LeafDD - Dash Display for Leaf

darelldd said:

it is held from the bottom of the case with magnets.

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I like that idea! I may even give it a try. There are other photos in this thread. One person put a bezel around the display (actually it's a back that's larger than the enclosure) in order to block some of the glare. Another took the jacket off the cable and removed the extra wires (only 4 are used) and so wound up with a lot thinner cable.

darelldd said:

So... any help on what my display is telling me?

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Sorry...somehow missed the fact that your questions weren't answered. I'll take a crack at this.

First of all, the first post of this thread has an explanation. And there are also a few YouTube videos (search "leafdd"), and since I had to find it to answer accurately, here's the link where Greg explains it to us.

So, anyway, you are mostly correct. The version number is three columns of dots, so yours is probably 1.2.2. In the video, we see version 1.1.2. The version is preceded by GIDs, as you surmised. And then the battery voltage, followed by current in Amps, and raw data that doesn't mean anything to you...all correct! The raw data has to do with reading the CANbus and sending commands to an add-on charger that's on the CANbus.

There's Aux (12V) battery voltage and a number related to the temperature on the DD at the bottom of the middle column. But it looks like you got the rest from the manual. Anything else, just ask. Hmm...just noticed, this thing has your initials imprinted on it

darelldd said:

...Here are my guesses top to bottom:
The dots at the top... version number. But what does this represent? Mine has the same three dots, with two under it. V3.2?
134 = Gids
377.5 = pack voltage
9.0 = maybe Amps in and out of the pack??
46 40 - Greg fooling around with raw data that doesn't mean anything to me

How'd I do?

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As gbarry42 mentioned, you got those right. But I'll point out that the amps reading is both in and out, charging (+) and discharging (-). I find that reading is useful for comparing charge rates from different EVSEs. So, amps x pack voltage gives a look at the charge rate. I've been curious to know whether the public EVSEs, and the one at the Nissan dealer I use when getting my car serviced, are 240 V or 208 V. With the 3.3 kW charger my LEAF is plenty slow to charge, unfortunately.

I like your mounting location; it is cleaner than mine. But one reason I left my cable free was so that I could hide the device on occasion, since I don't want some idiot breaking into the car thinking it was something to steal, such as a radar detector. Not that we have much of that sort of thing out here in the boondocks (in 30+ years in Colorado I've never had a car broken into). I put my shade backing in place both to make the display easier to read and to shield it from the sun. Baking the Leaf DD in the sun seemed like a bad idea to me. I believe that GregH said that the OLED display will shut down if it gets too hot; that has never happened to mine but it was a concern. YMMV.

Ah, dgp... another familiar name. Greetings.

Thanks guys. I'd looked at all the instructions I could find, but still hadn't found anything to explain that column. And the little dots for version number? Still not sure how that really works. Eventually I'll just ask Greg directly.

dgp - when you say that you put your "shade baking in place" is this some sort of device that was made for these units? I've not heard of it, and have not seen it. I plan to make something to snap onto the back that also has a little ball cap. But honestly - where I have it mounted at the near edge of the dash, it has remained well readable so far. I put up a sunshade when I park, and I've tinted the windows. I leave a portable GPS on the dash in all other cars and have not had a heat or theft issue. Fingers crossed.

And yes... the name of this thing is perfect! Except that I have "dd" resolve to my email address on all of my devices, so every time I try to write it, I have a bit of mess to clean up.

darelldd said:

...dgp - when you say that you put your "shade baking in place" is this some sort of device that was made for these units? I've not heard of it, and have not seen it. I plan to make something to snap onto the back that also has a little ball cap. But honestly - where I have it mounted at the near edge of the dash, it has remained well readable so far. I put up a sunshade when I park, and I've tinted the windows. I leave a portable GPS on the dash in all other cars and have not had a heat or theft issue. Fingers crossed...

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Darell, my shade holder is probably too crude by your standards. I made it from a piece of cardboard and it is white on the back side to reflect the sun and black on the facing side to provide a contrast for reading the Leaf DD. Since that original picture posted above, I added another piece just above the device to further shade it when the sun comes from above while driving. I used Velcro to attach it to the dash so that it is removable when cleaning the windshield. Here is a fresh picture of the current setup, from my driver's POV:

Notice how much lower my battery capacity is compared to your 2011; I presume that your car has had the battery replaced at some point. Note also that my battery temp is lower than yours, although much too high for February. We've had a "non winter" here in recent weeks, to my dismay. 56ºF in February? Where's the cold and snow? The snowpack in my local mountains is at 62% of average.
Edit: I didn't realize that the picture you posted upthread was taken from GregH's first post. So ignore my comments about your battery capacity and temp. So, what is your battery capacity?

So far as theft is concerned, yes, it is probably silly to be concerned about it. Around here I don't even lock my house doors: if someone wants to break in all they'd have to do is throw a rock though a window — it isn't as if the deer and chipmunks and trees in the forest are going to care. But when I travel down to the "big city", Montrose, population about 25,000, it is possible that someone might mistake the Leaf DD for something worth stealing.

I find it interesting that you have joined the LEAF community now that there are a plethora of used LEAFs around. Compared to your extreme early adopter status, isn't that progress of a sort for the EV world? Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of my LEAF in its home environment:

dgpcolorado said:

Notice how much lower my battery capacity is compared to your 2011; I presume that your car has had the battery replaced at some point.

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Sorry for the confusion - that image is from the opening post of this thread. NOT my data. Here's mine today. Yes, lower than yours in all the important metrics. This is immediately after a full charge. At 22,500 miles.

I find it interesting that you have joined the LEAF community now that there are a plethora of used LEAFs around. Compared to your extreme early adopter status, isn't that progress of a sort for the EV world?

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Many ways to look at this new development, of course. And I do find it fascinating. I'm used to being that guy who teaches others, and here I am starting at zero after there's so much product and experience out there. The biggest take-away here is that this is a testament to the durability of the EVs that came before. I did not purchase a Leaf new for the simple reason that I did not need one. My Rav4EV with 100,000 miles on it, still was getting better range than a new Leaf. And charging faster. And carrying more gear. And truth be told, it still is doing so (long story about its current status, but it has since had refurbished batteries installed, and we're back to significantly more range than new Leafs).

And more honesty: I didn't need to purchase another car today either. There are several reasons that I did: I was on the LAB, and learned plenty from the "inside" that I wanted to see for myself. I friend who owned this is moving out of the country. And, I wanted to get up to speed on the whole J1772 thing and see where the state of the art was. Fascinating that there is the entire generation of owners and charging specs that have passed me by. And now I just fell into the thick of it. Good stuff.

My summary of Leaf experience so far: A whole bunch of awesome automobile wrapped around way too little range. I have all the creature comforts to spend entire days in this vehicle... yet I can only use it for barely an hour at a time. I've been spoiled... by cars that were built in the 1990's!

Anyway, here's are a couple of pictures of my LEAF in its home environment:

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Beautiful!

darelldd said:

Sorry for the confusion - that image is from the opening post of this thread. NOT my data. Here's mine today. Yes, lower than yours in all the important metrics. This is immediately after a full charge. At 22,500 miles.

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At 54.06 Amp•hours battery capacity I presume that you have lost the first capacity bar on the dash (meaning you are down more than 15%). I expect to lose my first CB sometime in the spring.

As for your old Rav4EV being better than the LEAF, how much did they cost back in the day? I presume that Toyota sold those cars at a substantial loss, so I don't know if it is a fair comparison. I'm a bit surprised that you were able to get a new battery pack for it though, that's interesting.

My hope is that the Tesla Model III really will be "affordable" and Supercharger capable. If that happens I can go to one car, no ICEV, and still be able to make 650 mile trips to Denver and 2200 mile trips to Oregon. To me, the Tesla Supercharger network is a paradigm shift in EV utility. Three or four years ago I wouldn't have believed it was possible, much less practical. I think that's progress even by your Rav4EV standards.

From what I can tell, I'm down to 79% capacity. The first bar was lost at 18k miles according to the complete notes from the original owner.

We can argue about comparisons until the cows come home, of course. There are too many variables to ever make anything "fair." The Ravs were basically hand-built, as were all the "compliance cars" of the time. Cost is almost irrelevant in that context. I mean there were a total of just ~2,000 of them over seven years! My point is that for MY subjective needs, the Rav is better than the Leaf. Don't get me wrong - the Leaf is far quicker, quieter, smoother riding, safer and on and on. But my practical needs are met much better with the Rav. For the record, the purchase price was ~ $42,000 at the time. My huge list of incentive brought it down to about $30k. Considering how long I've amortized it (and continue to do so) it's been one of my better investments. There exist no "new" batteries for the car. When any "classic" Rav owner speaks of a new pack, she means "refurbished" at best. Generally they are batteries from low-mileage lease return vehicles. The batteries were not made after 2002, so all of the batteries in all the cars are at least 14 years old now! And did I mention that they work like new??

Complete agreement on your take on Tesla. I'm right there with you, brother! The whole purpose of keeping my Rav running, and even buying the Leaf is to tide me over until I can go "fully electric" with a capable car that fits in my garage.

Compliance cars are certainly sold at a loss and they skew the prices. On the other hand RAV4 EV owners and Mercedes-Benz B Class owners like me could not afford the cars at list with normal financing. I care less that Mercedes has a loss on my car. They had to get them out there for CARB credits and I took advantage of it!

If they insist on only making a handful of cars, they're going to lose money. And honestly, that's what many car makers have WANTED to demonstrate over the years. Don't make us do this! We can't afford it! Leave us alone, and in 15 years or so, we'll have an affordable Fuel Cell car that will run on rainbows and the laughter of children!

The times are changing fast now though. The options today are astonishing, and what's coming in the next few years? Awesome. It's been a long, hard haul. But here we are.

darelldd said:

... The whole purpose of keeping my Rav running, and even buying the Leaf is to tide me over until I can go "fully electric" with a capable car that fits in my garage.

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Exactly!

It is believed that a new LEAF had about 66.25 Ahr of battery capacity, so your 54.06 Ahr would put you at 82%. There seems to be considerable lag time (hysteresis) before hitting the 15% threshold before the first bar drops. After the first, subsequent capacity bars are supposed to be 6.25% apart. So you can expect to drop the next ones at much shorter intervals than that first one (you likely know this but I thought I'd mention it anyway). But it isn't mileage, it is mostly heat plus time for the chemistry used in the original LEAF batteries. To the extent that charge cycles increase the heat then that also adds to battery degradation.

Patent issues aside, would it be better to be using NiMh batteries? My understanding was that they are much lower in charge density than Li-ion. Any idea about the relative cost per kWh?

darelldd said:

... Leave us alone, and in 15 years or so, we'll have an affordable Fuel Cell car that will run on rainbows and the laughter of children!

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I get so frustrated by the PR BS of hydrogen fuel cell cars, for all the reasons you know so well.

The times are changing fast now though. The options today are astonishing, and what's coming in the next few years? Awesome. It's been a long, hard haul. But here we are.

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Yes. Thanks to people like you!

Hmmm. I came up with my capacity loss by using raw gids. Dividing number of gids when new by number I have today. Anyway... it is somewhere in the 20% loss category. When I drive this car the same way I drive my Rav, today I can get 60 miles in the Leaf, and 100 miles in the Rav.

NiMH is much certainly energy dense. But comparing them for price and performance is again a tough one. R&D basically stopped on them when the Rav4 program stopped. If that was infused with money the way that Li-ion has been, who knows where we'd be. A big problem is the heavy metals though. I'm not sure how long we could have moved along that path from an environmental standpoint. But, if we ignore all of that, I do firmly believe that "every day driver" cars would be well suited to NiMH vs Li-ion. The durability is well proven, and so far Li-Ion can't touch it. Same with heat management. It is sad that we completely lost that chemistry (in large format). We still use it with great success in small format. And that continues to improve every year.

NOBODY thought those batteries would last they way they did. And note that they're air cooled too! Poorly (unevenly) air cooled, I might add.

dgpcolorado said:

Yes. Thanks to people like you!

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ha! You're very kind. I am proud of the small role I played, certainly. It has been fascinating to watch the entire thing unfold. The "production EV community" was once VERY small and tightly-nit. We could all sit down to pizza! Now it is enormous... yet it is amazing how many of us from the EV1 days are still hanging out together. In fact, I bought my Leaf from one such person!

I'm still amazed to be hearing people talk about the Leaf as being "the first EV." And yeah, I get the mass production thing. I don't want to take that away from Nissan. But still.... The first mass produced car came after a long, and troubling process that left many corpses scattered about.

(hmmm, we should probably be having this conversation in a chit-chat thread... but them I'm famous for dragging things OT, I'm afraid).

Sure is fun to catch up!

darelldd said:

ha! You're very kind. I am proud of the small role I played, certainly. It has been fascinating to watch the entire thing unfold. The "production EV community" was once VERY small and tightly-nit. We could all sit down to pizza! Now it is enormous... yet it is amazing how many of us from the EV1 days are still hanging out together. In fact, I bought my Leaf from one such person!

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Since this is his thread, I should point out that GregH was also an early EV1 driver. And I sure am grateful for my Leaf DD because it lets me use the bottom of my battery with confidence and it helps to have a fuel gauge with energy units.

dgpcolorado said:

Since this is his thread, I should point out that GregH was also an early EV1 driver. And I sure am grateful for my Leaf DD because it lets me use the bottom of my battery with confidence and it helps to have a fuel gauge with energy units.

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Oh, heck yes. He created a similar product that we're all using for the Rav4EV as well (called Rav4INFO). I'm sure glad that the previous owner of my car got in on that buy, or I'd be screwed. I'm not sure what we all would have done without him. I haven't chatted with Greg in a long while. I hope he pops in! Greg is one of those guys who tends to haunt the same online venues I do... much like you.

At this risk of sort of bringing this back on topic... help a newbie out:

I keep hearing about SOH. The LeafDD shows HX, but nobody really knows what that means. I can see my gids at full charge and compare that number to how many gids a new battery has - but Greg mentions in this thread that calculating a percentage there also doesn't really tell the "health." So for the meters that are showing an SOH value - where does that come from? Is it simply Ah capacity of the pack relative to capacity of a new pack?

darelldd said:

... So for the meters that are showing an SOH value - where does that come from? Is it simply Ah capacity of the pack relative to capacity of a new pack?

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Yes, I believe that this is the meaning of "SOH" on LEAF Spy and similar devices. I think, but am not sure, that they use 66.25 Ah as 100%. I am reluctant to wade through the massive LEAF Spy threads since I use the relatively simple Leaf DD instead.

Some have hypothesized that the mysterious Hx number is a measure of the increasing resistance in the battery; it is unrelated to the calculated "SOH" number, so it can be confusing. Decreasing Hx may also be related to the decline in regen as the battery ages.

Got it. Thanks! As things stand now, the Gid% matches the SOC% close enough to call them even.

Hey Darell, belated welcome to the Leaf!
Sorry I've been absent here for a while.. been distracted lately by body hacking, Soylent and discourse.soylent.me.
Still consulting with various EV related companies and still driving my 2nd Leaf.. Down to 53Ah now
You can reach me direct at dashdisplay at gmail or just greghanssen at gmail.
I don't use the PM system on MNL.

Hey Greg,

Great to hear from you! I have the same love for PM. I'll drop you s line soon.