RavCharge, a solution to charge timer and entune woes

Update: RavCharge now includes the ability to check status and send commands via SMS! Go to menu->settings to activate SMS functionality. Also status updates performed while charging will now estimate your charging rate, displayed as both miles/hr and kw.

Update 2: Here's a basic getting started guide for setting up RavCharge to implement a charge start timer:

1. Make sure you have a valid Entune account and can use Toyota's Entune app from a smartphone or tablet

• Using a newer, javascript enabled browser, on your phone/tablet or desktop (I recommend using a mobile browser, or Chrome on the desktop), navigate to ravcharge.com and log in with your Entune credentials

• The default, leftmost tab shows status information, the middle tab gives charging timers/controls, and the rightmost tab is for climate controls (refer to screenshots) - choose the middle for charging

• Touch/click Timer1 to expand the controls, set a time and optionally days (all are chosen by default), switch it to 'On' then touch/click 'Save'. Your browser should provide controls to ensure proper time formatting, if not you should use a different browser. If you really must enter text, the proper format is military time, e.g. 00:30 for 12:30 am. If you're not in California, make sure to adjust times to Pacific time before entering.

• In order to avoid your car being in charge immediately mode, and as a failsafe, you should also set your car's departure timer from the dash. I recommend setting it for 1-2 hours later than you actually want your charge to complete every day. How much later depends on how deep you usually go into the battery, and also on what level of current/voltage your EVSE provides. If you're new to the Rav4-EV, some trial and error will probably be needed here.

Original post follows
After all the missed 31st day charges, weird overestimates of time-to-charge, and other strange problems with the charge timer and entune system, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I've developed an app called RavCharge that will hopefully make our lives with the Rav4-EV a little easier. Rather than choosing between iOS/Android/etc., I made it a web app which is optimized for smart phone browsers, but can be used from just about any computer. Here are some of the features I've implemented so far:

• A charge timer with a Start Time!
  A one-time climate control timer
  A battery charge display that shows the numerical percentage instead of just a picture, and estimates range at varying efficiencies
  Update, Charge now, and Start/Stop AC buttons that work - click it once and the app will keep trying to send the command to the car until it takes, so you don't have to keep going back to the entune app to make sure

Some ideas I have for future improvements:

• An end timer for charging that will allow you to set the volts/amps of your EVSE so that it can accurately estimate the time to charge
  The ability to run the climate control for longer than just 15 minutes
  The ability to stop climate control once a desired temperature is reached
  A "charging monitor" feature that automatically queries the car for the battery SOC every 5-10 minutes or so
  An option to factor in battery degradation (either user-inputted or deduced)
  Accounting for different timezones (everything's in pacific time for now)
  SMS/email notifications

Sign up now for a free 14-day evaluation, after which there will be a $39 annual fee to cover server expenses and my time.

Here are some screenshots:
Info page ("Refresh" in the upper right just updates the app display, "Update now" will query the car):


Set charge timers:


Climate control:


NEW! Early Charge Protection (automatically adjust the car's departure timer so it won't start your charges earlier than you want it to):

Set the time before which you don't want the car to start charges, and the amps supplied by your EVSE, and RavCharge will periodically check to see if the car's estimated start time will be earlier than your "not before" time, and will adjust your departure time accordingly. This is still very much "in beta", so try it out and let me know how it goes!

Note that this isn't 100%. If, for example, you take a long drive and arrive home late, the car could start charging before RavCharge has a chance to update.

I'd love to hear how you made that work this way!!!

TonyWilliams said:

I'd love to hear how you made that work this way!!!

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My guess is that he logged his own network traffic while his phone was running the Entune app., decoded the packets and then implemented the commands in his own web app.

miimura said:

TonyWilliams said:

I'd love to hear how you made that work this way!!!

Click to expand...

My guess is that he logged his own network traffic while his phone was running the Entune app., decoded the packets and then implemented the commands in his own web app.

Click to expand...

Yup, that's pretty much the idea.

Good job. PM'd you with my email. I assume the username/password combo is stored on the server. Not that it is a high value target, but do you care to comment on security?

yblaser said:

Good job. PM'd you with my email. I assume the username/password combo is stored on the server. Not that it is a high value target, but do you care to comment on security?

Click to expand...

Security was definitely one of the biggest concerns I had with developing the app. There's really no way around having to store your credentials on the server, so there is a risk, however small, that a hacker could infiltrate and retrieve them.

I took what steps I could to minimize that risk, including running a separate back-end server that contains the database and does all the communication with entune. This server is firewalled off from the internet, and all communications between it and the front-end user interface (as well as between the front-end and the user) are SSL encrypted.

Also, as you point out, this isn't the highest-value target - the most anyone could do with your entune password is run your battery down by starting the AC or start your charge before you're in super-off-peak. The biggest concern is if your credentials were to be compromised and they were the same that you used for other, more high-value accounts. So don't do that! As with any internet service, sharing passwords is a bad idea.

Where does the XX kWh information come from? Is that is what is in the pack or what is left that is usable. I assume the latter but wanted to know what generated the value.
Thanks.

Great. I am interested in beta testing for you. I have had 2 days recently when the car did not charge even after flashing to confirm that the charger is correctly plugged in. Very disruptive for the workday.

Ntd said:

Great. I am interested in beta testing for you. I have had 2 days recently when the car did not charge even after flashing to confirm that the charger is correctly plugged in. Very disruptive for the workday.

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Go ahead and sign in. Since I've had lots of successful logins now, I'm removing the "beta" status and I've opened it up so that anyone with a valid entune account can login and begin a free evaluation period.

Kohler Controller said:

Where does the XX kWh information come from? Is that is what is in the pack or what is left that is usable. I assume the latter but wanted to know what generated the value.
Thanks.

Click to expand...

Entune gives a 0-100 value for SOC, where 100 represents a full normal charge. I simply take the nominal 35 usable kwh figure for a normal charge and multiply it by the SOC value as a percentage. I can't vouch for how accurate it is (hence "approximate").

What is your recommendation for how to set the timers in the car to best use the RavCharge timers? If you disable the timers in the car altogether, it will default to Charge Immediately, right? So, that's not the right way...

miimura said:

What is your recommendation for how to set the timers in the car to best use the RavCharge timers? If you disable the timers in the car altogether, it will default to Charge Immediately, right? So, that's not the right way...

Click to expand...

Right, I recommend leaving the car's departure timer on, but probably a bit later than you had it previously. That way you'd need both the timers to fail to skip a charge. Of course RavCharge would never fail , but it relies on entune, and that could go down for whatever reason. Redundancy for the win!

Great idea. Thanks.

Can you enable/disable extended charge mode from your UI? I'm guessing you can't, but I'm really hoping you can.

SeaMonster said:

Great idea. Thanks.

Can you enable/disable extended charge mode from your UI? I'm guessing you can't, but I'm really hoping you can.

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Nope, no way to do that (I hoped I could too.) I've also been meaning to test what the SOC value does when you have a full extended charge, but I don't have high hopes. I expect it'll still just say 100% for anything over the normal charge level, just like the car does. :roll:

fooljoe said:

Entune gives a 0-100 value for SOC, where 100 represents a full normal charge. I simply take the nominal 35 usable kwh figure for a normal charge and multiply it by the SOC value as a percentage. I can't vouch for how accurate it is (hence "approximate").

Click to expand...

This, of course, makes no corrections for degradation. You might want to add a user input for that.

Also, wouldn't 100% be 41.8kWh? Or, does it really show 100 for an 80% "normal" charge and a different 100% for the 100% "extended" charge?

Edit: I see you already addressed that:

fooljoe said:

SeaMonster said:

Great idea. Thanks.

Can you enable/disable extended charge mode from your UI? I'm guessing you can't, but I'm really hoping you can.

Click to expand...

Nope, no way to do that (I hoped I could too.) I've also been meaning to test what the SOC value does when you have a full extended charge, but I don't have high hopes. I expect it'll still just say 100% for anything over the normal charge level, just like the car does. :roll:

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This is FANTASTIC!!!

F I N A L L Y after countless griping about this to "do-nothing-about-it" Toyota, one of our own on this forum comes up with the most promising "fix" to date. :mrgreen:

However, I am having a problem logging in to RAVCHARGE.COM. I have tried several times, and followed the instructions given, but I keep getting "This page can't be display" errors. Just to be sure I'm using the correct login email address and password, I logged out of ENTUNES on my mobile phone, and logged back in successfully. What am I doing wrong???

I was sitting in the car today and used the app to turn on the air conditioner. Within about one minute, it came on. I used my IR thermometer to measure 32F coming out of the air vents with the thermostat set to 72F and about 78F ambient temperatures.

When I was done, I just used the RavCharge app to turn it off. Worked awesome.

I'm going to guess there is no way to adjust the temperature. Of course, my car failed to charge with its onboard timer this morning, like always.

TonyWilliams said:

This, of course, makes no corrections for degradation. You might want to add a user input for that.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's on my to-do list.

TonyWilliams said:

I'm going to guess there is no way to adjust the temperature. Of course, my car failed to charge with its onboard timer this morning, like always.

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Can't adjust the temperature, but it does provide what the cabin temperature is when it's running, so I could for example have the climate run until you get to a target temperature (also on my to-do list).

Dsinned said:

However, I am having a problem logging in to RAVCHARGE.COM.

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Yeah, we had a bit of an outage earlier after someone entered a malformed time. For the record, you shouldn't be typing dates or times in - your browser should have controls for that. If it doesn't, you need a new browser. But I put in some error handling code so such a thing doesn't cause a complete crash and we should be good for now...

This is great and I will try it out.

Just a heads up for those that purchased through Dianne. You may want to change your Entunes password. :?

Hey Joe,

i'm looking forward to trying your new app! We just got our Rav last weekend from Dianne (awesome experience by the way!), the electrician is installing the 240 plug and charger on Monday. So I've only charged it up at a local charge point station by our house so far. But I want to charge the car between midnight and 6am to use the super off peak rates with sce.

But here's my question: when you set the car to charge at a certain time and you are using the ravcharge app, do you just connect the charger to the car and it starts automatically at the selected time? If you could just post up step by step instructions how to set up the car for,charging with the use of the app it would be appreciated for all us new owners who are pretty clueless on the car charger timer ( ie... Do this and then do this ...) thanks!

Scott

Scott1258 said:

Hey Joe,

i'm looking forward to trying your new app! We just got our Rav last weekend from Dianne (awesome experience by the way!), the electrician is installing the 240 plug and charger on Monday. So I've only charged it up at a local charge point station by our house so far. But I want to charge the car between midnight and 6am to use the super off peak rates with sce.

But here's my question: when you set the car to charge at a certain time and you are using the ravcharge app, do you just connect the charger to the car and it starts automatically at the selected time? If you could just post up step by step instructions how to set up the car for,charging with the use of the app it would be appreciated for all us new owners who are pretty clueless on the car charger timer ( ie... Do this and then do this ...) thanks!

Scott

Click to expand...

Good idea - I've added such a guide to the top post.