Bug Reports for ABRP on iOS with EVNotify

[Burns Fisher]

I just started a premium trial and in order to see whether I could expect to use APRB, I just took a short-ish (20 mile or so) trip.  I quickly found a number of issues.  It apparently did not save my drive so I can't give you exactly when and where some things happened, but I'll do my best to detail it.  The drive started on Rt 130 in Hollis, NH near the border with Nashua NH and ended in Townsend MA.  I drove along Rt 130 to Rt 13 South to Townsend.  I was using CarPlay.   Here are things I noted:

 

1) I first had a very long route set up (to Dayton OH) just to see what would happen.  Boy did APRB go nuts when I turned the wrong direction.  As most programs will do, it kept trying to get me to turn around.  Some programs give up after a while and search for a new route the way I am going.  APRB did not even after going for 10 miles or so.  This is sort of minor.  I changed the route to go from where I currently was to Townsend MA.  In this case, I took a shortcut I knew and APRB was perfectly happy to recalculate the route.

 

2) The speed limits shown were ok at first.  The route I took was on Bohannen Brook Road in Brookline NH and on Parker Road.  When I turned onto Rt 13, the speed limit was suddenly shown to be 80+ (I don't remember the exact number, but it was non exactly 80.)  As I crossed the state line from NH to MA, the speed limit changed to 58 (it was really 50).  I had the feeling that maybe the speed limit was stored in metric, rounded up from the actual MPH limit posted, and then converted back.  

 

3) On the way back, the speed limit showed 35MPH leaving Townsend, but it did not go up to 50 all along Rt 13 until we got into NH.   Other places on the route showed no speed limit at all on the back, even though it had shown on the way out.

 

4) The battery SOC did not update reliably.  This may be EVNotify as much as ABRP.  Sometime it was updating.  Sometimes it was not.  I tried making EVNotify the "front" application--ABRP still showed on CarPlay.  Nope.  A few times, I killed the EVNotify app (by flicking it off the screen) and restarting it.  That got everything to update.  Note, though, that all the time, the OBD dongle was flashing showing that it was actually talking to EVNotify.

 

5) On the "title page" of the app, it gives me a chance to read 4.0.37 (306) release notes, but it also says it is 4 years old.  I thought there were many newer changes!

 

 

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Anyway, the worst problem is really (4)...if I can't count on it to know the state of the battery, or worse if it think the battery is higher than it is, I don't think I can trust ABRP to guide me along the route.

 

BTW, I will also check EVNotify's web site and report this, but I got to this one first

[BarryH]

Do you use an Iphone or an android phone?

on iOS EVnotify stops once it goes the the background (to allow the abrp app to run in the front)

on Android you need to go into the settings menu and then tap multiple times on the version number on the bottom-rightside to get into a hidden settings menu. In there you can activate "backgrond mode" which makes sure evnotify stays active (in reading the obd2 port and sending the data to internet) while in background.

[Burns Fisher]

Hi @BarryH, and thanks.  I could have sworn that I put in my original account that I was using an iPhone.  Sorry about that.

 

But a couple of points/questions:

 

1) In fact, I did let EVNotify be "on top" of the phone.  ABRP was running, and displaying via CarPlay, but not showing in front on the phone.  Do you think that counts as EVNotify being in 'background' mode?  In addition, as I think I mentioned, the OBD dongle was still flashing its bluetooth light, which is (I thought) supposed to be saying that data was being collected.  Maybe there is a subtle difference.

 

2) So assuming that my results are explained by EVnotify being in the background of the iPhone, does this mean that ABRP is still kind of useless on an iPhone?  I understand that I can run it without any battery SOC feedback, but that kind of defeats one of the big advantages I should think.  Am I missing something here?  Is it possible to make this work with a different program or a different way of thinking about it?

 

Thanks again...any further feedback welcomed!

[BarryH]

@Burns FisherI bought a cheap android phone (android 8.0) which is tethered to my iPhone. I run evnotify on the android phone and abrp on the iPhone, which is shown on the carplay screen of the multimedia system. When Carplay was not supported yet, I ran ABRP on the Android phone as well....

 

It could be that the most recent update of iOS allows the 2 apps to function at the same time, but I did not try this myself.

[Burns Fisher]

@BarryH

Thanks.  I've decided to try that myself.  A BLU phone on order.  There was one costing in the $30s but it did not say it had Bluetooth.  Will try this $55 one and see.  Thanks for the idea!  I'll report back on how it works.

[Burns Fisher]

@BarryH, what cheap Android phone did you get?  The BLU that I ordered came today, and it can't seem to download EVNotify.  <sigh>

 

[Burns Fisher]

Ok, I got EVNotify working on my BLU phone.  It was weird--it seems like there were different versions of EVNotify available in the store, or at least the search gave me EVNotify-V3 and EVNotify.  I'm not sure if they actually gave different apps, but when I went to V3 it would not install.  The other one did.  After that it worked ok.

So let's call this "Hybrid Mode".  Clearly (from above) "pure iOS" is not terribly usable, so let me try a report with Hybrid (iOS for APRB/Android for EVNotify) mode:

First about the battery level report from EVNotify:  It seemed to work well until I got back home and the Android switched to my home WiFi.  Then I left again, and it did not switch back to the iPhone so it did not send any new data.  But oddly, ABRP somehow picked up a battery charge that was 20 lower than actual.  Hard to tell what happened and who to blame for that one--maybe I don't have the Android set up right.

But regarding ABRP:  There seem to be a lot of inconsistent behaviors.  As though there were a bunch of uninitialized variables, maybe.  For example:

1) When I left my house, Rt 130 showed to be posted at 78 (it is actually 45MPH).   Sounds like it is showing me metric.  In fact it showed me turns as ("In 200 meters...") so I'm pretty sure that is right.  However, on the way back it was show English measurements without me doing anything.   I actually don't mind metric distances especially since it is labelled as such.  But not only is the speed limit NOT labelled, but it is not so good to compare with the car speedometer or the road signs.

2) Despite the release note saying how happy the developers were with the new smoother on-screen movements, I was seeing an update only every 6 seconds.  Normally that would not matter except when you are coming to a turn, and it has not updated to clearly show which way to go.  But later when I started a new route, it was fine--nice and smooth motion of the car icon--the background jumped a bit, but that's not big deal.

3) At one point, the car drove off the screen and the background never moved.  Again, that made it hard to know where it thought I should turn (the voice nav is fairly soft and I could not always make it out--probably adjustable; I have not looked).

4) At first I set up a route on the car screen (iPhone version running car-play), and when I hit "launch" the app crashed.  I then set it up on the phone and it was ok.  Later I tried it on the car screen again and it was ok.

5) When showing map rather the aerial view, it came up in dark mode on the car screen despite being in light mode on the phone.

 

So I hope this does not sounds like just a bunch of whining.  As a software developer myself, I understand how hard it is, believe me, and I generally hope that people will report my bugs so I can fix them.   I really do want a mapping program that will do a good job at predicting where charge stops have to be, and I hope this can be that program.  

I'll try pure Android next and see how that works for me.  I think that is what the majority use, and I know it is older and the "base development platform" so perhaps many of these issues will not be there.

Thanks for listening, and I hope this is helpful!

 

 

 

 

[Burns Fisher]

You are probably getting tired of receiving my reports, so this will be short and there will probably be no more until and unless I get a good idea for making this work better or there is a new version.  As I said, I hope I am being more helpful than annoying.

First, I said above I would try pure Android.  I was shocked to see that Android Auto does not work.  (Yes, I see now elsewhere that it does not, and some of the issues relate to playing by Google's rules.  I understand.  Good luck!).  But I do wonder how so many people have such good success without Auto.  I could not tell how it was working while driving.  

I came back from my short drive in hybrid mode (as described above) and again saw the sometimes-jerky sometimes smooth mode.  The connection to EVNotify also seemed a bit intermittent.  But one thing:  It seemed like the jerky mode happened when the EVNotify connection was working.   When it was working smoothly, the charge state appeared not to update. 

And finally, a new symptom:  When I start the routing going, it invariably says something like "spend 0 minutes charging to <whatever my battery is already at".  This time, however, it also showed both the battery and the destination charge state at the starting charge state, and never changed.  In fact it also never gave me any directions, although the route was marked out on the map. 

[Katya-ABRP]

Hi @Burns Fisher,

On 3/26/2021 at 5:43 PM, Burns Fisher said:

First about the battery level report from EVNotify:  It seemed to work well until I got back home and the Android switched to my home WiFi.  Then I left again, and it did not switch back to the iPhone so it did not send any new data.  But oddly, ABRP somehow picked up a battery charge that was 20 lower than actual.  Hard to tell what happened and who to blame for that one--maybe I don't have the Android set up right.

I think you should be able to get around this by, in the Android phone's settings not allowing it to automatically connect to new networks. Unsure why it got that SoC value though, could it have reverted to non-live SoC?

1) I'd suggest to check your language and unit settings in: Settings (detailed), scroll down to 'App settings' > 'Language' / 'Units'

2) Yes, our improvements support smoother movements. However, if we're not getting fresh data frequently enough we can't make the decision to update the marker movement smoothly. I'd say, that since it was fine later, this would likely have been caused by some connection issue. The map movements is something we're also working on improving, I've myself noticed it is a bit "jumpy" sometimes.

3) That's a new one. Centering of the car icon in the iOS app isn't entirely perfect but the icon going off screen should of course not happen. Do you know if you had selected a certain "view mode" when this happened?

4) We did recently discover a bug which could cause such errors and it should be resolved in the latest version (4.0.39). I'd suggest to try and update the app(s) and try again.

5) We don't actually control dark/light mode in CarPlay but you should be able to switch between 'Automatic' and 'Always dark' in CarPlay settings.
 

On 3/26/2021 at 9:22 PM, Burns Fisher said:

came back from my short drive in hybrid mode (as described above) and again saw the sometimes-jerky sometimes smooth mode.  The connection to EVNotify also seemed a bit intermittent.  But one thing:  It seemed like the jerky mode happened when the EVNotify connection was working.   When it was working smoothly, the charge state appeared not to update.

This is also a possibility. I cannot check this now since your trial has ended, there are some charging sessions in your logs but strangely no driving sessions. I've sent you an email regarding having a closer look at this.

On 3/26/2021 at 9:22 PM, Burns Fisher said:

And finally, a new symptom:  When I start the routing going, it invariably says something like "spend 0 minutes charging to <whatever my battery is already at".  This time, however, it also showed both the battery and the destination charge state at the starting charge state, and never changed.  In fact it also never gave me any directions, although the route was marked out on the map.

Did you perhaps start at a charger when this happened? We have made some adjustments to not ignore the possibility to charge at a charger you're already at but perhaps we overdid it.

Lastly, we're absolutely not tired or or annoyed with your reports. We do appreciate all user feedback greatly (even if we take a little time replying sometimes) Thank you!

/Katya

[Burns Fisher]

Just to answer your very last question:  I was never starting at a public charger.  I think this happened at one point when I was leaving home, and my home charger, but AFAIK, ABRP does not know that I have a charger at home.  Thanks for everything else.  I'll update my app and follow the email instructions.

[Katya-ABRP]

Hi @Burns Fisher,

Correct, we shouldn't be showing any private chargers and we definitely shouldn't know of your home charger. Unless it for some reason has been added as a public charger in the databases we sync with, but that would have to be done by a person.

Are there any public chargers very close to your home perhaps?

/Katya