Interested in an unofficial Apple Watch app?

[ciaranob]

First generic value monitor in place:

This is setting up the foundations for tracking monitors over time. Electric Sidecar keeps a historical record of all command/response pairs sent over the OBD-II connection, so this data can be turned into charts within the app. Will also make it possible to export this data relatively easily and visualize it in a Mac (and Vision Pro!) app.

Hmmm - Taycan Forum and no EV data ….. not cool - just messing but …

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[electricsidecar]

Hmmm - Taycan Forum and no EV data ….. not cool - just messing but …

haha that’s next! Needed to start with the published standards first

 

[ciaranob]

haha that’s next! Needed to start with the published standards first

All very cool - looking forward to the next iterations!

 

[electricsidecar]

Quick update: spent the past couple days learning about DBC files before finally realizing that they're optimized for raw, fixed-width CAN bus data parsing, and aren't really designed for working with OBD diagnostics requests coming in via variable-width CAN frames via OBD. I want to make Electric Sidecar easily extensible with new parameter signals though so I'm evaluating a few options for making it possible to establish a community-contributed database of OBD-compatible commands that work with ELM327 devices. Getting closer to a working MVP!

 

[electricsidecar]

Went for the first drive with live monitors wired up

Monitors will be defined in the same community GitHub repos that house the vehicle discussions. So the Taycan's monitors are defined here: https://github.com/ElectricSidecar/Porsche-Taycan/blob/main/signalsets/default.json. The app UI will allow you to select from any signalset stored in the repo, and I plan to allow people to submit new signalsets (or modifications to existing ones) both via GitHub and via a simpler UX in the app.

One fun aspect about how I've architected this all is that signals can be pulled out from anywhere and visualized pretty easily in the app. For example, the terminal shows a complete history of all command ran against a given OBD connector. Whether the commands are invoked automatically or by hand, Electric Sidecar will detect any signals present and show them as a rich "card" UX:

Now that the end-to-end workflow is in place for observing monitors, next step is to make it possible to wire these up to actual vehicle metrics and widgets

 

[electricsidecar]

Adding an OBD badge to the charge widget to nicely surface when an OBD reader is connected to the vehicle everywhere this widget gets used:

 

[electricsidecar]

Been making good progress on the monitor UX. Here's what the community monitors page will look like:

Note that monitors can now suggest metrics that they'll power, such as SoC, speed, tire pressure, etc. When a monitor is connected to one of these metrics and you're scanning your car, Electric Sidecar will prefer the live data from your scanner over any vehicle connectivity data (which is often delayed). This means trip logs and data reports will be much more accurate when using a scanner, but Electric Sidecar will still gracefully fall back to using your vehicle's connectivity data otherwise.

Here's the data live-powering the SoC widget in the app:

And the terminal readouts of the underlying data requests:

Next step is to make the data poll automatically in the background and then I need to find a good way to get the data shared with widgets and the watch. The latter may require setting up some form of iCloud sync so that may have to come in a v2 of this feature.

I got pretty tired of having to go out to my car to test the Taycan monitors so I purchased this handy OBD testing kit. It has open source firmware, so I've been able to easily extend to act like a mini Taycan ECU and emulate all of the vehicle monitors I plan to support for v1. It's also got potentiometers for easy futzing with the data to make sure Electric Sidecar's showing data in real time

 

[electricsidecar]

Another update, this one less visual but important nonetheless: I've just finished a complete overhaul of the app's underlying signal logging database to a unified architecture that will now support both OBD and OEM-based data. This means a few things:

- When you're plugged in to a car scanner, Electric Sidecar will intelligently surface and prioritize that data, and when you're not plugged in it will fall back to OEM data.
- The app will now be able to gather and chart a wider variety of data, in ways that will be more configurable in the app's UX. Concretely, this means more charts for more things out of the box and the ability to create custom charts of bespoke metrics if you're getting deep into the OBD weeds.
- The unified approach is also breaking many of the early assumptions built in to the app around being an EV-only product, meaning hybrid and conventional vehicle data will be better representable in the app UX.

Now that the underlying database is unified and data is able to be gathered in the background, I need to wire the signals directly up to the UI and verify that widgets work, and then it's a final QA pass of the app before finally getting it out to TestFlight again

 

[B61]

Just a thought… have you ever compared charging data on display with app?
Today I noticed that chsrging speed is not the same on Porsche app, Sidecar and display in the car.
I was monitoring more precisely because of my charging problems.
We found out:
1. DC doesn’t work anymore
2. AC on the same side works with aboult 2/3 of the speed (13.3 instead of 22, or 6 instead of 9kw)
3. AC in driver’s side works ok (22kwh @ 32A, 9kwh @14A).

service scheduled for Mach 07.
Hope, it will be the last one.


See enclosed photos:

 

[electricsidecar]

Just a thought… have you ever compared charging data on display with app?
Today I noticed that chsrging speed is not the same on Porsche app, Sidecar and display in the car.
I was monitoring more precisely because of my charging problems.
We found out:
1. DC doesn’t work anymore
2. AC on the same side works with aboult 2/3 of the speed (13.3 instead of 22, or 6 instead of 9kw)
3. AC in driver’s side works ok (22kwh @ 32A, 9kwh @14A).

service scheduled for Mach 07.
Hope, it will be the last one.


See enclosed photos:

The data that comes from your car via the Porsche servers can be pretty delayed (on the order of minutes). This is why the data you see in the Porsche app is fairly consistent with the data currently shown in Electric Sidecar. There isn’t much that can be improved on the app side for this through the Porsche Connect api alone.

But this is the kind of thing that an OBD scanner can help make more instantaneously accurate. There are many signals that you can poll directly from the car to get a more detailed understanding of things.

 

[B61]

I thought that there is some delay…but SoC and km are updated very well….only speed of charging is delayed ?‍

 

[electricsidecar]

Everything is now fully functional for an MVP release of the OBD scanner functionality Just doing a final QA pass on the feature set now to iron out some of the obvious rough edges.

Journey statistics can now be much more accurate if you're using a scanner:

I've been brain-dumping all of the remaining work into Things and am splitting it between MVP and post-MVP tasks. I've got it down to the following list now:

Getting close

I'll likely be aiming for a release of this new beta to early testers as early as this weekend. If you've got an OBD scanner and would be interested in testing this new functionality out before it goes to the wider tester pool please let me know and I'll add you to the TestFlight group!

 

[bn8959]

Everything is now fully functional for an MVP release of the OBD scanner functionality Just doing a final QA pass on the feature set now to iron out some of the obvious rough edges.

Journey statistics can now be much more accurate if you're using a scanner:

I've been brain-dumping all of the remaining work into Things and am splitting it between MVP and post-MVP tasks. I've got it down to the following list now:

Getting close

I'll likely be aiming for a release of this new beta to early testers as early as this weekend. If you've got an OBD scanner and would be interested in testing this new functionality out before it goes to the wider tester pool please let me know and I'll add you to the TestFlight group!

Very happy to help test I have a ODB dongle!

 

[B61]

Your app is a reason that i’m buying OBD.
I’ll let you know when i’ll get it.

 

[electricsidecar]

I've stumbled upon a fun algorithm interview question: build Electric Sidecar's OBD signal scheduling mechanism ? It's a pretty fun algorithm / optimization / timing problem.

Given a set of commands X, where each command has:

1. a refresh interval specified in milliseconds and,
2. a 16 bit header that must be set on the OBD device prior to invoking the command,

build a scheduler that efficiently sends commands to the vehicle so as to minimize gaps in data. Start with just one signal that refreshes on a quarter second interval, then add a second that refreshes on a one second interval, eventually scaling up to 20 signals all refreshing at various intervals and across different headers.

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