[Ovmsdev] Charging Stopped vs Done

Fri Aug 17 14:59:15 HKT 2012

Tom,

I think I'll give the simplified logic a try in my car. It shouldn't be hard to change the code that way, and I can then see if it works as expected.

Regarding your charging story, I love OVMS stories like that.

Rafael must have a few from his trip around the world. I remember that when I was helping him out as he entered China I had his car on my phone. I got an alert in the middle of the night saying charge interrupted at something like 20% SOC, and I remember thinking that Rafael must be having a bad night. The next day I got an eMail from him saying what a good night he had because OVMS told him the charging was interrupted and he could go down to reset it then wake up to a full charge. I guess it all depends on your point of view...

My own story is that while on holiday in the UK last month, with my car back in HK in storage mode, I was watching the SOC drop dramatically for the first week. It literally lost half the pack in the first 7 days (and I was going to be away for almost three weeks). I've still got to go through the logs to see what exactly was happening, but I suspect that the coolant pump was running pretty much all the time due to the high temperatures here in that week (and the fact the car was plugged in). Anyway, on the 8th day a #10 Typhoon hits Hong Kong dead on - that is something like one of your category 5 hurricanes. Finger of god stuff. The next morning, I fired up OVMS and got no signal from the car. Same the day after. Getting worried now, because both Internet and Phone were down to my home, and I couldn't get hold of the helper (her cellphone was down too). 50% of the pack in one week means 0% by the time I get back unless the car can charge. Anyway, I tried again the next day and the car was back online - showing 47% SOC, power cord connected and ready to charge. The server showed a short charge the night before. The night before I got back, I switched it to standard mode and did a full charge remotely, so the car would be full by the time I got back. I really don't like storage mode in the summer.

Regards, Mark.

On 17 Aug, 2012, at 1:36 AM, Tom Saxton wrote:

> I appreciate getting notified anytime the charge ends prematurely as long as
> I'm not getting texts at 4:00 am when the car finishes charging normally.
> 
> BTW, this alert mechanism saved Cathy and me from a four-hour wait on our
> road trip in June. We drove from Seattle down the coast to San Francisco,
> then back north up I-5, 1,823 miles over 12 days. We charged in all sorts of
> wacky places: dodgy RV parks, waiting in line behind a parade of other EVs
> at a hotel that has one of the most heavily used stations in the ChargePoint
> network, a B&B from an extension cord running across the lawn, and a Blink
> station that set a new record for low voltage at 187V. Through all of this,
> I monitored the charging sessions with the OVMS app and depended on getting
> an SMS message if anything interrupted the charge.
> 
> The charging went smoothly everywhere until the last night. We stayed at a
> hotel in Portland where we had stayed and charged before, familiar ground
> where I didn't expect any problem.
> 
> Just before midnight, a text message woke me up and alerted me that the
> charge had been interrupted. I hustled out to the parking lot thinking
> someone might be stealing the mobile connector (RFMC) with our home-built
> J1772 adapter. When I got out there, nothing was disturbed, but the charge
> had mysteriously ended about an hour into a 6-hour charge. I restarted the
> charge and it finished without incident, but it would have been a big pain
> if I hadn't been alerted to the early stop.
> 
>    Tom
> 
> on 8/15/12 11:24 PM, Mark Webb-Johnson wrote:
> 
>> 
>> https://github.com/markwj/Open-Vehicle-Monitoring-System/issues/67
>> 
>> The car has two charging complete states (charging stopped and charging done)
>> and a bunch of sub-states. So far, we've been trying to use the sub-states to
>> differentiate between the charging completing normally or being stopped by the
>> user in the car (or from the apps) vs the charging being aborted early from a
>> source external to the car. The idea is that if you pop the breaker, you get
>> an alert, but if you stop the charge from within the car or from the App, you
>> don't.
>> 
>> The problem is, as Bennett points out, that there are some reasons internal to
>> the car that should really be alerted (but aren't). A good example is
>> 'extension cord detected'. The car reports that on the bus as state charging
>> stopped sub-state that it was stopped from inside the car (which is true - the
>> car detected the charging cord and stopped the charge) - which is not what we
>> want.
>> 
>> The suggestion is to change to a simpler logic. If the car reports charge
>> state 'charging done' (ie; charge went to completion and finished) then do
>> nothing, but if charge state is 'charging stopped' (ie; something, whatever,
>> stopped the charge before it reached completion) then alert (via SMS/IP PUSH).
>> 
>> The difference will be that we would then alert if you stopped the charge from
>> within the car of from the iPhone App, but would also catch more wierd events
>> like 'extension cord detected'.
>> 
>> Personally, I think this is a safer solution to the issue. We're going to
>> catch more events this way, the logic is much simpler. The downside is that if
>> you stop the charge from the App/Car you also get an alert.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> Mark.
>> 
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> 
> 
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