Interested in an unofficial Apple Watch app?

[electricsidecar]

v1.8 is now out with OBD support in CarPlay and a new "history overlay" for encouraging exploration of places unseen

Full notes in: https://electricsidecar.substack.com/p/v18-obd-in-carplay

Some screenshots:

 

[ciaranob]

Finally had a chance to hook this up - whilst clearly a lot of you focus is in trip data integration, personally my primary use would be a quick look at Soh and cell voltage metrics. And would be fair enough to say just use CarScanner for that but again, for me to avail of other aspects of SideCar integration into one app would be a better solution.

My OBDLinkMX doesn't seem to work with Sidecar but the other unit did - first thing I looked for was a readout of the Soh but (and I'm prob blind here) could not see it anywhere? I see the cell voltages etc but no simple output panel like the dashboard on CarScanner - or just even that one metric Soh on display?

The other pt I'd make is that whilst the data summaries for the cell packs etc is excellent its hard to beat a graphical display again like that in CarScanner - I mostly just want to rapidly scan a chart to instantly see any anomalous cell behaviors - without a chart I'd have to presumably go through every page of the readouts in SideCar to determine if any cell was misbehaving? Having this chart visible in CarPlay on the PCM screen would also beat the heck out of the small iPhone screen

I'm sure you have this covered and I'm being slow !

 

[electricsidecar]

Thanks for the feedback! All of those things are definitely on my mind, I'll respond to each point here:

> my primary use would be a quick look at Soh and cell voltage metrics

I haven't figured out how to decode SoH from the Taycan's OBD parameters yet. Working on it though! I need a few more samples to understand how the data is actually decoded and then I'll add the parameter to https://github.com/ElectricSidecar/Porsche-Taycan/blob/main/signalsets/default.json. This is one of those things that makes me want Sidecar to have an easy way to contribute OBD logs to a central place so that we can all collectively benefit from more decodings.

Once I figure out how to decode SoH, I'm planning on adding new UI and widgets to the app to make this parameter an official "connectable", meaning it'll be easy to monitor SoH alongside all of the other metrics and widgets being gathered by the app currently.

> My OBDLinkMX doesn't seem to work with Sidecar but the other

The MX+ requires that you connect your phone to it via the iOS Settings Bluetooth page first. You then need to manually refresh the set of devices in the Sidecar devices list to get it to show up as a device you can connect to.

Also due to a (reasonable) limitation, only one app can be connected to a Bluetooth device at a time. If you're not seeing the device, or are unable to connect to it, sometimes it could be that another app on your phone is already connected.

> I see the cell voltages etc but no simple output panel like the dashboard on CarScanner

Parameter dashboards are one of the top things on my list to build out next! I'm still noodling on the best way to incorporate dashboards into the app UI as there are two primary use cases: historical analysis and live mode (i.e. while driving, as a HUD). I have a currently disabled flag in the CarPlay integration that's experimenting with adding dashboards directly to the CarPlay screen but it's very early stages.

> The other pt I'd make is that whilst the data summaries for the cell packs etc is excellent its hard to beat a graphical display again like that in CarScanner - I mostly just want to rapidly scan a chart to instantly see any anomalous cell behaviors

If you navigate to Vehicle parameters > Battery > BatteryPack, you should see the beginnings of some visualizations of the battery cell voltage. I'm not happy with either visualization yet, but this was mainly added to prove out the viability of "signal groups", i.e. large collections of related signals all being shown together. You'll note there's an ability to connect these signal groups to "battery modules SoC". The intent there is to similarly add a concise visualization of cell packs to the main app UI, similar to the current battery level widgets/cards that are in the app.

Lots to come, and thank you for the feedback as this helps me focus on the right things

 

[ciaranob]

Thanks for the feedback! All of those things are definitely on my mind, I'll respond to each point here:

> my primary use would be a quick look at Soh and cell voltage metrics

I haven't figured out how to decode SoH from the Taycan's OBD parameters yet. Working on it though! I need a few more samples to understand how the data is actually decoded and then I'll add the parameter to https://github.com/ElectricSidecar/Porsche-Taycan/blob/main/signalsets/default.json. This is one of those things that makes me want Sidecar to have an easy way to contribute OBD logs to a central place so that we can all collectively benefit from more decodings.

Once I figure out how to decode SoH, I'm planning on adding new UI and widgets to the app to make this parameter an official "connectable", meaning it'll be easy to monitor SoH alongside all of the other metrics and widgets being gathered by the app currently.

> My OBDLinkMX doesn't seem to work with Sidecar but the other

The MX+ requires that you connect your phone to it via the iOS Settings Bluetooth page first. You then need to manually refresh the set of devices in the Sidecar devices list to get it to show up as a device you can connect to.

Also due to a (reasonable) limitation, only one app can be connected to a Bluetooth device at a time. If you're not seeing the device, or are unable to connect to it, sometimes it could be that another app on your phone is already connected.

> I see the cell voltages etc but no simple output panel like the dashboard on CarScanner

Parameter dashboards are one of the top things on my list to build out next! I'm still noodling on the best way to incorporate dashboards into the app UI as there are two primary use cases: historical analysis and live mode (i.e. while driving, as a HUD). I have a currently disabled flag in the CarPlay integration that's experimenting with adding dashboards directly to the CarPlay screen but it's very early stages.

> The other pt I'd make is that whilst the data summaries for the cell packs etc is excellent its hard to beat a graphical display again like that in CarScanner - I mostly just want to rapidly scan a chart to instantly see any anomalous cell behaviors

If you navigate to Vehicle parameters > Battery > BatteryPack, you should see the beginnings of some visualizations of the battery cell voltage. I'm not happy with either visualization yet, but this was mainly added to prove out the viability of "signal groups", i.e. large collections of related signals all being shown together. You'll note there's an ability to connect these signal groups to "battery modules SoC". The intent there is to similarly add a concise visualization of cell packs to the main app UI, similar to the current battery level widgets/cards that are in the app.

Lots to come, and thank you for the feedback as this helps me focus on the right things

Excellent - thx for the detailed response - on the OBDLinkMX+ I had in done all that was necessary (re your connectivity pts) but it still did not show up - I'm away from car now but I'll just try again later in case it was just a hangup of some sort.
Looking forward to the next iterations!
Cheers, C.

 

[tmrqs]

@electricsidecar it's obviously early as the first Macans aren't available yet, but do you have any indication whether ElectricSidecar would work with them, possibly with just some code adjustments on your end?

 

[electricsidecar]

@electricsidecar it's obviously early as the first Macans aren't available yet, but do you have any indication whether ElectricSidecar would work with them, possibly with just some code adjustments on your end?

In theory it should work! Every car has its unique quirks though so we’ll see if new api endpoints need to be wired up. I’ll need someone with access to a Macan EV to help test.

 

[tmrqs]

In theory it should work! Every car has its unique quirks though so we’ll see if new api endpoints need to be wired up. I’ll need someone with access to a Macan EV to help test.

Happy to once I get mine, dealer says by EOY.

 

[d00d]

Looking forward to the live CarPlay trip graph.
My screen is already taken by Waze/Podcasts, but if it could do split screen with Waze while Podcasts runs in the background, that would be good.

 

[electricsidecar]

Oh that's interesting, what does your split screen setup look like?

 

[d00d]

The Chick-fil-A app isn't live yet unfortunately.

 

[electricsidecar]

The Chick-fil-A app isn't live yet unfortunately.

Ah neat, that’s a cool setup. The main issue is that I believe CarPlay only lets you show one navigation app at a time, and I don’t think there’s a way to just show smaller widgets. I’ll poke around though!

 

[B61]

Two questions:

1. trips. It keeps last trip as April 26 on the screen. I can move to today (with next), but when i go back,to the main screen, i’m getting April 26 again.

2 i set different colours for SoC. On the phone, colours are changing based on SoC, while it’s always blue on the watch. As far as i remember, colours changed before, am i right?

Edit,
Re #2: just found out that it looks that settings are lost after upgrade to the latedt release.

 

[electricsidecar]

Two questions:

1. trips. It keeps last trip as April 26 on the screen. I can move to today (with next), but when i go back,to the main screen, i’m getting April 26 again.

Known bug! Should be fixed in the next release. The workaround right now is to open the calendar in the journey tab, this will force today’s trips to be analyzed and then you should see the latest trip on your vehicle page and widgets.

2 i set different colours for SoC. On the phone, colours are changing based on SoC, while it’s always blue on the watch. As far as i remember, colours changed before, am i right?

There’s been some major regressions in watchOS support by Apple in the past couple of weeks

https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/750801#750801021

The lack of preferences sync might be related. One thing to try is to make sure your watch is raised while you change the preferences on your phone.

 

[electricsidecar]

Edit,
Re #2: just found out that it looks that settings are lost after upgrade to the latedt release.

Ah! I changed the default top color from green to blue a couple versions ago to better align the app’s color scheme. If you had already configured your colors then your preferences should have stayed as is, but if your watch hadn’t synced to your phone’s preferences then your watch colors likely updated to the new defaults. If you change the colors on your phone while your watch is raised and the Electric Sidecar app is open on your watch then it should sync instantly.

 

[B61]

I’m loosing connection with watch… already “re-paired” four or five times.
It’s paired for few seconds…than un-paired again….
And, SOC colour is now ok on the phone, but still wrong on watch.

edit: i changed colours for SoC on my watch manually… so it’s fixed

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