Local Monitoring

Local Monitoring Mode

As shown in figure 1, the setup for local monitoring is relatively simple:

An OBD2 dongle is plugged in into the car. The OBD2 dongle can communicate with different processors present in the car.
With the App installed on an android device, the App can communicate with the OBD2 dongle over Bluetooth and retrieve information from the car.
Depending on whether you have the free version or the pro version of the App, you can see more or less information.

Figure 1: Local Monitoring

1. Local Monitoring Setup

Let us describe the steps for setting up local monitoring in more detail:

Step 1: OBD2 dongle
Plug-in the OBD2 dongle in your car under the steering wheel. Unfortunately not all OBD2 dongles may work equally well with the App. I tested the with the Viecar 4.0 dongle, the iCar dongle and several ELM327 mini dongles which all work fine.

Step 2: Bluetooth Pairing
Ensure that your android phone is paired with the OBD2 dongle. This has to be done in the Android operating system.

Step 3: Bluetooth Scanning
Next you open the App and you will see the Start Screen. For Local Monitoring, click on "Communicate with OBD2 Dongle".

The App will start to scan for Bluetooth devices. Found paired devices are shown in green, non-paired devices in brown. Click on your OBD2 dongle (has to be paired).

Note: Duplicates may occur in the scanning list but it does not matter which row you select.

Step 4: Bluetooth Connection Establishment & dongle initialistion
The App will attempt to establish a Bluetooth connection to the OBD2 dongle and initialise the dongle. If everything goes correct, both Bluetooth status and Dongle status turn green. Now we are ready to start local monitoring.

Notes:

Note that there is a setting "auto connect On/Off" in settings (three dots on the start screen). With autoconnect On, after a device has been selected on the scanning page once, at next occasions the App will no longer scan but immediately try to connect to the same Bluetooth device. This makes it possible to also connect to "hidden bluetooth devices" which are no longer open for scanning.

2. Local Monitoring Information

In the Bluetooth menu, three Local Monitoring options are provided:

1) CAR REPORTING

2) HYPERDRIVE INFO

3) COMMUNICATION CHECK

LOCAL MONITORING OPTION 3: COMMUNICATION CHECK

Let us start with the last of the third options. In the car there are many different processors. The App currently talks to 5 of these processing units (CPU's). On the Communication Check screen you can see if your OBD2 dongle is able to communicate to all 5 of these processors. Note that not all CPU's are always reachable. All CPU's should be reachable when the car is turned on. When charging, as subset of the CPU's is active and in even lower power modes of the car, even less CPU's will be reachable.

If you see an "OK" with all 5 CPU's when the car is turmed on, you should be fine. If not, the App may work only partly.

LOCAL MONITORING OPTION 1: CAR REPORTING

Via this button we come in the "Reporting Options" screen. This screen provides access to a large number of reporting screens. Each reporting screen provides parameters related to a certain subject.

Only the screens 1.1 "Driving related Info" and 2.1 "High Voltage Battery Status" are available in the free App. The pro-App supports all screens.

Note: In all reporting screens you can click on a parameter to get some further information about the parameter.

Some interesting aspects to note about each of the reporting screens:

1.1. Driving Related Info
Here you can see what your energy consumption per mile/km is. With this information you can try to optimize your range. Note that the "HyperDrive info" screen (see below) is even more suitable for this purpose.

This screen also shows the lifetime energy used by the car.

Note that certain information (e.g. energy consumption per mile/km and estimated range) can only be provided when you are actually driving, and will be "blacked out" when there is no movement detected.

2.1. HV Battery status
This screen provides a good overview on what is happening to the battery. It shows a.o. the Estimated Battery Capacity (expected to go down when the car ages), the State Of Charge (SOC) of the battery, ...

Especially important is the shown voltage difference between the cell with the max Voltage and the cell with the minimum Voltage. A too high difference will lead to cell imbalance and limit battery capacity.

2.2. Battery Conditioning
With all the known problems with the car battery, monitoring the battery module temperatures is interesting.

Here you can e.g. see when the car considers it necessary to heat/cool the battery. E.g. in the dutch climate, often after charging, the car will heat up the battery a bit before finalizing the charging cycle.

The last parameter "Thermal Condition Inactive" is counting in seconds how long the battery conditioning has not be active. It is reset when the battery conditioning is intervening in the temperature conditions of the battery.

2.3. HV Battery Cell Status
The car battery consists of 288 Li-ion cells. Cells are placed in parallel in groups of 3 cells, and we have 96 of these cell groups in series (96s3p). In this screen, the voltage of each of the 96 cell groups is shown. So here you can see examine any cell group imbalance in more detail.

Note that due to the slight difference in time when the different cell group voltages are retrieved from the car, the detected cell voltage difference may be higher than really present. E.g. when driving and really speeding, it is logical that the first cell for which the cell voltage is obtained has a slightly higher voltage than the last cell for which the voltage is obtained e.g. 300ms later. The reverse is true when charging.

As such, the "max cell group voltage" on the Battery Status screen provides a more accurate view on any cell group imbalance. But if the battery is not highly loaded/charged, this screen will provide a detailed accurate overview.

2.4. 12 Volt Battery Info
In this screen, the voltage of the low voltage 12 V battery is shown as measured at different places in the car.

Note that the first parameter "Dongle Voltage" is the only parameter out of all parameters (all reporting screens) that will always be provided by the OBD2 dongle (even if all car CPU's are turned off) since it is measured by the dongle itself.

Next we come to two charging related screens:

3.1. AC Charging
This screen provides a detailed overview on any ongoing AC Charging. Especially interesting is e.g. the "AC Charging Efficiency" which shows the efficiency of the AC/DC converter present in the car while the charging is ongoing.

When a charging session is finalised, the screen will show the efficiency of the previous charging session as shown in the screen on the left. In this example an efficiency of 86% is shown, but I have already seen much lower numbers. Note that the efficiency of a complete charging cycle is not only determined by the efficiency of the AC/DC converter but e.g. also on whether any battery conditioning has to take place related to the charging of the battery.

3.2. DC Charging
In DC charging, no AC/DC conversion is executed in the car. As such higher efficiencies (from the car point of view) should be obtainable with DC charging.

Note that the car does not remember whether the latest charging cycle was AC or DC charging, so the same 3 parameters are shown in both screens.

Next we come to two screens related to the cars drivetrain.

4.1. Drivetrain Info
The drivetrain consists of Inverter (motor controller), the motor itself and the transmission. For all three parts some parameters are reflected, starting from the throttle position (you will notice it is very difficult to have a stable foot) up to the actual axle torque.

4.2. Drivetrain Conditioning
This screens shows information about the third conditioning system in the car: Besides the battery conditioning (see 2.2) and the cabin conditioning (see 5.1.), this screen displays details of the drivetrain conditioning.

As a side note, each conditioning system has its own cooling system with a separate cooling fluid tank as you can see under the bonnet.

Currently there is one remaining screen in the "Other" section:

5.1. Cabin Conditioning
I consider the cabin conditioning system one of the "weak spots" of the car. Even under quite normal circumstances, cabin heating may use up to 11kW which can increase the power usage by the car from 14kW to 24kW thereby almost halving the range.

From the car dashboard it is not easy to spot which settings will result in a large or small power usage by the cabin conditioning. E.g. there are cases in which the cabin heating is turned of on the dashboard, but still the cabin conditioning may use a lot of power (:-(). With this screen you can spot these dashboard settings.

As another example of the use of this screen: I was assuming that car pre-heating while plugged in would only use wall-socket power and not draw from the battery (i.e. no impact on range). This screen will show you a quite different story: i.e. drawing e.g. 3.5kW from the wall-socket and using up to 11kW for car heating, it is clear that current has to be drawn from the car HV battery and thus the range is impacted.

LOCAL MONITORING OPTION 2) HYPERDRIVE:

Maybe the most fun screen is the the Hyperdrive info screen.

On this screen you can get an almost instantaneous view on how much power (Watt) you are using per km/mile, and how much km/miles you can still drive if you would continue with exactly this power usage.

Where the car dashboard information is averaging over quite large periods and takes quite some safety margin, here you can see exactly how far your current driving behaviour will bring you.

3. User settings

The following settings are relevant for local monitoring:

Bluetooth autoconnect:
If you only work with one ODB2 dongle, it is highly preferable to use the Auto Connect On option. It will largely speed up the connection process and allows the ODB2 dongle to be hidden after the first connection establishment in Auto Connect On mode.

How to determine the end of the ODB2 response:
There is quite a large variety in the detailed operation of ODB2 dongles. The App is extensively tested with dongles likes the Viecar 4.0 dongle and several ELM327 dongles. I had poor results with the HH ODB Advance and would not advice this dongle.
The preferred setting for quick response handing is the "End Marker based" option which is also the default. If you get bad results with this setting (the dongle does not provide a stable end-marker), you may try one of the timer based approaches. Note that they all work slower than a well functioning end-marker-based approach.

Unit used for distance/temperature:
Km/Celsius or Mile/Fahrenheit.

Representation:
All reporting screens support portray and landscape screen orientation. If the height of the landscape screen is very limited, it may be useful to switch this option on, which will show all reporting parameters in a slightly smaller font.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse