Alternate Carwings app for Android and Android Wear

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AlanSqB said:
Be sure to weigh any efforts against carwings possible depreciation next year. I still think it may be a good idea to consider an alternate module for the car side, but that's another topic.

Hm... any good reading on what's going on with that? I've heard some talk here and there but never read into it.

A question, what did you use for vehicle id? I tried the vin and it didn't work. I seem to remember some other carwings if, but I can't find it anywhere.

When you log into Carwings on the website and click vehicle status, a hashmark will appear in the URL. It'll look like 50181 or something, at the end of the URL. That's the car id Carwings wants.
 
patrick0101 said:
My Moto 360 is scheduled to arrive next week, I'll try it on the round watch and let you know how it works.
The 360 arrived a little early, here it is:
2014-09-30%2019.32.06.jpg

This is really cool. I don't think the Nissan app has any wear support yet.
 
evyna said:
Pat said:
I'd like to see the interval have a "Don't Auto Update" option. To go with the long update intervals (and "Don't update") I'd like to have an "update now" option.
I agree with the don't auto update and update now options, especially. I'm working on those right now but couldn't think of a UI for them yet, so I'm at the drawing board.
Thanks.

evyna said:
Pat said:
Under the SOC, it has the Level 1 recharge time. I'd rather see the Level 2 time, maybe this can be a configurable option.
It currently uses whatever Carwings reports ... You're right, that should be configurable.
I see. It was plugged in at Level 2, but not charging so Carwings reports it incorrectly. When it is not charging, could you display the plugged-in status instead? E.g., "Plugged in, Not charging" or "Not plugged in".

evyna said:
Pat said:
I guess I'd like to see it organized into 3 screens
...I need to think about how expanding the app's scope affects the niche I developed it for.
Now that I have used it for a day and seen how it works with wear, I have a much better idea what you were going for and I agree, make it the best app in this niche rather than yet another Carwings replacement.

evyna said:
I'm looking to find a way to intelligently reduce the number of calls to the car, perhaps by setting peak hours (i.e. if it's 9pm-6am, the updates probably don't need to be as frequent) as well as reducing the frequency when the car isn't charging. Any ideas on this are totally welcome.
Here is one idea, the user picks: interval (every X minutes) or scheduled (at time(s) you specify)

Then they set the number of updates per day (zero to 48). If they selected interval, these times are evenly spaced throughout the day. If they selected scheduled, then they get that number of timeslots that they can set to whatever time they like. They could start pre-populated with the same times that the interval setting would have used, then allow them to adjust from there.

evyna said:
Thanks for the very thorough and constructive feedback!
np, I love brainstorming stuff like this.
 
Thank you very much for tackling this. I'm waiting a bit because I am not a super tech guy, more of an end user. I am thrilled that there are finally some workarounds being kicked about. I never use carwings. I will use your app in a little while, and I will be happy to pay for it. Now I just want someone to develop a way to adapt the car to wifi, so I can go to a web site in my house that is the car.
 
DanDietrich said:
Thank you very much for tackling this. I'm waiting a bit because I am not a super tech guy, more of an end user. I am thrilled that there are finally some workarounds being kicked about. I never use carwings. I will use your app in a little while, and I will be happy to pay for it. Now I just want someone to develop a way to adapt the car to wifi, so I can go to a web site in my house that is the car.

No problem! It may take a bit to get the app up to snuff and such (still pretty beta), but if you have some patience and are willing to provide feedback, this app should turn out very nicely. I have several ideas I'm working on right now, but unfortunately I have three exams in the next 24 hours, so I'll be a little quiet until then ;)

Now I just want someone to develop a way to adapt the car to wifi, so I can go to a web site in my house that is the car.

There's a WiFi dongle for the CANBUS/OBDII port you can buy, that outta do the trick ;)
 
I ran Leaf Status and Leaf Spy and compared their SOC values. They didn't agree. Leaf Spy reported 54% and Leaf Status said 40%. I plugged the car in and ran these two apps periodically as it charged. They were generally 5-15% apart. I didn't log the values (I should have), but it seemed like Leaf Status was usually lower. I know you are just displaying what Carwings reports. I guess I just wanted to get it out there that the Carwings data is not as precise as the CAN bus data.

The one that annoyed me was that I have my car set to stop charging at 80% and Leaf Status only reported 70% even after the charging stopped. Leaf Spy reported the value as 79.6%. I was checking Leaf Status throughout the day waiting for it to hit 80% so I knew the charge was done; it never got there.
 
patrick0101 said:
I ran Leaf Status and Leaf Spy and compared their SOC values. They didn't agree. Leaf Spy reported 54% and Leaf Status said 40%. I plugged the car in and ran these two apps periodically as it charged. They were generally 5-15% apart. I didn't log the values (I should have), but it seemed like Leaf Status was usually lower. I know you are just displaying what Carwings reports. I guess I just wanted to get it out there that the Carwings data is not as precise as the CAN bus data.

The one that annoyed me was that I have my car set to stop charging at 80% and Leaf Status only reported 70% even after the charging stopped. Leaf Spy reported the value as 79.6%. I was checking Leaf Status throughout the day waiting for it to hit 80% so I knew the charge was done; it never got there.

The reason they are off is because Carwings will only tell us the number of bars, i.e. 8/12, instead of the actual percent. I've tried to round to get a rough 10% estimate, but you're right, there are edge cases such as low 80% that will not register as more than 70%, or high 80% which can register as 90%. So yeah, as you said, the Carwings data is much worse than the CAN bus. Not sure why Carwings doesn't give us the full number, but it's what we got. Same deal with the app.

I can try to make the rounding a little better for each bar, or just report the X/12 number, whichever is preferred.
 
I'm thinking about adding a confirm dialog (at least as an option) for the Start HVAC button. Was flipping through notifications and bumped the button to start AC in the middle of the night. Can't imagine turning it on and back off immediately is particularly good for the compressor.
 
evyna said:
I can try to make the rounding a little better for each bar, or just report the X/12 number, whichever is preferred.
My preference would be to report the bars. I know the granularity of this type of reporting. In contrast, if it says 70%, that sounds like a precise reading of exactly 70%.
 
patrick0101 said:
evyna said:
I can try to make the rounding a little better for each bar, or just report the X/12 number, whichever is preferred.
My preference would be to report the bars. I know the granularity of this type of reporting. In contrast, if it says 70%, that sounds like a precise reading of exactly 70%.

Yep, tackled with this during the weekend. I now have it displaying X / 12 bars, as well as range, last update time, and charge time. It's possible that I can derive the current battery percent from the range number, but since this number may deviate ~3% from the car's reported value, I'll probably leave it as it is for now.

Update is coming soon, just need to test the latest build out this week and make sure the one I deploy to the Play store doesn't have any major bugs.

As for the app, I think I'm going to rename this iteration to "Leaf Notification" and incorporate in most of the suggestions in this thread and in the Play reviews, but keep it somewhat niche for my uses. Then, if there's demand for it, I'll build out a full suite with more automation options, timers, send to car, etc. Though I'm not sure if there is demand for this, because a few other Leaf apps in the Play store seem pretty solid. I made mine because I wanted something that worked on Wear, but I figure it's worth fleshing out a bit more and making it a fairly simple/easy to use Leaf app.

It's a good learning experience at the very least.

Thanks for all the help everyone!
 
evyna said:
As for the app, I think I'm going to rename this iteration to "Leaf Notification" and incorporate in most of the suggestions in this thread and in the Play reviews, but keep it somewhat niche for my uses. Then, if there's demand for it, I'll build out a full suite with more automation options, timers, send to car, etc. Though I'm not sure if there is demand for this, because a few other Leaf apps in the Play store seem pretty solid. I made mine because I wanted something that worked on Wear, but I figure it's worth fleshing out a bit more and making it a fairly simple/easy to use Leaf app.

Personally, I would stick to make it as much focused on wear. There are many leaf type apps and none for wear. Contemplating getting a moto 360 and this app would be AWESOME (so sorry, haven't gotten to test it with android wear).

You are right, I mostly use carwings just to turn on the climate control and maybe check the status. Suggestion - maybe you can make a toggle option to report bars instead of percent. As some pointed, carwing's percent is really a very gross estimate. Most of us leaf owners now know how much range we get from the bars and maybe not carwing's percentages. You could also add a toggle to display carwing's estimate range. I know its inaccurate, but driving a leaf for 3+ years I know just how inaccurate it is and that number gives me an idea of the actual range.

I don't know if you want to make this an option (select %, bars, or range in miles) or if you wanted to display all at once (or 2 or 1 depending on a person's selection) - it may be nice, if possible (sorry not a programer) to have the option to display whichever ones I want (1, 2 or 3 options displayed at once).

I don't remember if you were able to have a "push status" option. As for myself the climate control is the 95% usage of carwings. Every once in awhile i need the status, but not all the time and its never on a schedule (usually its when I am out and about and need to know my status to determine if I need to stay longer, QC on the way home or just go home).

Just random thoughts from someone's usage of carwings. Thanks again for putting this together!
 
Pipcecil said:
evyna said:
As for the app, I think I'm going to rename this iteration to "Leaf Notification" and incorporate in most of the suggestions in this thread and in the Play reviews, but keep it somewhat niche for my uses. Then, if there's demand for it, I'll build out a full suite with more automation options, timers, send to car, etc. Though I'm not sure if there is demand for this, because a few other Leaf apps in the Play store seem pretty solid. I made mine because I wanted something that worked on Wear, but I figure it's worth fleshing out a bit more and making it a fairly simple/easy to use Leaf app.

Personally, I would stick to make it as much focused on wear. There are many leaf type apps and none for wear. Contemplating getting a moto 360 and this app would be AWESOME (so sorry, haven't gotten to test it with android wear).

You are right, I mostly use carwings just to turn on the climate control and maybe check the status. Suggestion - maybe you can make a toggle option to report bars instead of percent. As some pointed, carwing's percent is really a very gross estimate. Most of us leaf owners now know how much range we get from the bars and maybe not carwing's percentages. You could also add a toggle to display carwing's estimate range. I know its inaccurate, but driving a leaf for 3+ years I know just how inaccurate it is and that number gives me an idea of the actual range.

I don't know if you want to make this an option (select %, bars, or range in miles) or if you wanted to display all at once (or 2 or 1 depending on a person's selection) - it may be nice, if possible (sorry not a programer) to have the option to display whichever ones I want (1, 2 or 3 options displayed at once).

I don't remember if you were able to have a "push status" option. As for myself the climate control is the 95% usage of carwings. Every once in awhile i need the status, but not all the time and its never on a schedule (usually its when I am out and about and need to know my status to determine if I need to stay longer, QC on the way home or just go home).

Just random thoughts from someone's usage of carwings. Thanks again for putting this together!


Yep, all of that is possible. The latest update should have an option to disable the auto update, but I'll add in a button to the notification that will allow manual updates if auto update is turned off.

Also, here's a WIP screenshot of the new notification. App is about 95% there, just needs some more polish and testing. Lots of internal changes in this build.

Screenshot_2014-10-08-13-39-18.png


Shows the time to charge, bars, and range. When the car is plugged in, it'll show the charger type and how long to charge on that charger.

Thoughts?
 
Update was just published and will be live by tomorrow morning. This is still beta and thus the UI is a bit ugly and a few options are still missing, but I cooked in some of the most recent suggestions, as well as added initial Canada support. I still need to add an option to enable the range to display in kilometers instead of miles, but again, it's beta and I'm taking things one step at a time and collecting feedback along the way.

Thanks for all the help/ideas, everyone!
 
I like the new update status button - the look is aesthetically pleasing and it works just right.

A few of ideas:

- Is it possible to put the % capacity on there as well - the bars, and miles are great, the percent would be nice too. I don't know if this would be too overload of information since you are trying to be simple or if it just goes with everything else. Maybe in the options setup in the program you can have checkboxes that allow you to pick which information to display - dunno if thats too difficult to code though.

- I think it has been discussed before but maybe there needs to be a selection option for which level of charge to pull from carwings. You could display both (although that may get messy since both are long text strings - so I don't know how it would work out aesthetics wise) or you could have another checkbox option to choose which one (or both?). Like for me, I almost always use Level 2, so that number is more important than level 1 - but you do have many people that use level 1 exclusively as well.

- I wonder if the bar number needs a qualifying measurement with it (your guess is as good as mine at how to label). It took me a second to realize it was the bar reading - it might be harder for jane & john smith to catch what this is. If you feel adventurous - for android wear - you can make a little bar graphic for it (like a standard bar graph would be perfect - just a little one - if you grade color on it too from red to green then everyone would know the meaning of that number). I don't know if a graphic would serve well for the drop down menu - it feels better for wear.

- I am going to be "technical" and nitpick here, it actually makes me chuckle since this has been addressed before and is just a small thing and not a big issue. I know the climate control was first AC because - well that's what we use it for right? (I live in Texas - I feel ya). "Technically" all S models and some 2011 & 2012 models do not have a HVAC in our cars. Yup - I went there :D . Again, everyone knows what it is and what you are talking about, but I KNOW there will be that one person who points out his car doesn't have a HVAC system.

I am going to play around with the program and see if any bugs pop up or I break it. I am running stock android on an Nexus 5 with KitKat, so I doubt I will get any issues since there are no skins or random programs to cause problems, but test test test I will!
 
Ok playing with it some more, I found an issue with the notifications - I don't know what a solution might be:

The program puts itself in the notification task bar. You can dismiss it with a standard swipe or it can be dismissed with the all clear button to remove all notifications. The problem is getting the program back into the try. Where I think this would be a problem is when someone clears all notifications and dismisses the leaf notification (this is assuming most wouldn't dismiss it by itself - but I can see someone accidentally clearing it will the all clear button). To get the program back onto the tray, I have to physically change something in the program (logout or modify the auto update - I tend to just toggle the auto update on and off). This makes the program recheck and re-sync and the program goes back into the notification tray.

If I am understanding the intent - it should be in the notification bar at all times (and not having to launch the program settings and fiddle with it to get it into the bar). The only options i can think of is blocking Android from dismissing the notification (similar to how voice mails are done - you can't dismiss them out of the notification bar). Or, if you can fine tune it (really don't know if this is possible), allow it to be dismissed by itself (by swipe) but not via the all dismiss button. Additionally, you should add a button in the program settings itself that allows the program to go back into the notification bar if it is dismissed (for whatever reason). All it would do is refresh the system. Currently I have to modify a setting first BEFORE it allows me to save and update (its greyed out). Maybe save and update is available all the time? Maybe a new button that is labeled something to sync back to the notification bar? Would save and update text on the bar need to be changed if it has the additional function?
 
Another issue (medium-high priority). If the app is not the last one in the notification bar (i.e. the top), the HVAC and update buttons are not available, you only see status. Can easily replicate by opening a program that will go into the notification bar (say google music app). Open and start a song, it will push as the first app (left to right) and be on the top of the notification bar. BUT if the app was previously in suspension (i.e. you can still open/access it via the all open programs) and was previously off the tray and is added back again, it will go second. So it only occurs if an app is open freshly.
 
Pipcecil said:
I like the new update status button - the look is aesthetically pleasing and it works just right.

A few of ideas:

- Is it possible to put the % capacity on there as well - the bars, and miles are great, the percent would be nice too. I don't know if this would be too overload of information since you are trying to be simple or if it just goes with everything else. Maybe in the options setup in the program you can have checkboxes that allow you to pick which information to display - dunno if thats too difficult to code though.

Carwings doesn't return the % capacity; the old number was just bars/12 and formatted into increments of 10. Now it shows the raw bars, which are more correct, and the range. I can derive the percent from the range, but it would be inaccurate to a few percents, which would be annoying to people.

- I think it has been discussed before but maybe there needs to be a selection option for which level of charge to pull from carwings. You could display both (although that may get messy since both are long text strings - so I don't know how it would work out aesthetics wise) or you could have another checkbox option to choose which one (or both?). Like for me, I almost always use Level 2, so that number is more important than level 1 - but you do have many people that use level 1 exclusively as well.

Working on it! Didn't make it into this update, but definitely coming. It will currently switch to whatever level when the car is charging, but I need to put an option to show the non-charging number.

- I wonder if the bar number needs a qualifying measurement with it (your guess is as good as mine at how to label). It took me a second to realize it was the bar reading - it might be harder for jane & john smith to catch what this is. If you feel adventurous - for android wear - you can make a little bar graphic for it (like a standard bar graph would be perfect - just a little one - if you grade color on it too from red to green then everyone would know the meaning of that number). I don't know if a graphic would serve well for the drop down menu - it feels better for wear.

Hmm... yeah. Need to think about this. I don't like showing X / 12, it seems unintuitive, but people wanted the raw bar reading, so I'm not sure what to do with that.

- I am going to be "technical" and nitpick here, it actually makes me chuckle since this has been addressed before and is just a small thing and not a big issue. I know the climate control was first AC because - well that's what we use it for right? (I live in Texas - I feel ya). "Technically" all S models and some 2011 & 2012 models do not have a HVAC in our cars. Yup - I went there :D . Again, everyone knows what it is and what you are talking about, but I KNOW there will be that one person who points out his car doesn't have a HVAC system.

Well, to be fair, S models don't have Carwings either ;) What do you suggest it be called?

Pipcecil said:
Ok playing with it some more, I found an issue with the notifications - I don't know what a solution might be:

The program puts itself in the notification task bar. You can dismiss it with a standard swipe or it can be dismissed with the all clear button to remove all notifications. The problem is getting the program back into the try. Where I think this would be a problem is when someone clears all notifications and dismisses the leaf notification (this is assuming most wouldn't dismiss it by itself - but I can see someone accidentally clearing it will the all clear button). To get the program back onto the tray, I have to physically change something in the program (logout or modify the auto update - I tend to just toggle the auto update on and off). This makes the program recheck and re-sync and the program goes back into the notification tray.

If I am understanding the intent - it should be in the notification bar at all times (and not having to launch the program settings and fiddle with it to get it into the bar). The only options i can think of is blocking Android from dismissing the notification (similar to how voice mails are done - you can't dismiss them out of the notification bar). Or, if you can fine tune it (really don't know if this is possible), allow it to be dismissed by itself (by swipe) but not via the all dismiss button. Additionally, you should add a button in the program settings itself that allows the program to go back into the notification bar if it is dismissed (for whatever reason). All it would do is refresh the system. Currently I have to modify a setting first BEFORE it allows me to save and update (its greyed out). Maybe save and update is available all the time? Maybe a new button that is labeled something to sync back to the notification bar? Would save and update text on the bar need to be changed if it has the additional function?

I can set the notification to be always there, there's an option in Android for that, but I feel like I'd get a slew of complaints if people couldn't get rid of it. Maybe make it an option in the app?

Another issue (medium-high priority). If the app is not the last one in the notification bar (i.e. the top), the HVAC and update buttons are not available, you only see status. Can easily replicate by opening a program that will go into the notification bar (say google music app). Open and start a song, it will push as the first app (left to right) and be on the top of the notification bar. BUT if the app was previously in suspension (i.e. you can still open/access it via the all open programs) and was previously off the tray and is added back again, it will go second. So it only occurs if an app is open freshly.

It's an Android thing.. there's a weird gesture to show the buttons (swipe down on the notification, I think), but it's not really intuitive. Not sure if there's a workaround for this, though. I'll look into it.

I am going to play around with the program and see if any bugs pop up or I break it. I am running stock android on an Nexus 5 with KitKat, so I doubt I will get any issues since there are no skins or random programs to cause problems, but test test test I will!

Thanks! I really, really appreciate all the feedback!
 
Ok it downloaded no problem from Canada and installed but I couldn't log in. It said login failed check user name/password.

One thing though, even though the name is changed to search for it in chrome I still had to use leaf status and it redirected when it opened up in play.
 
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