[Ovmsdev] my own to-do list... input welcome

[Julien (JaXX) Banchet]

Hi !

Well, I like your todo list (mostly that is, i have a ridiculous twizy compared to your volt :- so i’ll give my 2 cents for what I can give input about))

De: Lee Howard lee.howard at mainpine.com
Date: 15 mai 2014 at 02:37:52

> Hello Everyone,
> ...
> 6) I would like the server to store all GPS data for the last 7 days and
> on the app to allow the user to flip-view through each day's travel path
> (based on the time zone for the geographical location of the GPS data).
> This way I can show-off my travels easily and check-up on where the car
> has been over the day without needing to constantly hover over the
> location view in the app.

The OVMS server doesn’t have any GUI and it wasn’t meant to have one I believe, plus and I doubt the one provided will ever do, it isn’t meant to store on long periods (I bet the server would have a hard time as I’m pretty sure there are thousands of people using it)

That said, nothing prevents you from setting up your own OVMS and tweaking around it to store more, it’s good old Perl.

On the other hand, I’ve cronned a few scripts to pull down the data (gpslog&pwrlog) pretty often (feeding off a live feed didn’t work as it would simply stall if I ever launched the mobile app in parallel, too bad, I set up a AMQP client>producer>consumer process before noticing that)
The data I pull down is simply pushed into a local database, deduplicated on timestamps, that I enrich with tags, trying, probably badly, to detect beginning and end of trips.
(wrote it over a few minutes, it works, but I’m ashamed of the ugliness of the code, don’t ask for it :) )

Since a little bit, I also feed the data to a thingspeak setup (a FOSS IoT data frontend) and currently creating visualisation plugins exactly for that: Maps/Paths of trips, with eventually, efficiency data. It will take me some time, I have a very talkative wife and a big daytime job.

>  
> 8) I suspect that there is a plethora of information running around on
> the bus that is currently unused or not displayed in the app. I would
> like to present as much of that information as can be reasonable to the
> user.
> 10) I suspect that updating the firmware via the PICKIT is going to get
> bothersome very fast. I would like to see it be able to update firmware
> by downloading it from the data connection.
>  

OVMSv3 ? :-) Problem is, the device is ultra tight on memory and flash, i keep screwing up compilations, plus I hate launching windows for that, but the last time I did, there’s no way it could store the firmware before flashing… add to that, i doubt the PIC could do it by itself.

I love the idea though (had to tuck the OVMS deep under the dashboard because of vandals)

> 11) It would be really cool if the OVMS module had a WiFi adapter in it
> and permitted "tethering" from other WiFi devices for data access. In
> other words, it would be sweet if my iPad could get internet access via
> WiFi through the OVMS module's data service. Phones here often have
> tethering restricted/disabled on them by the service provider... so it's
> not always easy to tether via phones here... AND the OVMS antenna and
> signal reception is much better than the on the phones, anyway.

That, or some cheap 433/868 radio mesh (cheap radio+eth base station at home&office).

Over here, in .EU, there’s a little company from Toulouse France name Sigfox, who’s deploying a 868MHz Ultra-Narrow-Band Low Bandwith cellular network, and had developed dirt cheap modems to be integrated with that, using the network goes around 2 to 10€/year depending on the volume of messages (short ~SMS like messages) with an API to receive them.
The range is about 20km (demonstrated with a modem, in a car, in a sub terrain parking lot, and the base station 20km away) (Snootlab has created an arduino shield with the modem called Akeru)
ATM the only problem is the amount of messages/day, because of the 10% emission ratio limited by law, you get only a handful, but I hope that could change.
It could serve at least as a great backup (alarms/alerts and so)

>  
> As a matter of feedback, I ended up provisioning the module using SMS
> from my own phone. I tried to do it from the website, but that seemed
> to do nothing.

To what destination network? I would tend to believe that the provisioning service on which the OVMS server is backed on cannot fulfill every destination (I for instance am having a hard time finding one to send SMS texts to Brasil, not even eSendex does…)

>  
> I found the basic installation and configuration documentation to be
> either hidden or lacking. I would have appreciated a step-by-step
> written documentation on installing and configuring the OVMS module. As
> it stood I ended up digging-out bits and pieces from the Weekend
> Workshop video, the Tesla Roadster installation/configuration
> documentation, forum posts, and I even dug into the code at github. If
> nobody gets to this first then when I don't feel like such a newbie
> maybe I'll write-up that documentation, myself.

Feel free :) It’s what it’s all about, interpersonal enrichment, hacking around, the whole project is not End-User enclined as such (therefor, WE, DIYers get around with it), so yeah, there is space for improvement.

:-)

JaXX,
Twizy accident, stopped to let a police car pass (had its sirens), a truck hit me from behind, head trauma buT I’m PrEfTcLY F1ne i Gu3ss :-] !



--  
Julien (JaXX) Banchet