EV vehicle work around

On my IONIQ, AutoPi will shut down after 10 minutes, even while driving. Could it be possible that AutoPi does not turn off while there is traffic on the wireless network or when GPS speed data is available?

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Hi

I donā€™t know about using the wireless network as an indicator, as there are probably people who donā€™t use the hotspot. But something like GPS SOG (speed over ground), or the accelerometer could be used as well.

We are looking into other possible ways to handle EVā€™s in the best possible way, so itā€™s only a matter of time before it will work with EVā€™s as well.

If you come up with any other ideas, feel free to let us know :slight_smile:

Best regards
/Malte

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Hi Malte,

An idea I had the other day about how to detect when EVā€™s are being driven.
Would activating the Autopi when the battery voltage exceeds a certain level work?

What I have noticed is that the voltage drops really quickly when the car is off because of the small battery size.

Now, EVā€™s occasionally will recharge the auxiliary battery while the car is not in use, but this should not be an issue if the Autopi comes on for that time.

Could you use the battery voltage as an indicator?

Regards
Sandi

Hi Sandi

We actually already use this for the signal to turn on the device, the main issue we are facing and is in the process of solving, is what signal to use to continually keep it running. In a normal ICE vehicle, we use the RPM, but that doesnā€™t really work for anything else, as fully electric doesnā€™t support the RPM PID, and hybrids has it, but when the engine turns off, and it uses the electric motor to accelerate, the RPM will return 0 or nothing.

We have a big release coming out within the next few hours with the ā€œCar Explorerā€ section being the biggest change, it will allow you guys to map your vehicles and share proprietary PIDā€™s with each other, but we will post more info about it very soon.

We are working on a way to configure how the device should ā€˜keep aliveā€™, like i mentioned above, and we expect to have that included in the next release.

Best regards
/Malte

Hi Malte,

But what I was thinking is to monitor the battery voltage, when ever a car is running (ICE, hybrid or electric) the battery is being charged, so the voltage will always be high (13 to 14V) because the carā€™s systems require power to function.

So I was thinking that you could only rely on the battery voltage to control the power modes of the AutoPiā€¦
You do not need to depend on a specific PID at all, making it a universal fixā€¦

Maybe I am missing something, but I think that this should work.

Regards
Sandi

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Hi Sandy

Maybe you are not missing anything at all :slight_smile:
I will take it up with the team, but I do know that the voltage is affected by a lot of things, so it may not be possible to rely that heavily on it. But itā€™s something i will check up on for sure.

Best regards
/Malte

It seems like accelerometer or GPS speed would be a good variable to incorporate. Or, if we can somehow define a custom PID to use to initiate trip logging?

I drive a Chevy Volt which mostly gets driven as an EV, and of 7 recent trips, only 2 were logged. Those two days were particularity cold and the gas engine started for heat output, so engine RPM helps explain why those two trips were logged. :slight_smile:

Iā€™m not sure about other EVs/PHEVs, but the Volt seems to keep the 12v system maintained/topped off when charging, so there may be periods when the voltage will spike to 13v-14v while not being driven.

I suspect youā€™ll need to query one or more PIDā€™s anyways - autopi will need to remain on whilst charging and whilst ā€œonā€.

Maybe create two special PIDā€™s in the library per car -

  1. ON_CHECK - if returned 1, car is on. Donā€™t sleep. If returned 0 or error, sleep as usual.
  2. CHARGING_CHECK - if returned 1, car is charging. Donā€™t sleep. If returned 0 or error, sleep as usual.

For the kona I can see what the formula for these would be.

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@MrEricM We currently have this in our core, but itā€™s not configurable. We are working on changing this so that you can modify the triggers that are running on the device, ideally weā€™d like to provide some default settings that should work for the various types of cars, which can be overwritten by the users so that we can make it fit any type of car.

@plord It will most likely be on a level above PIDā€™s, where different stuff can emit events, and the triggers can receive various events, be it from the accelerometer, PIDā€™s etc, but we will probably get back to you guys about that, as it should 100% cover the electric vehicle requirements.

Best regards
/Malte

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I might be completely wrong, but i think most EVs donā€™t report main battery SOC when off (as the BMC is offline), so that PID might be used to detect car on / off state in place of RPM.

No main battery SOC PID - car off.
Main battery SOC PID responding - car on.

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Is there any progress on this?
Turn on when

  • When EV car is on
  • When EV car is charging.
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Hi @Malte @Peter - any news on where we are for this last step for EV support ?

Thanks,

Pete

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Hi Pete,

ETA is end of next week. Fingers crossed.

We are polishing the last details at the moment. The release will be a major one and contain a lot of other changes. Weā€™ll keep you posted when there is news.

Thank you for your patience.

best
Peter

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Great ! Many thanks for the update,

Pete

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I see this ā€¦ itā€™s know is charging car ?? 03

Hello all,
Not sure about other EVā€™s, but on my Smart electric drive, the motor is only powered, similar to that of an ICE ) when the main drive contactor is engaged. I am guessing that this could be used for telling the AutoPi when the motor is in an active drive modeā€¦ Just an idea??
Plus my Smart ā€œHadā€ an App that showed everything, when the car was switched off! So I am guessing there must still be a way to access this data. Mercedes in their wisdom, decided to shut the App down, as the on board modem used 2G, and since we no longer use that, it was shutdown :frowning:
Another thingā€¦ the AutoPi doesnā€™t seem to read my OBD for some reason, so gave up for now, using it on the EVā€¦
Ok thats me for nowā€¦
Cheers
Vince.

Maybe we all didnā€™t cross our fingers hard enough :wink:

Any more news ?

( Iā€™m holding off working on some mini projects until this update )

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Hi @plord,

Sorry for the missing response on this. Iā€™m not sure crossing your fingers harder would have helped.

We are still working on this release, but I wont give an exact date for the release. We do hope to be able to complete it soon, but we have had some task going unexectedly over time.

In the future, we do hope to be better at informing you about the upcomming releases and their content.

For now, please keep you fingers crossed :wink:

best
Peter

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Hello:
Any info about this?? Have my autopi useless in my kona ev months ago waiting for the update with all my fingers crossed :wink:
Thanks.
Octavio.

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If you find task of plord " Telegram etc" little trick to work on Kona, sleep and awake, also notify function

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