RavCharge, a solution to charge timer and entune woes

[waidy]

May I request for pulling the "remaining charge time" from Entune server to display in RavCharge, please? Thank you.

 

[yblaser]

I think RAVCharge wasn't able to initiate my charge last night. I have it set to start at 12:30 but it didn't start until 3:00 presumably due to the 8 am departure time I have set.

 

[fooljoe]

Lo and behold, at 12:16 am the great RavCharge rose effortlessly with might and wonder from somewhere in the night!

Lol, I love it. Love that CS-60 thump too, except it's installed on the wall right outside my daughter's bedroom. Thankfully it hasn't woken her up yet or my wife would let me have it...

Thanks for trying RavCharge! By the way, it's typical for your charge to start anywhere from 1-15 minutes after the time you set, as it does a status check first to make sure you're plugged in, and sometimes it takes a couple tries for Entune to do its job and get the command to the car. Good thing you didn't have to wait too long for it this time though!

 

[fooljoe]

I think RAVCharge wasn't able to initiate my charge last night. I have it set to start at 12:30 but it didn't start until 3:00 presumably due to the 8 am departure time I have set.

I'll have to look into the logs when I get a chance later tonight to see what happened in your case, but as I just mentioned there is the possibility that Entune will fail in its part to get the command to the car, particularly if your car is parked where there's weak cell coverage. Did you get any charge failure notifications from Entune?

I've designed RavCharge around this, as I have it re-send the command to Entune every 2 minutes, for up to 8 minutes, if charging hasn't started; then I also set a backup timer to repeat the whole process 37 minutes later (used to be 20 minutes) just in case. So it does what it can, but sometimes Entune might still fail to start the charge even after 8 or so attempts spread across 45 minutes. This approach has worked out very well so far, but thanks for letting me know that your charge got skipped - I may have to increase further the number of attempts to ensure that such problems become more rare.

It's good that you had your departure timer set, as recommended, and hopefully your charge still completed in super-off-peak.

 

[fooljoe]

May I request for pulling the "remaining charge time" from Entune server to display in RavCharge, please? Thank you.

I could do that, but in my experience that number is terribly inaccurate (probably for the same reason that the car's timer is so bad.) A better idea that I have in mind is allowing you to specify the voltage/amperage of the charging station you're using, and combining that with your %SOC and battery capacity estimate to get the remaining charge time. For now you could fairly easily calculate it yourself much better than Entune does, as (1-%SOC)*capacity/(.82* volts*amps/1000). The .82 is my estimate of charging efficiency - that'll probably be something else I'll give you the ability to adjust.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Dsinned]

Hey Joe,

My wife signed up for RavCharge today and we set it up to start charging the car at 12:15 am. I was in the garage waiting to see it work in person At 12:15 I started waiting for the great pumpkin (I mean RavCharge) to rise out of my garage and with ease and wonder wake up my sleeping Ravy asking her to request power from my waiting EVSE, at the very time I DECIDED I wanted her to charge.

Lo and behold, at 12:16 am the great RavCharge rose effortlessly with might and wonder from somewhere in the night! I heard a click click, then a zzzz, and then like magic my new Clippercreek CS-60 roared to life with a resounding THUMP! And the life giving elixir began flowing to energize her hungry and waiting underbelly.

I never actually saw RavCharge tonight, I can only exclaim he came in so quickly and was gone in a flash ... But his mighty powers left our Ravy screaming with pleasure and delight as the wonderful juices she so desired flowed into her longing loins from her consummated union with RavCharge. It was a passionate beginning I know she is excited to experience often.

As I left the garage I could hear Ravy whispering into the night sky ... "Come Ravcharge come, and join with me every night! You are mine and I am yours, and we will be together forever!"

Oh those crazy kids ... Infatuated after just the first kiss.

HILLARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Dsinned]

May I request for pulling the "remaining charge time" from Entune server to display in RavCharge, please? Thank you.

I could do that, but in my experience that number is terribly inaccurate (probably for the same reason that the car's timer is so bad.) A better idea that I have in mind is allowing you to specify the voltage/amperage of the charging station you're using, and combining that with your %SOC and battery capacity estimate to get the remaining charge time. For now you could fairly easily calculate it yourself much better than Entune does, as (1-%SOC)*capacity/(.82* volts*amps/1000). The .82 is my estimate of charging efficiency - that'll probably be something else I'll give you the ability to adjust.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Actually, I think this is an EXCELLENT suggestions (in terms of Joe's interpretation) for purposes of making RavCharge even more useful!

Although, I think your computation would have to be:

(1 - (%SoC / 100) * capacity) / (0.82 * (Vac * Iac) / 1000) = hours remaining to fully charged

Even better, would be to convert the resulting calculation to hours and minutes remaining to fully charged.

 

[yblaser]

I'll have to look into the logs when I get a chance later tonight to see what happened in your case, but as I just mentioned there is the possibility that Entune will fail in its part to get the command to the car, particularly if your car is parked where there's weak cell coverage. Did you get any charge failure notifications from Entune?

No I didn't get any failure emails so I am guessing that it was a failure to detect that the car was plugged in. Anyway with the backup departure time it charged fully well within super off peak, I just wanted to give you the feedback. Thanks again for a great web app!

 

[Dsinned]

One thing that everyone has to be aware of is that the J1772 charge port connector has a built-in "latch" on the plug. If pressed (unlatched) intentionally or inadvertently while the connector is still plugged in, the car thinks it is being unplugged; even if "YOU THINK" it is actually plugged in. This, in turn, disables the EVSE from outputting a HV into the charge port connector. This is a safety feature to prevent exposure to HV when the unit is actually unplugged and the human body may possibly come in contact with the recessed pins on the end of the connector. When this happens, you may have to physically unplug and reconnect the charge port connector to the car, then verify the amber LED(s) start blinking again. In the worse case scenario, additionally, you may have to turn on the car itself, then a few seconds later back off, to clear the "charging cable not plugged" fault indication on the instrument panel.

In other words, when you first plug in, be very careful not to accidentally press the latch trigger on the connector plug. Plugging in should be a single operation without any hesitation, in one continuous, non-stop motion. Just plug in the connector in this manner and listen for it to "click". The clicking sound means the connector has properly physically latched in place. Again, while you are plugging in, DO NOT press the latch trigger at any time. In fact, keep your trigger finger off of it. Use two hands if you have to steady the connector so it is properly aligned before you plug it in. Then, wait briefly for the LEDs to start blinking on and off repetitively in the side window. This verifies that you have made a successful charge port connection, but do not touch the connector again until after charging has been completed (as can easily be verified by Entunes email notification and/or RavCharge).

 

[miimura]

I thought that the double Charge Start e-mails that I was getting when using RavCharge were due to something that the web app was doing. However, in preparation to take my car in for the 5,000 mile service, I went back to straight car timer charging. It threw the Charging Stopped due to System Malfunction error that my car has done a half dozen times, even before it wanted to start charging. Since it didn't charge at all that night, I used Entune on my iPhone to manually start charging as soon as I woke up. That also gave the double Charge Start e-mail. So, I conclude that it is entirely due to how Entune handles remote charge start, which RavCharge is using to provide its timer function.

 

[fooljoe]

I'll have to look into the logs when I get a chance later tonight to see what happened in your case, but as I just mentioned there is the possibility that Entune will fail in its part to get the command to the car, particularly if your car is parked where there's weak cell coverage. Did you get any charge failure notifications from Entune?

No I didn't get any failure emails so I am guessing that it was a failure to detect that the car was plugged in. Anyway with the backup departure time it charged fully well within super off peak, I just wanted to give you the feedback. Thanks again for a great web app!

So I just looked through the logs, and RavCharge successfully sent the charge start command to entune 10 times between 12:30 and 1:25 am last night, but entune still couldn't get your car to charge!

It's not possible that a scheduled charge won't happen because of a failure to detect the car is plugged in (unless the car itself fails to detect plug-in) - that would only delay the start time of the charge: RavCharge tries a status update (and it tries that every 2 minutes for 8 minutes too, just like a charge start) at the start of each timer event to detect if your car is plugged in before sending the charge start command, but in your case all of the status update attempts failed too. However, when a status update fails and it can't determine if you're plugged in, RavCharge tries to start the charge anyway, which it did in your case, but of course without success.

Several other users had successful status updates and charge starts during the same time, so it seems RavCharge and entune were both working nominally. Like I guessed before, I'd have to conclude that your car just wasn't getting cell reception, or perhaps something went haywire in the car itself. If your car was parked in the same place as usual it's quite odd that it would usually work fine but not get a signal this time, but I suppose that just happens sometimes...

Anyway, thanks again for letting me know and good thing the car's timer kicked in in time to get you charged up before 6! Hopefully things are back to normal tonight. If you continue to have cell phone coverage issues that cause your car not to work with entune, and you can't work it out with Toyota or AT&T, then I'll be happy to refund your RavCharge subscription fee.

Oh, and if you didn't get any charge failure emails it probably just means you didn't check that box in myentune.com, or otherwise entune is just a little inconsistent about the notifications it sends. I get charge interruption emails almost every time I unplug, but not every time - and sometimes I get them even before I unplug. :?:

 

[fooljoe]

I thought that the double Charge Start e-mails that I was getting when using RavCharge were due to something that the web app was doing. However, in preparation to take my car in for the 5,000 mile service, I went back to straight car timer charging. It threw the Charging Stopped due to System Malfunction error that my car has done a half dozen times, even before it wanted to start charging. Since it didn't charge at all that night, I used Entune on my iPhone to manually start charging as soon as I woke up. That also gave the double Charge Start e-mail. So, I conclude that it is entirely due to how Entune handles remote charge start, which RavCharge is using to provide its timer function.

That's correct; the notification emails you get from entune should be exactly the same whether you use RavCharge to start the charge or the button in the entune app. RavCharge no longer makes multiple attempts to start the charge as long as the first one succeeds. The only exception to that would be if the status update fails before the backup timer event - but that second charge start email would come about 45 minutes later, not immediately (or within 1-2 minutes) after the first.

 

[fooljoe]

Although, I think your computation would have to be:

(1 - (%SoC / 100) * capacity) / (0.82 * (Vac * Iac) / 1000) = hours remaining to fully charged

Even better, would be to convert the resulting calculation to hours and minutes remaining to fully charged.

Well technically a number followed by the % sign means the /100 is implicit, i.e. 55% = 0.55, and a spreadsheet app like Excel would interpret it that way, but of course if you use the raw SOC number (i.e. 55) then you would indeed have to divide by 100. Maybe I should've written SOC% instead of %SOC to be clear.

However, the way you wrote it actually messed it up a bit because of order-of-operations. I think you meant to write ((1-SOC/100)*capacity) instead. If you calculate (1-(SOC/100)*capacity) with our example of SOC=55, and assuming capacity of 35kwh, then you'd have 1-.55*35 = -18.25kwh! What you want to get is (1-.55)*35 = .45*35 = 15.75kwh.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know you think this approach is a good idea. I think I can get it worked in pretty soon - probably above the charge timer settings area. I've got a lot of requests for recurring A/C timers so I need to work on that too, but that'll take a lot more work than this one. Oh and of course I'll give you the time-to-charge in hh:mm format instead of some ugly decimal number!

Thanks again for all the feedback everybody - the thread had gotten a little stagnant so it's nice to know that people are still thinking about RavCharge!

 

[Scott1258]

Thanks again for all the feedback everybody - the thread had gotten a little stagnant so it's nice to know that people are still thinking about RavCharge!

Oh, I'm thinking about ravcharge a lot right now! I can't wait to see if those two love birds make some beautiful music again tonight. I can't wait to when I trust that those two will be getting it on every time I plug her in and I start forgetting all about it since it just works. Thanks again joe for all your great work with this and your continued support!

 

[Dianne]

I bought my Siemens VersiCharge off Amazon.com because it's got the built in timer.
These two are my go-to chargers lately. The Versi just dropped to $799 last week and the GE is $849 so they are close in pricing. Clipper is good but pricy.

http://www.amazon.com/Siemens-VC30BLKB-VersiCharge-Electric-Vehicle/dp/B0083ZZFEA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382205609&sr=8-1&keywords=evse+level+2+charger

http://www.amazon.com/GE-WattStation-Wall-Mount-Charger/dp/B00B4KR18Y/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1382205609&sr=8-7&keywords=evse+level+2+charger

You know how I feel about Leviton, Scott, but the Versi had a built-in timer that I like a lot.
Dianne

 

[fooljoe]

...You know how I feel about Leviton, Scott, but the Versi had a built-in timer that I like a lot.
Dianne

Did this fall under the wrong thread somehow (subject = "chargers"?) Mods?

 

[Dsinned]

Joe, yeah, it's a bit out of place, but the connection is the part about a "built-in timer". Although, RavCharge also has a software alternative for essentially the same thing using ANY charging station, AND for only $39/year! :mrgreen:

Also, thanks for continuing to enhance Ravcharge with the latest proposed new feature for displaying the time remaining to complete a charge! I think that just about covers what almost everyone would want. Thanks to Waidy for suggesting it! :idea:

 

[yblaser]

So I just looked through the logs, and RavCharge successfully sent the charge start command to entune 10 times between 12:30 and 1:25 am last night, but entune still couldn't get your car to charge!
...
Anyway, thanks again for letting me know and good thing the car's timer kicked in in time to get you charged up before 6! Hopefully things are back to normal tonight. If you continue to have cell phone coverage issues that cause your car not to work with entune, and you can't work it out with Toyota or AT&T, then I'll be happy to refund your RavCharge subscription fee.
...
Oh, and if you didn't get any charge failure emails it probably just means you didn't check that box in myentune.com, or otherwise entune is just a little inconsistent about the notifications it sends. I get charge interruption emails almost every time I unplug, but not every time - and sometimes I get them even before I unplug. :?:

Thanks for the info fooljoe. Yes, my car was parked in its usual place which should have good cell coverage and I do have entune set to send me all alerts. Before you changed the program to sense whether or not the car was plugged in I used to get several failed to start emails a night when I didn't plug in. I also get the charge interrupted emails pretty much everytime I unplug my car. I run my own mail server and also checked to make sure nothing got blocked from entune that night and I only see the charge start and charge complete emails.

Anyway, I only charge every few days and won't charge again until sunday, so I haven't reproduced the problem. I'm guessing I won't be able to and its probably just a ghost in the system somewhere. No worries about the issues even if they persist. My main motivation for paying for the app was to support a good developer and having a faster and easier way to initiate remote climate.

 

[fooljoe]

Thanks for the info fooljoe. Yes, my car was parked in its usual place which should have good cell coverage and I do have entune set to send me all alerts. Before you changed the program to sense whether or not the car was plugged in I used to get several failed to start emails a night when I didn't plug in. I also get the charge interrupted emails pretty much everytime I unplug my car. I run my own mail server and also checked to make sure nothing got blocked from entune that night and I only see the charge start and charge complete emails.

That really was a strange condition that led to your charge getting skipped. I checked last night's log and the status update at 12:30 went through on the first try, and correctly detected that you weren't plugged in. Hopefully it was just a weird one-time thing.

Anyway, I only charge every few days and won't charge again until sunday, so I haven't reproduced the problem. I'm guessing I won't be able to and its probably just a ghost in the system somewhere. No worries about the issues even if they persist. My main motivation for paying for the app was to support a good developer and having a faster and easier way to initiate remote climate.

Thanks for the support!

 

[fooljoe]

The new time-to-charge feature is now live, in the charge settings area. Vary the volts/amps for your charging station and see how long RavCharge thinks it'll take for your charge to complete. It should also detect whether you're in Extended charge mode and adjust for that.

Do remember that even if you nominally have 240 volt service your actual voltage may be significantly lower (or perhaps a bit higher) and under load it may drop lower still. You should measure your voltage under load to get a good idea what to put there, or just do some trial-and-error until your actual charge times match RavCharge's estimates reasonably well.

Also remember that what you have set for the normal charge capacity in settings will affect the time-to-charge estimate, so if you have a conservative degradation estimate it may lead to optimistic time-to-charge predictions.

I decided to assume 80% charging efficiency for now. I might add in another slider in settings for that later, or just adjust the amount from my end after further testing. Adjusting the voltage should work fairly well to fine-tune your estimate in the meantime.

Let me know how close the estimates turn out! Here's a screenshot of my prediction for tonight: