LEAF Manager, alternative carwings app for android

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gyathaar

Active member
Joined
Jan 13, 2013
Messages
25
Hi.
The last month or so I have been working on an alternative carwings app for android.

You can find it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.darkspawns.leafmanager" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The app has been available on play store for almost this long, and quite a few users has found it and used it so far.

Thought I would make a post about it here now that most urgent problems has been fixed, so I can get more feedback and ideas.

App currently allows login for following servers:
European server
Europe server 2 (alternate server used by official android app.. no support for charge and climate timers)
US server
Canadian server
Japanese server (untested, but should work)
Australian server (untested, but should work)

After you have logged in once (assuming you click the option to remember username and password),
the app should from then on no longer need to wait for you to log in to use it.. if required, it will log in automatically and perform the function you request

App allows setting climate timer (unsupported in official European android app) and charging timer (unsupported in all official apps)

With in app purchase you can:
Disable advertising
Enable home-screen (and lock-screen for android 4.2) widget.

The widget has no functionality that is not available in the normal app, just the convenience of not needing to open the app to perform functions.

There are still some problems with UI scaling with different screen sizes.
(Lock-widget looks particularly ugly :) )
 
This should be in the for sale section or you should be listed as a vendor as you are charging for the ad free version.
 
Thanks gyathaar, nice app!! I've been using it for couple weeks now (that is how long I've owned my leaf!), especially for the charge timer function.

In the past, I've noticed that a function I requested was not performed. But after the recent updates, it seems to work pretty good.
 
I'm giving this app a try because I'm sick of the official Nissan LEAF app. I'm a little worried, though, that I'm going to accidentally turn on my heat or override my charge timers with the widget as I navigate my phone-- the text alerts may come in useful!
 
I've been using this app for a few days now. It works well. It's not particularly pretty, but it's worked better for me than the official Nissan LEAF app. I recommend the widget, too.
 
It would be nice to have more feedback (if available) as the app is communicating with the Carwings Servers and/or the car.

I don't think it's a problem with the app since any interaction with Carwings seems painfully slow.

I wish there was a way to communicate directly with the car via SMS. It wouldn't be all that pretty, but there is not all that much information going back and forth that couldn't be fit into 160 characters.

Edit: After posting the above, I realized that there are some good threads about alternate communications methods.
 
The app communicates only with the carwings servers.. some of the calls takes a long time.
In most cases then have to wait a few seconds and then do another call to the carwings server to check if the server has received any data from the car or not.. (if not, try again in a few secs)

In addition it seems like the carwings servers just passes the call to the Japanese carwings server for most (with a few exceptions) calls (after it first check if the user belongs to the local server or not)it

You can probably make it go slightly faster by logging directly into the Japanese server (assuming that works for your user, it does for my European user), but the disadvantage of doing that is you wont be able to log into your local server for for some time if you do that.

So basically, the app is always talking to carwings servers, and never the car directly, so I dont know how useful it would be to give more detailed feedback on that in the app :)
 
leighf said:
For me (in Australia) the app won't login to the Australia server, but works OK to Japan. I'll have a play with the app and see how I like it.

Leigh
Thanks for the feedback.. I got the urls from the Australian android carwings app.. but testing it was a bit hard... :)

Checked now to see if there was any updates.. and cant even find the official app in the Australian play store any more? (can you still see it?)

Does the official app work for you? assuming you have it
 
Is the charging timer function part of the Leaf API, or does the app (or server) just send the regular "start charging" command at the specified time?

The question is basically if I set the remote timer to 4:00am in Leaf Manager, what has to be "up" at 4am? My phone? A server somewhere? Or does the car perform the timer function and the command is sent to the car, and the car starts charging at the right time on its own?
 
The car just needs to be plugged in. The command is sent when you set it and the car wakes up.

Staque said:
Is the charging timer function part of the Leaf API, or does the app (or server) just send the regular "start charging" command at the specified time?

The question is basically if I set the remote timer to 4:00am in Leaf Manager, what has to be "up" at 4am? My phone? A server somewhere? Or does the car perform the timer function and the command is sent to the car, and the car starts charging at the right time on its own?
 
Scribbious said:
The car just needs to be plugged in. The command is sent when you set it and the car wakes up.

Staque said:
Is the charging timer function part of the Leaf API, or does the app (or server) just send the regular "start charging" command at the specified time?

The question is basically if I set the remote timer to 4:00am in Leaf Manager, what has to be "up" at 4am? My phone? A server somewhere? Or does the car perform the timer function and the command is sent to the car, and the car starts charging at the right time on its own?

This doesn't answer the question, and I too am looking for the answer.

You said "The command is sent". But what triggers the send? The app on the phone? Does the app register the timer with a server somewhere and the server sends the command to the car at the appropriate time (implying that the phone itself can be off). If the app on the phone is what actually triggers the command to be sent, does the app need to be actually running or is there an alarm of some kind on the phone that will cause this to fire?
 
Yes, that's the gist of my question. I have used the feature and it works well, I just want to know what technology I'm relying on.
 
I didn't write the program but I'm pretty sure that the command is immediately sent via the Nissan Network to the car and the car holds it in memory and fires at the appropriate time just as it does with the daily timer. The same function is available via the stock Leaf app so presumably this one just uses the same API call to immediately send a 'start charging at (time)' command.

It would be a trivial matter to do a controlled test to see for yourself. It doesn't have to be at 4:00am.

Set it for an hour in the future, turn your phone off and see what happens.
 
Sorry I didnt see the question before.

The phone dont need to be on.

When you send the command in the app, it sends the call with the time to the carwings servers.
What happens further I dont really know.. but I assume one of the following:

1) the carwings server immediately contacts the car with the time to turn on
or
2) carwings servers waits until the specified time, and then sends the command to the car

The same applies when you set a time for when to start charging.
 
Thanks.

If I were to guess, I'd say the Nissan server holds the command, and sends it to the car at the specified time. I'm guessing that because if I send a remote command to immediately charge, I get a text message back that says "charging started." If I set the timer for 5AM, then I get the exact same text message at 5AM, so I'm assuming the car doesn't know the difference. Either way it gets a "charge now" message. When charging starts because of the in-car timer, I don't recall getting any kind of message.

But of course, I am guessing. :)

I like the feature, though, because I'm able to set a 24 hour timer to charge to 80%. Then, if I'm lying in bed and I decide I'm going to leave the house at 8:30AM, I just send a remote charge command to start at 6:30, since a 80%->100% charge takes about 2 hours. In this way, the car is always "ready enough" (80%) to go at any moment, but always at 100% in the morning for a full day of whatever comes. The once or twice a month that I've come home with less than 20%, I've really appreciated being able to do this.
 
Staque said:
I like the feature, though, because I'm able to set a 24 hour timer to charge to 80%. Then, if I'm lying in bed and I decide I'm going to leave the house at 8:30AM, I just send a remote charge command to start at 6:30, since a 80%->100% charge takes about 2 hours. In this way, the car is always "ready enough" (80%) to go at any moment, but always at 100% in the morning for a full day of whatever comes. The once or twice a month that I've come home with less than 20%, I've really appreciated being able to do this.
This is exactly what I do - 24 hours charge to 80% and set a charge timer via app the previous night to start charging 1.5 hours before departure time in the morning. Occasionally, I've forgotten to set charge timer the night before. Wish the app allows setup of recurring charge timers for every week-day ... :) gyathaar - can this go into the nice-to-have list?:)
 
Really nice app, thanks!

If possible, could you change this app so that it does not report invalid username/password when the server is down? Hopefully you can detect this and report an appropriate message.

Thanks,
William
 
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