DriveCyclePro

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  tips & tricks

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  user selects year of vehicle

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  drive cycle preview user sees the steps needed before the drive cycle is started

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  pre drive check list 1

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  pre drive check list 2 they must all be selected to make sure car is in right conditions before starting drive cycle

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  drive cycle step 1 of 7

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  drive cycle 2 of 7

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  drive cycle 3 of 7

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  drive cycle 4 of 7

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  drive cycle 5 of 7

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  drive cycle 6 of 7

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  drive cycle 7 of 7

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  drive cycle is complete

Inspiration

My side hustle is buying and selling used cars, and I often need to drive them through manufacturer-specific drive cycles to get them to pass states inspection. You can’t sell a car or renew your registration in places like over 20 states without a valid inspection certificate — and that’s where things get tricky.

I’ve always found the instructions for different brand vehicles specific drive cycle confusing. How long do I hold 55 mph? Was that enough idle time? Was i supposed to have the A/C on or off? Trying to set timers or read a printed sheet while driving is frustrating and dangerous.

One day I was at a smog shop and overheard a woman telling the technician, “I already drove 200 miles — how can it still not be ready?” He explained that she needed to follow a very specific drive cycle for her vehicle and said, “I gave you the printed instructions.” But she replied, “I can’t understand this stuff, and I can’t look at a piece of paper while I’m driving. I figured 200 miles would be enough.”

That’s when it hit me: people aren’t failing because they didn’t try — they’re failing because the process is too complicated while driving. That moment inspired me to build DriveCyclePro.

What it does

DriveCyclePro is a mobile app that walks drivers through their car's exact smog drive cycle.

It gives:

• Clear voice instructions
• Step-by-step countdown timers
• Speed tracking based on GPS

Just enter your car’s make and year, and the app speaks the steps out loud and tells you when to idle, how fast to drive, and for how long, what speed to be at while you coast down, turn ac on or off, how long to idle your car, — hands-free and easy to follow.

How we built it

We built DriveCyclePro using Bolt.new as our AI development platform, which helped us generate the initial project structure and code.

Tech used includes:

• Bolt.new
• Expo + React Native for building the mobile app
• Expo Speech to read instructions aloud
• Expo Location to track GPS speed and progress
• A lightweight 40KB JSON drive cycle database with real steps from manufacturer documentation for popular car brands

Challenges we ran into

• Syncing countdown timers with real driving speeds
• Preventing voice instructions from overlapping
• Designing a simple, distraction-free interface for driving use
• Driving in the car to test the GPS speed

Accomplishments

• Fully working mobile app for both iOS and Android
• Voice-guided smog cycle walkthrough
• Real-time GPS speed tracking
• Lightweight and offline-capable
• Supports dozens of vehicle makes with accurate timing steps

What's next DriveCyclePro

• Add optional Bluetooth OBD2 reader support to check readiness monitors live
• Sell DriveCyclePro branded OBD reader at auto parts stores bundled with the app

Built With

• bolt.new
• expo-location
• expo-speech
• expo.io
• react-native
• typescript