[williamandangela]

I would suggest you turn off Smart Charging in the app, except when you actually want to charge the car...

With the Niro EV, the risks are less than with earlier Kia vehicles as the newer car does protect the 12V much better, but it isn't good for long term battery health.

This is my BM2 graph from today...
View attachment 176461
You can see the smart charging from 00:30 - 01:30 then an hour gap and the remainder of the schedule from 02:30 - 03:00.

There was a 12V charging session at 04:30 and then Home Assistant switched off Smart Charging at 05:30 and shortly afterwards at 07:00 there was another 12V charging cycle then all the other activity you see is normal driving for the rest of the day with no further 12V charging cycles.

Cheers. I can see the option to do this within the ‘device’ settings of the Octopus App so will let the car go through a day or so of smart charging left on then switch it off and compare on BM2. As I thought, the new Niro EV appears to cope well with the multiple 12V charge sessions and I was worried that I would get suspended from IO if I switched off the smart charge..your advice seems to hit the middle ground and I will switch it on when charging which hopefully will only be a few times a week.
Question - does toggling the Smart Charge option reset anything or is everything happily recommenced when toggled back on.?

 

[Mark_T]

Cheers. I can see the option to do this within the ‘device’ settings of the Octopus App so will let the car go through a day or so of smart charging left on then switch it off and compare on BM2. As I thought, the new Niro EV appears to cope well with the multiple 12V charge sessions and I was worried that I would get suspended from IO if I switched off the smart charge..your advice seems to hit the middle ground and I will switch it on when charging which hopefully will only be a few times a week.
Question - does toggling the Smart Charge option reset anything or is everything happily recommenced when toggled back on.?

Nothing gets reset, no need to repeat any of the onboarding process.

They won’t kick you off for turning it off between charges. They just want to control the charges that you do, when you do them.

 

[dirk362]

Just because the 2nd generation Niro EV is better able to proactively protect the 12V battery, hammering it the way they seem to be and forcing additional charging cycles on the 12V isn't really what Kia designed those pieces of kit to do.

It's a shame that the only thing we've heard about the newly re-introduced IO for Kia is to adjust from 30 minutes to 75 minutes as the interval between polls.
It would have made much more sense to have greater logic as well as only polling the car if the car sends one of a series of defined status changes back to the central servers. Otherwise, use the cached data on the server end.

I appreciate there are only certain touch points available to Octopus, and hence their integration is hampered due to this. But even so, there doesn't seem any reason why between Octopus, Kia, and whatever common API/backend the server platform uses, they couldn't have made a better iteration on this 2nd attempt.

And I further appreciate that integrations are complex things. This is not me moaning, but rather lamenting.

 

[Mark_T]

Just because the 2nd generation Niro EV is better able to proactively protect the 12V battery, hammering it the way they seem to be and forcing additional charging cycles on the 12V isn't really what Kia designed those pieces of kit to do.

Agreed, and that is why I am only turning smart charging on when I am ready to perform a charge, and turning it off afterwards.

It would have made much more sense to have greater logic as well as only polling the car if the car sends one of a series of defined status changes back to the central servers.

That would be nice, but I suspect it is outside the current capabilities of the Kia system as it would require the Kia servers to actively request a response from Octopus. Certainly a better system, but perhaps a step further than Kia is prepared to go...

I very much doubt that Kia have made any changes on their end at all, this is the problem that Octopus face with car integrations as there is very little they can do to motivate the car manufacturers to make changes to their global systems to suit a supplier in one country...

Octopus can at least try to trade on their presence in several large Kia markets to get a response but I'm not sure how much luck they will have...

 

[prawlin]

This ‘fixed’ incarnation of Kia IO is even worse news for the Eniro and its cousins as the 12V battery only gets the once a day 20 minute top up whilst parked up……. Completely irrespective of any 12V ongoing drain energy or SOC left in the 12V battery. Also, iirc even the daily top up ceases after the HV battery is below a certain SOC. It’s sure to still cause problems in some situations. As said, the car was never designed to be used in this way (constant repetitive waking up whilst parked). At best, the 12V battery lifetime will be reduced due to this nagging unexpected load 24/7. Peter

 

[Mark_T]

This ‘fixed’ incarnation of Kia IO is even worse news for the Eniro and its cousins as the 12V battery only gets the once a day 20 minute top up whilst parked up…….

The good news, such as it is, is that as long as you do not just leave smart charging enabled when you do not actually want to charge, then there is little to no impact from this, so it is manageable.

 

[williamandangela]

IO appears to use location services when you set it up and ‘knows’ when you are at home and charging. Interested to hear about other user’s observations when car away from home location and whether this has any affect on the 12v battery charge cycles. I don’t have enough info yet but currently 30 miles from home at workplace with smart charging still enabled on IO app ( will be switching it off after I get a feel for how it is behaving and only on when I’m about to charge ). Here’s my current BM2 data and a third pic from yesterday when car at home for 75% of day.

 

[Mark_T]

IO appears to use location services when you set it up and ‘knows’ when you are at home and charging. Interested to hear about other user’s observations when car away from home location and whether this has any affect on the 12v battery charge cycles.

I would hope they can retrieve the last known location from Kia without having to wake the car so with luck it will not do any polling until the location shows you are at home again...

 

[Mark_T]

Just adding an updated copy of the BM2 data for yesterday, and one showing the overnight charging...

Yesterday completed with no spurious 12V charge cycles, just the one at 07:00. turned on Smart Charging when I got home after a short drive in the car, that did not trigger a 12V charge either.

Smart charging began polling the car soon after turning it on and you can see the dip in the 12V leading up to 01:00 where the first 30 min charge began at 01:00.

The 2nd charge ran from 02:30 to 04:00, then a final short charge from 04:30 which brought the car up to the set target of 70%.

Smart Charging turned off via HA at 05:30, no 12V charging cycles triggered at all today so far...

Took the car to Sainsbury's where is was plugged in to their free 11kW charger from 08:45 for just under an hour which took it up to 80%, then drove home and plugged into Zappi in Eco+ mode to soak up the spare solar energy this morning...

All good, and I would have no problems staying on IO even with the 12V issues as it really is not an issue for me with just some very mild automation as a safety net.

Not likely to be charging again tonight though.

 

[dirk362]

One thing about location settings on the Niro is that it seems to always show as "Away" and not "Home" when my car is parked up on the driveway. This is as per the API/HA integration, and I can see there is a 0.01 type difference in the GPS values.

I am thinking it may be because I have not set my actual address as Home in the SatNav for the general security reason that I don't want my SatNav to take whoever steals my car directly to my house - so it's set to a street away.

For anyone else using HA and the Kia integration, it is worth checking the attributes returned on the Data element to see if it shows your correct location, etc.
I have no idea if Kia and/or Octopus are concerned with the location, and to what level of accuracy they measure. GPS is normally to 6 decimal places to get a relatively accurate position, and the car seems to store it that way. But the measurement for Location is only 2 decimal places.

 

[Self-Titled]

I have been having problems at the stage where it tries to connect to Kia Connect so gave up and called the Octopus help line, where I have just been told they have suspended linking to Kia again -because the battery drain is still happening.

To follow up on this, based on other members seemingly having IO working with their Niro EVs could it be that the person on the helpline was mistaken and giving outdated advice about Kia's being suspended? There's been no official correspondence from Octopus to say that they are still having issues and also the Niro EV is still an option when setting up IO.

 

[williamandangela]

There's been no official correspondence from Octopus to say that they are still having issues and also the Niro EV is still an option when setting up IO.

Yep. I will wait for an email to tell me there’s an issue, until then I’ll use the work around above.

 

[RogerE]

To follow up on this, based on other members seemingly having IO working with their Niro EVs could it be that the person on the helpline was mistaken and giving outdated advice about Kia's being suspended? There's been no official correspondence from Octopus to say that they are still having issues and also the Niro EV is still an option when setting up IO.

I did question the operator, explaining that the email had arrived at the beginning of the weekend, so she went away to check and did come back to say that was correct and was still causing problems.

 

[Mark_T]

I did question the operator, explaining that the email had arrived at the beginning of the weekend, so she went away to check and did come back to say that was correct and was still causing problems.

It took a huge number of retries to get through the process when I completed it the other day, so if the app is still letting you try I would keep trying (if you are comfortable with the way to mitigate the problem for now).

 

[Self-Titled]

Has anyone with Ohme managed to set up Intelligent Octopus with their Niro EV (or any other car for that matter) but via the car rather than through the Ohme app. I want to be able to see and control charging through the Octopus app to be able to make sure IO is working correctly etc.

At the moment everything is set up and Kia connect is working/integrated I'm just stuck at the test connection phase. I've seen people with Zappis turn them onto dumb mode but don't seem to be able to do the same thing on Ohme. Just wondering what the setting need to be set on the car and Ohme to let Octopus do the test charge (Octopus are really not clear on this).

 

[Mark_T]

Just wondering what the setting need to be set on the car and Ohme to let Octopus do the test charge (Octopus are really not clear on this).

Have you tried ‘Max Charge’ mode on the Ohme?

 

[Self-Titled]

Have you tried ‘Max Charge’ mode on the Ohme?

Yes, tried it but that automatically initiates a charge. I've tried testing connection with this running and straight after initiating and stopping the max charge.

I have emailed Octopus but still waiting for their reply. I'm hoping they can give clear steps to set up because the tariff, car and charger have all been supplied by them!

 

[Mark_T]

Yes, tried it but that automatically initiates a charge. I've tried testing connection with this running and straight after initiating and stopping the max charge.

That is what should be happening though.

During the test you should connect to the car to the EVSE and the car should begin to charge. Then the test should allow the car under IO control to stop and start the charge.

I'm not familiar with the Ohme functionailty, but if it is in Max Charge mode will it stay that way while the car stops and starts charging, or does it just exit from that mode if the car stops the charge?

 

[Self-Titled]

That is what should be happening though.

During the test you should connect to the car to the EVSE and the car should begin to charge. Then the test should allow the car under IO control to stop and start the charge.

I'm not familiar with the Ohme functionailty, but if it is in Max Charge mode will it stay that way while the car stops and starts charging, or does it just exit from that mode if the car stops the charge?

It comes out of Max Charge mode as soon as the charging stops as far as I'm aware. From what I can tell when doing a test connection is that no charging starts, unless I've started it before with max charge, but either way the test always fails.

I feel like Octopus and Ohme must get these queries a lot but I can't find a guide that tells you exactly what order and what settings to use.

I did find a minimal step by step guide from Octopus which I now can't find again. That said to 'disable' other apps but what does that even mean? In my mind that could either either be close them as you normally would, force stop them, log out of them or delete them completely. So I tried it all but still didn't work! 😂

 

[Mark_T]

I feel like Octopus and Ohme must get these queries a lot but I can't find a guide that tells you exactly what order and what settings to use.

I doubt that they do, as there is really no reason for someone with an Ohme charger to want to use the car integration...

If Ohme says a period of charging was at the low rate then that is what it will be...

If you can't set the Ohme into 'dumb' mode and have it stay that way during stop and start of a charge cycle then you couldn't make it work with the car integration anyway, and you certainly can't get through the test either...