RavCharge, a solution to charge timer and entune woes

[rav4buyer]

Not sure if someone has mentioned this but what about PG&E EV-A customization.

If car is plugged in and it's off-peak hours, it charges automatically. This way you are maximizing charge without even thinking about it without touching timers ever. If you drive and come home after 11PM it starts immediately. At 7PM on Saturday it starts immediately. Can look into what holidays they use and integrate that too.


Just a thought!
Love the app so far, works like a charm.

 

[Dsinned]

Joe, I can live with it. Because I generally only do scheduled charging on weekends after midnight, I will only get one set of those "failed to charge . . . unplugged" email notifications per week (either Saturday or Sunday). If I used the Timer to schedule a charge every night, then it might become more of a nuissance.

Maybe you can put a toggle in RavCharge or a check box that makes scheduled charges conditional on whether Entunes thinks the car is plugged in or not. If not, again, I think most of us can live with the notifications that don't really matter.

Thanks again for taking the initiative to come up such a useful resource as RavCharge and please keep up the good work!

 

[waidy]

Sorry, I've been out of country back packing for last last couple of months. I am back in Hong Kong catching up emails and threads. Would some one tell me how you could plug in the Rav4 and tells it not to charge and wait for RavCharge's command?

 

[fooljoe]

Sorry, I've been out of country back packing for last last couple of months. I am back in Hong Kong catching up emails and threads. Would some one tell me how you could plug in the Rav4 and tells it not to charge and wait for RavCharge's command?

Leave the in-car departure timer set, a few hours later than you actually want it to complete. If you unset the car's timer then there's no way to prevent it from going into "charge immediately" mode.

Besides, it's a good idea to leave both on just so you can be doubly sure the charge will happen. If it's a 31st day or you've used 120, RavCharge will take care of you. If entune's servers go down, the car might take care of you.

 

[waidy]

Sorry, I've been out of country back packing for last last couple of months. I am back in Hong Kong catching up emails and threads. Would some one tell me how you could plug in the Rav4 and tells it not to charge and wait for RavCharge's command?

Leave the in-car departure timer set, a few hours later than you actually want it to complete. If you unset the car's timer then there's no way to prevent it from going into "charge immediately" mode.

Besides, it's a good idea to leave both on just so you can be doubly sure the charge will happen. If it's a 31st day or you've used 120, RavCharge will take care of you. If entune's servers go down, the car might take care of you.

Thanks for the speedy respond. Here's another question: If the Rav is at 10% SOC and standard charge (80%) is set, the charge time undoubtedly will be more than couple of hours (even at full speed 240V*40Amp). What would happen if the departure time is set to two hours after the RavCharge's start time? In another word, does the Rav takes both commands (from the Rav and from RavCharge)?

 

[Dsinned]

I'll try to answer that . . . in that situation, I think all that would happen is the car will continue to charge because the "second" start command (from the car) will be redundant, because the car is already being charged.

Joe, please correct me if I am mistaken.

 

[waidy]

I'll try to answer that . . . in that situation, I think all that would happen is the car will continue to charge because the "second" start command (from the car) will be redundant, because the car is already being charged.

Joe, please correct me if I am mistaken.

Since I have been traveling I have not seen my Rav for several months. What would be a good feature is to allow the Rav to listen to both commands if one only want to charge to 50% SOC (or any SOC != 80% && != 100% ). Of course, this feature is only useful if departure time can be set via RavCharge.

My Rav does do the liquid battery cool sequence so it will discharge faster than those that do not do liquid cool while sitting in the garage. Therefore, having been able to do start-time and end-time charging via RavCharge would be good. But of course, we will need to see whether the Rav would listen to both commands.

 

[yblaser]

What would be a good feature is to allow the Rav to listen to both commands if one only want to charge to 50% SOC (or any SOC != 80% && != 100% ). Of course, this feature is only useful if departure time can be set via RavCharge.

I would hazard a guess that while technically possible, it is probably not practical. If you told RavCharge what you had set the departure times in the car to be as well as what power EVSE you were hooked up to it could calculate what the approximate charge start time is taking into account the car's normal overestimation of charge time. It could then check to see if the car is charging around that time and send a stop charge command (I'm guessing that exists).

The problem with this solution and solutions to some other requests in this thread is that it may require lots of queries to Entune to determine when the car is charging or for whatever information is required. I think at some point this web app could attract the attention of Toyota if there is enough traffic from the RavCharge server. I believe something similar happened with Chevy and OnStar but I think things got worked out in the end (based on the popularity of the third party service) although I am not hopeful Toyota would be as accommodating.

 

[fooljoe]

Thanks for the speedy respond. Here's another question: If the Rav is at 10% SOC and standard charge (80%) is set, the charge time undoubtedly will be more than couple of hours (even at full speed 240V*40Amp). What would happen if the departure time is set to two hours after the RavCharge's start time? In another word, does the Rav takes both commands (from the Rav and from RavCharge)?

Dsinned and yblaser's comments are correct. RavCharge commands are indistinguishable from the "charge now" commands you would send from Toyota's Entune app. The car knows nothing about RavCharge's timers, it just gets a "charge now" command at a time that you set.

Therefore, if the car's onboard timer is set to start before your RavCharge timer, then it will. The RavCharge timer will still go through as programmed, but it will be ignored by the car and charging will continue. You'll probably get a couple extra emails from Entune though.

Since I have been traveling I have not seen my Rav for several months. What would be a good feature is to allow the Rav to listen to both commands if one only want to charge to 50% SOC (or any SOC != 80% && != 100% ). Of course, this feature is only useful if departure time can be set via RavCharge.

Charging to a user-specified SOC would be great, but there's no "stop charging" command available that would facilitate such a thing. It would be possible to notify you once a given SOC target is hit so you could unplug the car yourself, but that could lead to the problem yblaser describes of having to send a lot of queries to Entune. Still, I am considering adding a "charge monitor" feature that will query the vehicle every xx minutes while charging and could send such notifications.

Also, you mentioned setting a departure timer via RavCharge, and this is something I've also thought a lot about. I don't think it would be as simple as it might seem, however, since unlike the car's timer RavCharge doesn't know when you plug in or unplug and go somewhere. It'd have to query the car periodically to ascertain such things, and again too much of that might be problematic. But it's still on my laundry list of future improvements!

Speaking of which, I just got done with making a bunch of improvements to the code to improve reliability, most of which shouldn't be visible to users. But as always, if you notice anything strange please let me know! One new feature is that RavCharge is now capable of supporting multiple vehicles under the same Entune account. To use this feature you would login as usual with your Entune credentials, then to access the 2nd (or nth) vehicle you log out then log back in with ".2" (or ".n") appended to the end of your email address. For example, if your Entune email is [email protected], that account would work as usual for your first vehicle, and [email protected] would work for the 2nd one.

So go out and buy that 2nd or 3rd Rav you've always wanted!

 

[vips]

Joe,
Thanks for the RaVcharge site and features.
Any reason why the first e-mail is a failure?
Then 2 success e-mail within 2-5 minutes.
The 20 minute fail safe charge command and e-mail, I understand.

-Vips

 

[fooljoe]

Joe,
Thanks for the RaVcharge site and features.
Any reason why the first e-mail is a failure?
Then 2 success e-mail within 2-5 minutes.
The 20 minute fail safe charge command and e-mail, I understand.

-Vips

RavCharge sends a charge command at the time you specify, then checks periodically for up to two minutes to make sure charging starts. If after two minutes charging still hasn't started, that means the charge command failed, and Entune might send you an email to notify you about that. I'm not sure why some commands to Entune fail - perhaps due to spotty cell coverage where the car is parked.

But since they do fail sometimes, I've programmed RavCharge to keep trying if the first command was a failure. It will send another charge command a few seconds after the two minutes are up, and will repeat this cycle about 4 times (and then repeat the whole process 20 minutes after the time specified.) It sounds like in your case the 2nd attempt worked. I'm not sure why Entune sends two emails when starting the charge works - perhaps one is to indicate that the car received the command, and the second, usually a minute later, is to indicate charging has started.

 

[mhkp]

Thanks for creating RavCharge!

I've been using it for a few days. I set it for a 1am start charge time. However the car started charging at 10:50 pm or 11:30 pm. My car schedule was set to finish charging at 7am. Charging actually finished at 3am. I received an email at 10:50 pm/11:30 pm to tell me the initial charge started and i got a second charge start time email at 1:20am that charging started.

I will turn off the RavCharge timer and see if start times are again after midnight. Too costly to be charging in non-super peak.

I'll let you know any other issues I come across. Its a work in progress and I hope to help with feedback.

 

[Dsinned]

I will turn off the RavCharge timer and see if start times are again after midnight. Too costly to be charging in non-super peak.

I'll let you know any other issues I come across. Its a work in progress and I hope to help with feedback.

Mhkp, probably what you really want to do is reschedule your departure time (in the car) to a few hours later like 9am, and reschedule RavCharge's timer to start a charge no later than midnight. This gives you a full 9 hours to start and end the overall (bulk + top off) charging process.

What may be causing your existing problem is that the extra time in the default charging process for cell balancing/topping off (i.e. only ~27 minutes for the latter), takes longer than a 7am departure time. This seemingly belated charging time to complete the overall process is at a much lower power level (~700W), so even if it occurs after 7am, it will not penalize you nearly as much. However, by moving back RavCharge's timer to midnight and deferring your departure time, I believe your charge will commence when you most want it (off-peak) and the "BULK" charge will still complete way before 7am. This, of course, assumes you are plugged in to an EVSE L2 (240V) charging station.

Joe, please feel free to jump in here if you wish to add anything.

 

[mhkp]

Well, I thought of that and moved my departure time from 6 am to 7 am. I often charge to Extended but it never takes more than 4 hours or so with my Leviton. I'll set my departure to 8am and see what happens.

 

[fooljoe]

Well, I thought of that and moved my departure time from 6 am to 7 am. I often charge to Extended but it never takes more than 4 hours or so with my Leviton. I'll set my departure to 8am and see what happens.

I confirmed in the RavCharge server logs that mhkp's early charge was not commanded by RavCharge. Dsinned's comment is spot-on: With a low starting SOC and/or extended charge set (and possibly a <40 amp EVSE, if applicable), it's not at all unexpected that the car's weird timer would start the charge before midnight.

This sort of thing is precisely the reason for RavCharge in the first place, not something caused by it!

 

[miimura]

If you are willing to forego the car's timer as a backup, you could probably set a single charge timer for Sunday afternoon in the car and let RavCharge do the rest. Even if the Sunday car timer does result in charging, it will be sure to be Off Peak.

 

[miimura]

If you are willing to forego the car's timer as a backup, you could probably set a single charge timer for Sunday afternoon in the car and let RavCharge do the rest. Even if the Sunday car timer does result in charging, it will be sure to be Off Peak.

I decided to follow this idea. I set my car's timer for Sunday 5pm departure only. I set RavCharge to start at 1:10am every day. The car put up a warning that it's not set to charge every day. We'll see how it goes.

BTW, what does RavCharge do when it's time for a timer event and the car is not plugged in? Does it know that and skip the event? I'm just wondering about the extraneous Entune e-mails mentioned above.

 

[fooljoe]

I decided to follow this idea. I set my car's timer for Sunday 5pm departure only. I set RavCharge to start at 1:10am every day. The car put up a warning that it's not set to charge every day. We'll see how it goes.

I'm flattered by your faith in RavCharge, but I wouldn't really advise this. If you just leave the car's timer set for every day, but with a time sufficiently late as to ensure it won't kick in before you want even if you're charging from 0%, then you'd get the same result. But you'd have the added redundancy of the car's timer kicking in (most of the time) even if the RavCharge or Entune servers go down, or if your car's not getting a cell signal, or whatever else.

EDIT: Another reason I'd advise against this approach is that some days you might stay out late and come home and plug in after RavCharge's start time. In that case you'd have to remember to choose "Charge immediately" when you turn off your car, or else you'll wake up empty. If you left the car's timer on, you should still get a charge, even if it starts later than you want. This scenario is the reason for my 20 minute later backup charge attempt, but of course that can only do so much.

BTW, what does RavCharge do when it's time for a timer event and the car is not plugged in? Does it know that and skip the event? I'm just wondering about the extraneous Entune e-mails mentioned above.

I addressed that question here. Unlike the car's built-in timer, the information that RavCharge has about whether the car is plugged in is only as good as the last update. I could set RavCharge to do a status update some time before a scheduled charge, but then there'd be some risk of the car getting plugged in between the status update and the timer event, or the status update not completing and a charge being skipped because of incorrect information about plug status.

Since my #1 goal is 100% activation of scheduled charges, for now RavCharge just goes ahead and sends the command (and sends it a lot), regardless of what information it has about the car being plugged in or not. So you probably would get a number of nuisance emails from Entune if you didn't plug in and had a timer set. If you want to avoid this you could just go to RavCharge on your phone and turn the timer off for the day. Changing the timer settings via RavCharge is much less painful than having to go out to your car and deal with its terrible interface.

Now that I think about this last part, maybe a cool feature would be a "skip the next charge" button that turns the timer off for a night but then automatically turns it back on so you don't have to remember to...

EDIT: Now that I think about this some more, maybe the risk isn't really that high, and it'd be nice to avoid hammering Entune with charge start requests when people are intentionally unplugged (not to mention avoiding all those "charge failure" emails). I'm working on implementing a "Plug check" option for the charge timers now.

If you choose this option, RavCharge will do a status update immediately before sending a charge start command. If the update fails, it'll go ahead and try to start charging anyway. If the update succeeds, it'll only send the charge start command if it has confirmed that you're plugged in and not already charging. Due to the time required for a status update to go through, charges will probably start a few minutes after the time you specify if you select this option. I'll test it on my car tonight and probably make it live tomorrow.

 

[Dsinned]

Now that I think about this last part, maybe a cool feature would be a "skip the next charge" button that turns the timer off for a night but then automatically turns it back on so you don't have to remember to...

EDIT: Now that I think about this some more, maybe the risk isn't really that high, and it'd be nice to avoid hammering Entune with charge start requests when people are intentionally unplugged (not to mention avoiding all those "charge failure" emails). I'm working on implementing a "Plug check" option for the charge timers now.

If you choose this option, RavCharge will do a status update immediately before sending a charge start command. If the update fails, it'll go ahead and try to start charging anyway. If the update succeeds, it'll only send the charge start command if it has confirmed that you're plugged in and not already charging. Due to the time required for a status update to go through, charges will probably start a few minutes after the time you specify if you select this option. I'll test it on my car tonight and probably make it live tomorrow.

I agree with this approach Joe. This morning I got "six" nuisance email notifications, all between midnight and about 20 minutes later, telling me RavCharge requests to charge had failed. Of course, these were to be expected because I intentionally left the car unplugged last night as it was still nearly fully charged already. This new approach will cut way down on such nuisance emails, and still get the job done!

. . . Oops, looks like you already did it! There is now a "Plug Check" checkbox in the latest version of RavCharge, I presume for this new feature. Thanks!!!

 

[miimura]

Now that I think about this last part, maybe a cool feature would be a "skip the next charge" button that turns the timer off for a night but then automatically turns it back on so you don't have to remember to...

EDIT: Now that I think about this some more, maybe the risk isn't really that high, and it'd be nice to avoid hammering Entune with charge start requests when people are intentionally unplugged (not to mention avoiding all those "charge failure" emails). I'm working on implementing a "Plug check" option for the charge timers now.

If you choose this option, RavCharge will do a status update immediately before sending a charge start command. If the update fails, it'll go ahead and try to start charging anyway. If the update succeeds, it'll only send the charge start command if it has confirmed that you're plugged in and not already charging. Due to the time required for a status update to go through, charges will probably start a few minutes after the time you specify if you select this option. I'll test it on my car tonight and probably make it live tomorrow.

I agree with this approach Joe. This morning I got "six" nuisance email notifications, all between midnight and about 20 minutes later, telling me RavCharge requests to charge had failed. Of course, these were to be expected because I intentionally left the car unplugged last night as it was still nearly fully charged already. This new approach will cut way down on such nuisance emails, and still get the job done!

I agree. Taking advantage of the status info available is the better way, especially if the code can differentiate between Plugged, Unplugged, and Status Timeout.

My car did successfully charge last night with RavCharge, but generated 5 Entune emails. 1:10 Fail, 1:12 Start, 1:13 Start, 1:30 Start, 3:06 Complete. If the status shows that the car is actively charging, then the 20 minutes later one should be avoided.