[dpeilow]

The Tesla Roadster owners got fed up with waiting for Tesla to add telematics / smartphone monitoring to their cars (despite the hardware being present for Tesla themselves to do it), so they took matters into their own hands and made an open source module to plug into the cars.

This module works by monitoring the CAN bus and sending the data back to a server (that we run on TMC). This can then be accessed from iPhone and Android phones. For the more adventurous, write mode can be enabled. The data traffic is pretty low, so you can put in one of those £5 SIM card deals.


Luckily the system was designed to work with other cars, which might get us around the lack of such functionality on the Ampera and European Volt. Some US Volt owners are also considering it, due to some of the more advanced functionality it brings over the Onstar system they have.

Right now, one of the German Ampera owners is doing the work to scan the CAN bus and understand the traffic, but I'm sure they'd appreciate some help.


If you want to check it out, search OVMS on your app store. You'll find a dummy Tesla Roadster on there to practice with.

You can read a lot more here: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthre ... ing-System

You can find their website at: http://www.openvehicles.com/

 

[dpeilow]

An update on this from the OVMS guys...

There has been progress on this but it's hard going (they are making much better progress on the Twizzy)

For Volt Ampera, we have GPS location, soc and ranges. No charge status, alerting or control, yet.
Both are developer-only at the moment. Monitoring for both is definitely feasible, but not sure about control yet.

Volt/Ampera is hard going (so much data on the bus), but in progress. Like the the Roadster version, I guess developers will run this in their cars first, then end user release two-to-three months after that.

It's open source so if anyone has the time and skills to get involved, please do.

https://github.com/markwj/Open-Vehicle- ... ing-System

http://www.idleloop.com/tesla/ovms/


By the way, they've also got a relationship with http://www.globalsimcard.co.uk who charge £5 A YEAR plus 10p per megabyte for data. Because it's a roaming SIM, it will connect to O2 , Orange and T-Mobile to get the best signal.

 

[Duncan]

By the way, they've also got a relationship with http://www.globalsimcard.co.uk who charge £5 A YEAR plus 10p per megabyte for data. Because it's a roaming SIM, it will connect to O2 , Orange and T-Mobile to get the best signal.

Are you sure about those prices? The Geosim website says UK data is 45p+VAT per megabyte, it's only the US that is 10p/MB.

 

[dpeilow]

Oops sorry yes. Anyway, OVMS is supposed to generate a small amount of data.

 

[hopbackguy]

I was taking a look at this again today, to see how far things have advanced for the Ampera / Volt. Looks like they're out of stock of V2 hardware at the moment, I'm thinking of ordering the bits and having a go with this myself, I've got the requisite skills. Not sure about exact installation tips for the car but there is probably info on gm-volt.com . Have you done any more with this yourself David?

 

[RickMGoldie]

I got mine up and running a couple of weeks ago. I hope our esteemed hackers add more car info to it soon as what you get is fairly minimal but nice to have :-
Charge state and an (under-)estimate of range.
Charging current while charging, but no control or stop/start.
Location - nice for when family members borrow the car!
Ambient temperature, electronics module temp, & battery temp. Expect transmission temp in place of motor temp soon.
Notification Alerts on phone when plugged in and not charging.
Mph stuck on 152mph so no mileage or battery vs erev mileage data like on-star.
I'd like to see tyre pressures like the tesla version - the car has them.
On the control side, I'd like to have the preheat function on the iPhone app so you don't have to be in key fob range.

I had a few issues during installation/setup the worst of which were the the local phone masts getting an upgrade in the the middle of the process making it seem like the unit had gone faulty as all phones in the area were affected. I did need assistance from Mark Webb-Johnson to turn on Canbus write mode, but once the phones were back on it was fine.

Worth getting if you are a technophile like me.

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

I am interested in OVMS but haven't got around to looking at it yet.

Does it require any modification to the car to install? I don't want to install it if I need to drill or cut anything as I would like to be able to remove it without trace if needs be.

Does anyone know who is running the server side? Is it using the server being run by the Tesla guys in the USA?

I see that ZCW is offering the hardware on their web site. What would I need to install? Is everything available on ZCW? How much does it cost overall to install?

I might give this a go.

 

[Kevin Sharpe]

If you can help with Open Vehicles development then I'm prepared to give you this hardware for free (worth ~£100). PM and convince me

 

[RickMGoldie]

I'm sure Paul found out by now, but for the benefit of newcomers, it just plugs in to your ODB port under steering wheel - looks a bit like scart. Go Vauxhall didn't flinch when I sent mine in for service with instructions to disconnect it for me once the vehicle arrived so I could monitor the collection driver and see if he used petrol or broke the speed limit! They were fine about it and Luke said he was going to get a rise out of the driver when I said I'd spotted him doing 79 briefly on the A3. It's not foolproof with WorldPay sim bit costs so little I don't worry - it seems to lose touch for ages if it has to start roaming. Might be more quick to reconnect if it's only looking for one network. But I'm glad I got it. I can monitor timer charge starts from my bed if I'm unsure. I don't think I have the patience to learn to program it like I would have as a young man, but I wish I could monitor the planetary gearbox temp as the risk of melting the bearing ball race spacer could be eliminated using that info on the move. I know mine is the nylon type, so there must be a risk. It also shows me how my switch settings on my DIY EvSE are relating to current into the battery. Never more than 14 amps register on OVMS, but I expect the charger inefficiency explained where the other 2A went.

 

[Mark Sanders]

I put in OVMS yesterday ... Took about 2 hours (but a big chunk of that was registering Geosim) .... So far VERY impressed .. allows stuff like incromental 1amp charging steps, not even available on standard car.

Still not sussed out digital Speedo... Good for tall people. Or how to set and start battery cool down ... any suggestions ? (especially from @Alexander Sims ... Who has THE most healthy battery of all ) .. May be a text only command ??

Also impressed with Geosim .. locks to ee @ 6p / megabite, in UK and 25p in Europe. Payg ... Got 2 nd nano SIM for iPad

 

[Alexander Sims]

I put in OVMS yesterday ... Took about 2 hours (but a big chunk of that was registering Geosim) .... So far VERY impressed .. allows stuff like incromental 1amp charging steps, not even available on standard car.

Still not sussed out digital Speedo... Good for tall people. Or how to set and start battery cool down ... any suggestions ? (especially from @Alexander Sims ... Who has THE most healthy battery of all ) .. May be a text only command ??

Also impressed with Geosim .. locks to ee @ 6p / megabite, in UK and 25p in Europe. Payg ... Got 2 nd nano SIM for iPad

Hi Mark,
Great to hear you have OVMS as well.
I'm in a similar position to you regarding the digital speedo and battery cool downs. Not worked out how they get activated yet.
I have a GeoSim but cannot seem to register it. do you need to do it on an unregistered phone? Think that might be my issue...

Regarding battery health, try a couple of standard charges on 10 amps, thats how i got it to balance nicely and give a high range reading...

 

[Mark Sanders]

Hi Mark,
Great to hear you have OVMS as well.
I'm in a similar position to you regarding the digital speedo and battery cool downs. Not worked out how they get activated yet.
I have a GeoSim but cannot seem to register it. do you need to do it on an unregistered phone? Think that might be my issue...

Regarding battery health, try a couple of standard charges on 10 amps, thats how i got it to balance nicely and give a high range reading...

Hi Alex
I found the GeoSim seems to need a 2 step registration process: (done it twice now).
1. Register it on their website (quoting numbers on the Creditcard sized) Sim holding card... that gives the phone number.
2. Put the sim into an UNLOCKED phone (my mistake on this), and have it search for providers (it also came up with 'prime' and then soon after came up with EE/T-Mobile as UK provider

Then you can log into the sim control panel on the GeoSim site .. to control call forwarding, auto re-charge etc.

As for charging -- yes I do 10A std charges and leave to balance, but you mentioned being fanatical about doing a 'cooling' cycle, by putting on range charge .. I just wondered if you did this with the OVMS app or SMS ?? (or just manually via the VDS ?)

 

[Alexander Sims]

Hi Alex
I found the GeoSim seems to need a 2 step registration process: (done it twice now).
1. Register it on their website (quoting numbers on the Creditcard sized) Sim holding card... that gives the phone number.
2. Put the sim into an UNLOCKED phone (my mistake on this), and have it search for providers (it also came up with 'prime' and then soon after came up with EE/T-Mobile as UK provider

Then you can log into the sim control panel on the GeoSim site .. to control call forwarding, auto re-charge etc.

As for charging -- yes I do 10A std charges and leave to balance, but you mentioned being fanatical about doing a 'cooling' cycle, by putting on range charge .. I just wondered if you did this with the OVMS app or SMS ?? (or just manually via the VDS ?)

Thank you Mark, I'll try that with the sim.

With the cooling I always just start the charge on at least 13 amps and Range, then monitor temperatures after half an hour. If they are around 20oC then I knock it off and then go back and the plug in the car so it resets to it's charging schedule of starting at 12am.

 

[Mark Sanders]

Thank you Mark, I'll try that with the sim.

With the cooling I always just start the charge on at least 13 amps and Range, then monitor temperatures after half an hour. If they are around 20oC then I knock it off and then go back and the plug in the car so it resets to it's charging schedule of starting at 12am.

Thanks for clarifying .. cool (!)

 

[Mark Sanders]

works a treat .. screen shot of car in standard mode (android)