Using clone ELM327 Bluetooth OBDII adapter with Leaf

Mounting Android device:


Closer

Closer


Not beautiful but functional, for now.

Yes, blocking the left side of the eyebrow would be
better if one needs to plug it in for charging, but
that does block the red and yellow "Master" warning
triangles, but they only alert you to the fact that
another warning of the same "color" (or severity)
is ON.

Made from the "body" of an old audio tape cassette box
(removed the lid, cut out one end for the longer body
of the Android device, cut a little off the right-end front
to access the "Return" hardware button, and added
a little padding and two velcro pads).

Yes, I could cut the front plastic off enough to uncover
the entire screen. But the plastic is difficult to cut nicely.

Updated Version 0.020t.

QueenBee said:

I'm an iPhone user so excuse my naivety but it seems odd that there is a list of devices that this is confirmed to work on. Shouldn't this work on all devices that are capable of running whichever Android OS version is needed? Which leads to my next question. Is there a minimum OS version required? I had an old G1 running 1.6 laying around and was surprised that the application even installed. It immediately crashes upon opening though.

Click to expand...

I'm using an old Motorola Droid running 2.2 and it works fine.

garygTx said:

QueenBee said:

I'm an iPhone user so excuse my naivety but it seems odd that there is a list of devices that this is confirmed to work on. Shouldn't this work on all devices that are capable of running whichever Android OS version is needed? Which leads to my next question. Is there a minimum OS version required? I had an old G1 running 1.6 laying around and was surprised that the application even installed. It immediately crashes upon opening though.

Click to expand...

I'm using an old Motorola Droid running 2.2 and it works fine.

Click to expand...

Ah, so maybe there is a chance that it'll work? I don't have the ELM327 yet so maybe the crash simply it not handling the use case were that is not connected/paired?

Sorry, the app does not crash due to no ELM327.

I test the app with no ELM327 all the time during development.

1.6 is probably just too old and does not support some of the API that the app uses.

I believe that Turbo3 has one Android device with
OS version 2.2, and another with 4.0.4 (at least).

I have a Tablet with 3.2.1, and a device with 4.0.4 for testing.

There were major changes between V1 and v2 of Android OS.

Stoaty said:

I am not sure if this feature has been requested previously (and I have somewhat of a life, so I am not going to read through 70 pages of this thread again), but here is my request: save the latest data between restarts of the Leaf application instead of using bogus data on screens 1 and 2 and resetting screen 3 to zeros. Just tonite I was checking to see how much the battery pack temperature dropped over a two hour period with a 10 degree F. differential between battery pack temp and ambient temp. Unfortunately, the accuracy of my report is significantly affected by the fact that I can't remember exactly what the battery temp was when I got home 2 hours ago.

PS I think the temp only dropped 0.3 degrees F., but not sure, it may have been even less.

Click to expand...

I have gotten proficient at doing screen saves on mine (squeeze power and volume down, in my case). My phone saves the pic with a time-stamp as the name.

Turbo3 said:

Updated Version 0.020t.

Click to expand...

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!! We really can have it our way. No more complaints about screen colors I guess.

PS In regards to Gary's comment that saving old data between starting the app might be confusing, here is my suggestion: display the last data on restart of the app until the app connects to the ELM327. At that point everything can be zeroed for the few seconds until data shows up. If you see that the phone is connected, you will know that any data displayed is "new" (current) data.

Couple of bugs in version 0.20t:

1) The reset button for screens 1 and 2 doesn't work
2) If you are on the settings screen, phone held in landscape orientation and try to pick a color, only part of the palette is shown, and no scrolling is available
3) If you are in the color picker and change the orientation of the phone (move from portrait to landscape or vice versa) the effect is the same as hitting the cancel button (bug or feature?)

OK, actually that was 3 bugs/features.

No Debugging Text?



Yes, taking a screen shot with the Kyocera Event
works well: just squeeze the Volume-Down button and
the PowerhOn/Off button at the same time, and
hold for almost 2 seconds. The Event will take a
screen-resolution screen shot, making a camera shutter
click type of sound, and store the image in a "screenshot"
group in the Gallery. Use the included Gallery app
to view, and delete unwanted pictures.

I tried using http://www.imgbox.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; but I had trouble
doing a copy (to clipboard) of the link that they
provided. You can upload more than one image
in one upload session, and then you get a
list of links. It should be easy to copy the links,
but I apparently am not yet good enough at
using the Android 4.0.4 OS on the phone.

Stoaty said:

Turbo3 said:

Updated Version 0.020t.

Click to expand...

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!! We really can have it our way. No more complaints about screen colors I guess.

PS In regards to Gary's comment that saving old data between starting the app might be confusing, here is my suggestion: display the last data on restart of the app until the app connects to the ELM327. At that point everything can be zeroed for the few seconds until data shows up. If you see that the phone is connected, you will know that any data displayed is "new" (current) data.

Click to expand...

So basically, when you bring the phone inside the house, out of the range of the ELM327, you can see what the last data values were in the car.

vrwl said:

Stoaty said:

PS In regards to Gary's comment that saving old data between starting the app might be confusing, here is my suggestion: display the last data on restart of the app until the app connects to the ELM327. At that point everything can be zeroed for the few seconds until data shows up. If you see that the phone is connected, you will know that any data displayed is "new" (current) data.

Click to expand...

So basically, when you bring the phone inside the house, out of the range of the ELM327, you can see what the last data values were in the car.

Click to expand...

You can already do that, the problem is when you exit the Leaf application and then decide later you want to look at the last data values. Poof! They vanished.

So basically, when you bring the phone inside the house,
out of the range of the ELM327, [and restart the app later, ]
you can see what the last data values were in the car.

Click to expand...

I agree, a nice feature, but perhaps an option in the Settings,
with a button to erase the saved data, to start "fresh"?

Also consider saving all the CAN Messages in a log file,
with the title YYMMDDNN.txt (or ".can" or ".evc" if the
file is binary CAN-Do compatible). The NN is just a 00
to 99 sequence number for each drive of the day.

Having second, and possibly even millisecond time stamps
on each message would be helpful.

Then, one could add a Playback function (like the CANary
already has) to be able to review the data for each drive,
and have complete "Black Box" records (if enabled).

One could even set a retention limit of N days,
with 0 meaning no limit.

Inserting an micro SDHC card (perhaps 8GB or 16GB)
would give plenty of space for many days, even months
of logs.

Playback could have a speed control (about 20x down
to 0.1x), with a Pause, Resume, Restart, Loop, Mark A,
Mark B, Play AB, and Loop AB.

Some people are confused about the Ah and CAP meaning
(on Screen 1).

Maybe text like "Est Ah Capacity 62.03 / 66.2345 = 95.6%"
(or something like that) would better reveal that the percentage
shown is a Capacity estimate divided by a guess (in Settings)?

Updated Version 0.20t up on DropBox

Stoaty said:

Couple of bugs in version 0.20t:

1) The reset button for screens 1 and 2 doesn't work
2) If you are on the settings screen, phone held in landscape orientation and try to pick a color, only part of the palette is shown, and no scrolling is available
3) If you are in the color picker and change the orientation of the phone (move from portrait to landscape or vice versa) the effect is the same as hitting the cancel button (bug or feature?)

OK, actually that was 3 bugs/features.

Click to expand...

I see no problem with the reset button for screens 1 and 2. Works fine for me. Even better than fine in that if you do a long press and restore the defaults you can do a short press and get back the original settings you had before entering the Settings menu.

You are pressing the second reset button below the chart sample colors box not the one below the sample text box for screen 3.

For 2) I have released an updated Version 0.020t that will block starting up the color selectors if you do not have enough space to display them.

For 3) That is the way it works.

Debug screen will not be functional until Version 0.21

The latest 20t version has two overlapping labels at the
right end of the histogram horizontal axis.

I intend to meet with GregH this weekend and investigate
the Cell-Shunting situation.

OK, debug can wait, but you had it working several versions ago,
perhaps before you added the choice of what data to Debug.
You might want to add the other two Groups of data, at that time.

Thanks for the great work.

I've noticed that my %successful in settings runs around 13-14%. Is this what others are seeing? The overall function of the app seems to be OK, but either my adapter is struggling, or the program is polling too rapidly, or ...

garygid said:

The latest 20t version has two overlapping labels at the
right end of the histogram horizontal axis.

Click to expand...

I will need a screen shot. I don't see any overlap.
(Never mind, I was looking only at CP voltage screen. I know what the issue is.)


Debug will be back with version 0.021 that will be available in a few minutes.

Released Version 0.21 on DropBox.

Fetures
* User can now define most all screen colors.
* Current screen data saved and restored
* Debug working again

Vicki sent me her ELM327 that she had trouble getting paired. At first I had the same problem. If seemed like it would not take any passkey.

After a little reading I tried powering it up and then immediately paired with 1234 and it worked.

I will need to do some testing to see how long the window is that will allow it to accept the pairing code.

My testing was done with a bench power supply. But after pairing and running my app it will auto connect whenever I power up the ELM327.

It is best to first do the discovery step on the Phone so it shows up as a new device. Enter the pairing code but do not press Enter/Done just yet. Unplug then replug the ELM327 then send the pairing code. You only need to do this one time to get it paired. (The Leaf is not here to do a real test but it works on the bench)

Next step is to see if it will talk to the Leaf