DroneMobile is undoubtedly one of the best solutions to control a remote car starter or security system in your car or truck. While the traditional key fob remote is a great backup, being able to send commands to your vehicle from almost anywhere using your smartphone is ultra-convenient. Better yet, your vehicle can use DroneMobile to send notifications to advise you if someone is tampering with it. Let’s take a close look at some of the features of this impressive vehicle control and communication system.

What Is DroneMobile?

Telematics is the name given to solutions used to monitor the location and operation of cars and trucks using a telecommunication system. Suppose your vehicle has a Compustar, iDataStart or iDatalink remote car starter or security system. In that case, DroneMobile allows you to use your smartphone to send commands to the system controller in the vehicle instead of a traditional key fob. The system uses an application on your Android or Apple smartphone to talk to a DroneMobile computer module in your vehicle using the cellular data network. You can send unlock, lock or remote start commands with a simple touch of a button. Auxiliary outputs and trunk release control are also available. You can even activate the panic feature right from your phone.

When you launch the DroneMobile app, you’ll initially see a status screen display for the last vehicle you sent commands to. Indeed, DroneMobile will work with any number of vehicles, making it perfect for a family with two cars or a company with a fleet of commercial vehicles. The status screen displays the battery voltage and the temperature inside your car or truck (if you have a temperature sensor built into your remote car starter). All of these functions are included with the Basic service package, which costs as little as $3.99 a month. That’s much less than most factory-installed telematics systems cost.

Vehicle Security Features

Another essential feature of DroneMobile is its security features. If you have a Compustar car alarm or have added the DAS or DAS-II sensor to a Compustar remote car starter, then alerts from the alarm will show up on your phone as a notification. If you have installed the DroneMobile app on your smartwatch, the notifications will also show up there.

Another feature included in the Premium and higher packages is towing alerts. If your vehicle is moved without the ignition being turned on, you’ll get an instant notification on your smartphone. If you have a luxury or exotic vehicle and are concerned that someone might tow it away in the middle of the night, this feature is a perfect way to protect your pride and joy.

Find and Track Your Vehicle or Fleet

If you opt for the Premium service plan, you can access a full suite of GPS-based functions and warnings. When you log into the app, DroneMobile will show you exactly where your vehicle is located on Apple or Google maps. Tapping on the map screen will enlarge the map and show you the engine status (off or running); if the vehicle is moving, it will display how fast it’s traveling. This feature is quite handy if you share your car or truck with a family member.

You can also configure GPS-based alerts and notifications. Speed Monitoring will notify you if the vehicle exceeds a predefined limit. Likewise, you can set curfew hours and receive a notification if the vehicle is started during that time. These features are excellent for business owners with a fleet of vehicles.

The Premium plan also includes user-configurable Point of Interest and geofence warnings. If one of your kids borrows the family vehicle to go to work, you can configure a geofence around the location and receive a notification when they arrive and when they leave. This is also an excellent feature for company vehicles that are intended for use in specific areas.

The Premium service plan will also track how far the vehicle has been driven to let you know when it’s time for service and maintenance. Should the computer in your car or truck produce a check engine light or error code, DroneMobile can forward that information to you.

Advanced GPS Features Are Great for Business

The DroneMobile Premium Plus and Ultimate service plans add detailed breadcrumb trails and turn-by-turn tracking. If you use your vehicle for work, the system will log each trip. You can log into the DroneMobile website to generate travel reports for your expenses. That information is stored for six months, so there is lots of time to create reports for income tax purposes.

High-Speed Communication

One complaint we hear from people using factory-installed smartphone control systems is that they seem to take forever to send commands from the smartphone app to the vehicle. We’ve heard from many people that the process can take 30 to 60 seconds. DroneMobile modules are built using LTE-based cellular communication radios, and the authentication database is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The result is a system that works with lightning-quick speed. In most cases, commands from your phone or watch are received and executed by the vehicle in two to three seconds. You’ll get confirmation back to the app that whatever command you’ve requested has been completed in the same blazing-fast time.

Ready When You Are

Compustar bundles a Drone X1 module with most of its premium two-way remote-control systems. New users are provided a 30-day Premium trial to experiment with the system’s features. An important consideration is that you can activate DroneMobile as you need it. If you don’t need to remote start your vehicle in the summer and only use the system in the winter, you can pay for service from December to March. Should your vehicle be stolen or you lock your keys inside and need access, you can activate the subscription and use the tracking or unlock the doors in a few minutes. You can even use DroneMobile from a desktop computer connected to the internet by visiting the DroneMobile website. One of our co-workers managed to lock his keys and phone in his truck. He used a computer at the restaurant he was dining at to log into the website and send an unlock command to the vehicle. The whole process took only a few minutes. You can even log into the dronemobile.com website using the web browser on a smartphone or tablet. As long as you have internet access, you are connected.

DroneMobile – The Ultimate Vehicle Control and Monitoring System

If you want to communicate with the remote car starter or security system in your car or truck from almost anywhere in the country, visit a local authorized Compustar or iDataStart retailer and ask about adding DroneMobile. Once you’re used to its speed and convenience, you’ll wonder how you lived without it.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Being able to lock, unlock or remote start your car or truck using an app on your smartphone is handy. In listening to what owners of these solutions have been saying over the last few years, we’ve noticed a disturbing pattern: Most factory-installed remote systems are agonizingly slow. Nobody wants to wait around for their vehicle to unlock. So let’s do some research and see how the DroneMobile system from Firstech stacks up in terms of responsiveness.

What Is a Telematics System?

In the context of cars and trucks, telematics is a way of remotely controlling basic vehicle functions using an app on your smartphone. In essence, these systems replicate the operation of a key fob to let you lock or unlock your vehicle, pop the trunk or hatch, or remote start the engine. In addition, many systems include a GPS receiver that can locate your vehicle on a map or configure location-based security alerts.

DroneMobile is the aftermarket telematics system offered by Firstech – the company behind Compustar remote car starter and security systems. DroneMobile can be integrated with a Compustar remote car starter to provide unlimited control range. So long as your vehicle is parked somewhere with cellular service and your smartphone has access to the internet, you can send commands quickly and easily.

Smartphone Control Response Time

In addition to reliability and ease of use, impressive response time is one of the main reasons thousands of people have upgraded their cars and trucks with this system. Firstech moved its authentication services to AWS a few years ago to increase reliability and responsiveness. AWS is one of the world’s premier cloud computing platforms and is used by companies like Netflix, Amazon, Capital One, Coca-Cola, Expedia and thousands more to host their online platforms.

If you’re sitting at your desk at work and want to remote start your vehicle with your smartphone, it doesn’t matter significantly if the process takes 2, 20 or 120 seconds. However, if you’re walking up to your vehicle and want to use your phone to unlock it, response time matters. The last thing you want is to stand in front of your vehicle for 30, 40 or 60 seconds while data commands travel around the globe. You want the system to unlock as quickly as possible so you can be on your way.

We surveyed a group of friends to look at the response time of the telematics systems that came with their cars and trucks. The answers were surprising in all regards. Most response times were slower than we expected, with a surprisingly significant number of users completely giving up on these systems because they often didn’t respond.

If we average all the responses, it took just under 18 seconds from when an icon on the smartphone was pressed to when the vehicle responded on most factory-installed telematics systems. In most cases, this was a simple lock or unlock command. However, the time it took for these vehicles to remote start and then report their status back to the app was often more than twice that.

DroneMobile – The King of Vehicle Remote Control Speed

Most of the employees at BestCarAudio.com have Compustar remote starters installed in their vehicles. We also have DroneMobile telematics systems integrated with those starters. We surveyed our team and many of our peers and found that the average response time for a lock or unlock request was about 2 seconds. In some cases, it was less. Sending a lock command over LTE was often faster than using a one-button RF remote. This isn’t a failing of the remote – it waits a second before transmitting to see if you’re going to press the button again.

If you have remote started your car or truck from inside your home, work, a restaurant or movie theater and are approaching the vehicle, using the DroneMobile system to unlock the doors in about 2 seconds is, frankly, the way these systems should work.

Upgrade Your Vehicle with DroneMobile

Many friends we talked with for this article expressed an interest in replacing the factory system with a solution like DroneMobile. The slow response time or complete failure of the system to function had led many of them to abandon using the factory-installed solutions. If you’re shopping for a lightning-quick telematics system for your car or truck, drop by a local DroneMobile retailer today. You can learn more about this impressive smartphone control solution by visiting the DroneMobile website, their Facebook page, Instagram feed or YouTube channel.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.