM327, and USB OBD paths to keep signal flow steadier under mixed adapter conditions.
  • Applies UI and UX cleanup across dashboard and assistant surfaces so core interactions feel cleaner and more consistent in daily use.

April 20, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (171)

Beta Build 171 UI/UX cleanup and metadata consistency
  • Delivers UI and UX cleanup for a cleaner in-app experience.
  • Includes an important metadata fix to improve consistency across surfaced information.

April 20, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (170)

Beta Build 170 OBD reliability and maintainability
  • Shared connection-engine cleanup improves OBD reliability and long-term maintainability.
  • Adaptive polling optimizations make telemetry updates more stable during mixed signal conditions.
  • Telemetry fallback behavior is steadier across Bluetooth, USB, and AppBridge feeds.
  • Debug exports are cleaner so troubleshooting can move faster when issues are reported.

April 17, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (166)

Beta Build 166 Media and diagnostics integration
  • Media and system-signal alignment is cleaner.
  • Split-launch dashboard flows are more polished.
  • OBD telemetry reliability is stronger.
  • The release focuses on cleaner media integration wiring plus better App-Bridge fallback and polling behavior for steadier diagnostics and clearer debug output.

April 16, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (165)

Beta Build 165 Naming and terminology cleanup
  • Naming consistency was tightened across the release.
  • Copyright text was updated.
  • Ecosystem-aligned terminology now keeps release messaging cleaner and more consistent.
  • Core behavior does not change in this build.

April 15, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (164)

Beta Build 164 Split-screen promoted
  • Split-screen dashboard launching is now a permanent feature.
  • The previous experimental framing has been removed.
  • Split route, media, and telemetry workflows are now part of the standard in-car experience.

April 15, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (163)

Beta Build 163 Emissions and DTC clarity
  • Emissions-readiness monitor decoding is more robust.
  • App Bridge fallback parsing is stronger for compact and bare payload variants.
  • Telemetry metric mapping now keeps emissions and DTC visuals clearer and easier to configure.

April 14, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (162)

Beta Build 162 Audio and diagnostics polish
  • Improved AudioLab output tuning, including 15-band control.
  • App Bridge telemetry normalization is stronger.
  • DTC sweep follow-up is faster.
  • Emissions-readiness reporting is richer.

April 14, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (161)

Beta Build 161 Startup clarity and telemetry reliability
  • The startup overlay now stays readable on very fast launches.
  • DTC sweeps react sooner with stronger OBD decode coverage.
  • LL8 oil-pressure estimates are smoother on startup.
  • Telemetry and setup flows were consolidated to reduce duplicate polling and repeated intent-link behavior.

April 13, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (160)

Beta Build 160 Diagnostics responsiveness and reliability
  • DTC sweeps can now react faster when active fault counts change.
  • OBD decode coverage is stronger across compact and prefixed response formats.
  • Telemetry-plus-assistant context stays steadier and more confidence-aware during imperfect bridge sessions.
  • This build focuses on improving diagnostics responsiveness and reliability without changing the broader release flow.

April 13, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (159)

Beta Build 159 Telemetry steadiness and assistant trust
  • App Bridge gauges now avoid more momentary stale flicker.
  • DTC status holds together better between sweeps when bridge support data is incomplete.
  • Assistant summaries now include better low-confidence diagnostic notes without amplifying noisy bridge artifacts.
  • This build focuses on making live telemetry feel steadier and assistant feedback easier to trust.

April 12, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (157)

Beta Build 157 Assistant consistency and export polish
  • Driver Brief summaries are shorter and more driving-safe.
  • Assistant reply framing is more uniform across local and detailed engines.
  • Debug exports now preserve stronger recovery context while calling out suspicious PID and trip-distance inventory patterns more clearly.
  • This build focuses on making assistant responses feel more consistent and easier to trust without changing the broader release flow.

April 12, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (156)

Beta Build 156 Assistant feedback and disclosure polish
  • Assistant responses now follow clearer feedback profiles.
  • Driving-focused warning wording is shorter and easier to absorb at a glance.
  • Privacy-policy and voice-disclosure copy better explain how synthesized speech, saved keys, and local model files are handled.
  • This build focuses on making ShoddyAssistant feedback easier to trust and understand without changing the broader release flow.

April 11, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (155)

Beta Build 155 Diagnostics trust polish
  • Pending and stored diagnostic trouble codes now surface more clearly across telemetry and assistant warning flows.
  • DTC sweeps now run on a calmer schedule behind the scenes.
  • Torque App Bridge fallback handling is broader and more resilient when bridge coverage is partial or timestamps go stale.
  • This build is focused on making live diagnostics easier to trust without changing the broader release flow.

April 11, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (154)

Beta Build 154 Assistant and small-screen polish
  • Detailed Assistant mode now supports more bring-your-own-account cloud options, including Claude, xAI Grok, AWS Bedrock, and Azure OpenAI.
  • Readiness checks and fallback behavior keep the assistant usable when a cloud request or credential setup is not ready.
  • Local SmolLM2 model resolution is smarter, preferring imported model packs when present and falling back cleanly to the bundled Play Asset model path when needed.
  • Portrait-phone dashboard layouts can now scroll, and compact spacing plus slot rules are tighter so telemetry, maps, and media fit more naturally on narrow or short screens.

April 9, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (153)

Beta Build 153 Telemetry resilience and diagnostics
  • Torque App Bridge support is broader and more tolerant of partial bridge inventory or stale timestamps.
  • Estimated LL8 Oil Pressure behaves more naturally on cold and heat-soaked startups.
  • Debug exports now package clearer issue, metric, and recent-event detail for faster troubleshooting.
  • This build strengthens telemetry resilience and diagnostics without changing the broader release flow.

April 8, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (152)

Beta Build 152 Release experience polish
  • Startup now progresses more clearly through hardware and app readiness with a safer fallback path if telemetry is still loading.
  • Validation-only telemetry gallery surfaces now stay out of normal release builds.
  • Settings now use clearer release-friendly section labels.
  • Compact dashboard layouts fit smaller landscape screens better.
  • Recent App Bridge cache and polling cleanup improves telemetry resilience behind the scenes.

April 8, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (150)

Beta Build 150 Telemetry and dashboard polish
  • Torque App Bridge validation now does a better job separating healthy mixed-rate telemetry from real stalls.
  • Partial starvation now stays on softer recovery paths before escalating to a full rebind.
  • Debug snapshots now call out requested, decoded, brokered, and stale PID state more clearly.
  • Estimated LL8 Oil Pressure is retuned around a more realistic 5W-30 warm-up curve with smoothing between updates, so cold-start and hot-idle behavior read more naturally.
  • On the custom Telemetry Dash, empty grid cells can now create a new widget in place for faster layout building.

April 7, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (149)

Beta Build 149 App Bridge responsiveness
  • App-side bridge snapshots now refresh roughly every 650 ms instead of once per second.
  • Fast dashboard metrics like throttle, load, RPM, and timing should react more quickly in the in-car view.
  • The recent App Bridge stability and warning-tuning work stays intact under the faster snapshot cadence.
  • This build is about making App Bridge-backed dashboard feedback feel more immediate without reopening the recent stability work.

April 6, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (147)

Beta Build 147 Dashboard editor polish
  • Widget metric and style controls now use the same compact selector pattern as the visualization picker.
  • Wide landscape route cards separate instruction text from turn imagery more clearly.
  • Media cards make better use of the lower-right space for metadata instead of leaving empty chrome behind.
  • This build focuses on refining the in-car dashboard editing and presentation experience rather than changing the broader launcher workflow.

April 6, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (146)

Beta Build 146 Maps and music polish
  • The dashboard now shows stronger turn-direction cues on navigation cards.
  • Direct maneuver imagery is now shown when the navigation source supports it.
  • Media artwork fallback is more reliable for players like YouTube Music that sometimes expose cover art through notifications instead of the media session.
  • This release focuses on metadata polish across the maps and music surfaces instead of changing the broader launcher flow.

April 3, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.13 (145)

Beta Build 145 Decoder discovery
  • Added a diagnostics and decoder-discovery update for Torque App Bridge telemetry.
  • Unknown active AIDL PIDs now carry sampled values into the debug export.
  • Known mapped dashboard PIDs are summarized more clearly in App Bridge scan diagnostics.
  • The backend now has a cleaner path for expanding support as new bridge signals are identified.

April 3, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.11 (143)

Beta Build 143 Debug export
  • Added a new Settings-based Debug export flow for support snapshots and troubleshooting.
  • Support snapshots now capture the current app state, telemetry freshness, recent diagnostics events, connection details, and hardware context in a copy/share-friendly format.
  • Carried forward the latest App Bridge freshness and stale-handling hardening for safer live telemetry diagnostics.
  • Continued the GM enhanced telemetry groundwork without disturbing Bluetooth, USB, or App Bridge troubleshooting flows.

April 3, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.11 (142)

Beta Build 142 Telemetry stability
  • Improved App Bridge freshness handling for live OBD data.
  • Hardened stale-value recovery when bridge PID inventories are incomplete.
  • Expanded safe GM enhanced groundwork for P10, P12, and E67.
  • Improved E67 AIDL translation and one-shot support scaffolding.
  • Added native release debug symbol packaging for the app's JNI library to improve production crash analysis.

April 2, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.11 (141)

Beta Build 141 E67 live-data foundation
  • Added the first modular GM E67 live-data foundation without disturbing existing generic OBD-II, P10, P12, Bluetooth, USB, App Bridge, dashboard, or telemetry behavior.
  • Added safe E67 one-shot Mode 22 support.
  • Added Mode 2C DPID configuration and AA stream-start plumbing.
  • Added 0x5E8 live-stream routing and flow-control filtering.
  • Added bounded stale/dropout handling and reconnect-safe session reset.
  • Added developer diagnostics to support continued reverse-engineering and on-vehicle validation.

April 2, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.11 (140)

Beta Build 140 Telemetry reliability
  • Improved live OBD telemetry freshness.
  • Reduced stale or frozen RPM, coolant, load, throttle, timing, and intake readings.
  • Stabilized fuel updates.
  • Restored supported voltage and runtime reporting.
  • Made estimated oil pressure behave more predictably when source values go stale or recover.

April 1, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.11 (139)

Beta Build 139 Telemetry polish
  • Snap Dashboard gauge cards now look cleaner in edit mode.
  • Unavailable telemetry tiles read much more clearly on in-car screens.
  • The Telemetry screen keeps Clear Codes visible with better guidance about when it can be used.

March 30, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.11 (137)

Beta Build 137 Clarity and setup
  • Dashboard telemetry card layouts were cleaned up across gauge, bar, and cluster styles so labels and values stay visible on in-car screens.
  • The dashboard telemetry editor no longer has overlapping sections.
  • Quick Launch role cards now open the matching preferred-app setting in Setup directly.

March 30, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.10 (136)

Beta Build 136 Clarity and stability
  • Estimated LL8 Oil Pressure is now selectable anywhere dashboard telemetry metrics are configured.
  • Telemetry profile changes now restart cleanly so values like RPM do not get stuck in stale states.
  • The Snap Dashboard has been refit for EONON-style 1024x600 screens.
  • Cards are cleaner, readability is stronger, and gauges and bar visualizations fit the layout better.

March 29, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.9 (135)

Beta Build 135 Dashboard update
  • Improved dashboard customization.
  • Expanded snap-dashboard metric selection.
  • Added a live drive-safe countdown.
  • Improved telemetry tile scaling on larger layouts.

March 29, 2026 - v1.0.0-beta.9 (134)

Beta Build 134 Torque bridge
  • Upgraded the Torque App Bridge to prefer the newer batch API.
  • Added fallback through legacy reads when needed.
  • Waits 10 seconds after app start before polling.

March 18, 2026 - v1.0.0-alpha.16 (115)

Alpha Build 115 Validation-driven
  • Added real Clear DTC support.
  • Added value-driven telemetry progress.
  • Added Alpha and Beta build labeling in Settings.
  • Kept the app classified as Alpha.

Undated preserved builds

Workspace archive Earlier milestones
  • v1.0.0-beta.8 (131): Added an AIDL-first OBD2 bridge with automatic direct-OBD fallback.
  • v1.0.0-beta.7: Expanded split-launch for route, media, and telemetry panels.
  • v1.0.0-beta.6: Improved SmolLM2 pack resolution, startup overhead, release safety checks, and moved the privacy policy into the app.
  • v1.0.0-beta.5: Added USB ELM327 support, moved Ambient Mode into the dashboard picker, and added experimental split-launch for dashboard media.
  • v1.0.0-beta.4 (119): Fixed Setup scrolling and clarified Default home-app copy.
  • v1.0.0-beta.3 (118): Fixed Telemetry scrolling and added in-app latest-release-notes summaries.
  • v1.0.0-beta.2 (117): Fixed the Custom theme startup crash, restored Telemetry scrolling, moved Ambient Mode into Settings, and improved dashboard customization.
  • v1.0.0-beta.1 (116): Reclassified the app as Beta and narrowed the shipped scope to the real feature set.
  • v1.0.0-alpha15 (114): Improved Setup and Telemetry scrolling and simplified dashboard chrome.
  • v1.0.0-alpha14 (113): Added telemetry validation, diagnostics, predictive warnings, custom gauge layouts, ambient mode, and telemetry-aware assistant context.
  • v1.0.0-alpha06 (105): Introduced the advanced OBD2 telemetry engine, E67-focused tuning support, MAF support, DTC read and clear, and smarter polling.

Current direction

ShoddyDrive has steadily moved from foundational OBD2 telemetry and diagnostics toward a more polished driver-facing launcher experience with modular dashboards, smarter bridge behavior, better release clarity, and improved usability on larger automotive displays.

Why the beta matters

  • Validate layout readability across phones, tablets, and head units.
  • Harden telemetry behavior around real adapters and real startup timing.
  • Improve the app bridge, dashboard customization, and split-launch workflow.
  • Catch in-vehicle usability issues before wider release.

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