Downtime & New Things

Free Car Check had some problems later yesterday and earlier today with DNS which prevented it from contacting data providers. As a result FCC was unable to provide any reports and also kept timing out. If you were trying to get a check during those times and had problems you should be able to try again now. There were also some problems retrieving data about MOT failures due to what seems to be a modification of the MOTINFO site. I've put a quick fix in for it, though MOT expiry dates are now unavailable. I need to put together a better regex for it (I also want to get advisory notices).

On the plus side I've made some progress on getting the site itself into a more manageable state and I've been working on some highly exciting legal bits. I had previously submitted Free Car Check to the people at MoneySavingExpert only to have it rejected for not having a privacy policy. So there's one up at the development site now.

I'm still looking for more useful addons to the site. I'm looking right now at:

• Registration Number Decoders (year of registration, DVLA office involved etc)
• VIN Decoders (make, model, year of manufacture, unique serial etc)

On some slightly more fun additions, I'm thinking:

• Maps of test stations - find out where a vehicle has been tested
• More environmental data - see the number of trees needed to offset the mileage of a car

Work towards being able to register has now started, so that'll be the next big project for the time. If you've got any opinions of what should be added next feel free to add a comment here.

And They're Done

Well, almost!

I've just got them working on the development site which I use to test out changes before I make them available to everyone (which stops me looking silly when I miss out a semicolon or something similarly idiotic...).

Take a look:


The graphs are made using the Google Charts API. Its not particularly pretty, but seems easier and more reliable than other chart solutions I've seen.

Mileage Graphs

Now full MOT results are available I have the ability to sort out mileage graphs. I'm looking to present them in a few formats:

• Line graph - showing current mileage over time
• Variable width bar chart - showing average mileage per month over time
• Yearly bar chart - showing estimated yearly mileage

I can also estimate the current mileage based upon the average daily mileage in the last MOT period. Based on my own mileage this method came out pretty good.

The code to get together data for these statistics is already done - so all I need to do is get the graphs to be generated. I've been looking at Google Chart API and Open Flash Chart. Google's offering is pretty easy to use but seems a bit odd in that its bad at figuring out how to scale bar charts. OFC on the other hand seems a bit more powerful (you can add your own shapes to charts and do some other nice things) but code wise its a bit of a pain. I'm playing with both to see which one I like more. Hopefully I can get something working soon in beta.

MOT Testing & Going Green

Last week I said I'd got together all the environment data from the VCA and done some work to make it easily searchable. It's now available to view - enter the registration number and Free Car Check will go off and look for the nearest matching vehicles. There are still some teething troubles and older vehicles probably won't come up with results since VCA data doens't go back that far.

In other improvements you can now display all previous electronic MOT records. Information available includes the data, mileage, result and the test station. It doesn't yet show any advisories issued - I need a better way of displaying them than in a table. Added to the todo list :-)

Environmental Data

Today I completed gathering the data for environment checks from the VCA and the beta is looking pretty good. I'll be rolling it out to the main site soon. Also on my wish list now:

• Home Office Vehicle Crime Statistics - http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/policingroads.html
  
• Insurance Group Lookup (Thatcham) - http://www.thatcham.org/abigrouprating/index.jsp?page=343
  
• Vehicle Recalls (VOSA) - http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosa/apps/recalls/default.asp
  

Welcome

I've been adding a lot of new useful things to Free Car Check for a while now, but I've not really had a good way of keeping you all up to date with it. So welcome to the new Free Car Check blog!

There's currently lots on the todo list:

• Environmental data
• Proper stolen police reports
• Insurance checks (for owners only mind)
• Mileage graphs
• Estimate current mileage
  
• Results from MOT test numbers
• Ability to store MOT number/document reference number with permission
• MOT/vehicle tax/insurance reminders
• Upload images of cars (for fun!)

What would you like to see first?