My Nissan Leaf Forum

Discuss the Android devices that you use with Turbo3's LEAF Battery app,
and the mounting of the device in the car, and any cables that might be
associated with the LEAF Battery App installation.

Android devces:

Mounting techniques:

Cables and installation issues:

Typical Android phone initial setup for LEAF Battery app:
(using the Kyocera eVent as an example)

1. Open the box and extract the Phone, battery, power
adapter, and the USB cable. You might want the user
manual for reference. Put the remainder back in the box.

2. Open the phone and install the battery. No need to
remove the "paper" label from the battery. Use the slot
in the lower right side of the phone to gently remove the
cover, note the holder for an external micro SDHC card
under the battery space, and insert the battery, carefully
matching the battery contacts with the contacts in the
phone's battery compartment.

3. Put the cover back on the phone, and begin charging
the phone. Plug the USB cable into the power adapter,
plug the adapter into AC Power, and then plug the small
end of the USB cable into the matching connector on
the right end of the top edge of the phone. In a few seconds,
the red charging light should come on. While charging,
you may continue the Setup.

5. Turn On the phone with a firm, two-second press of the
Power button, located on the upper part of the left side.
A quick press would wake up the phone if it was "sleeping",
but in this case the phone was Off.

6. The red charging light will go off for a few seconds, the
phone will boot up, and the charging light will come back on.
You will see a "Hands Free Activation" window come up,
which you should Cancel if you want to wail until later to
activate your cell phone service. Finally, you should see the
Date and Time, and the charging percentage of the phone,
most likely something over 50%. From this point on, a firm,
quick press of the Power button should put the device to
"sleep", and another quick press would wake it up again.

Continue with "Configure the Android system Settings"
in the next post.

Setting up the Android phone, continued:

7. To configure the Android system Settings,
"flick" the lock away, and find the app called "Settings"
and tap it to start. Under the first category "Wireless and
Networks", choose "more" and check "Airplane mode",
and press the system's Return button. This stops the
phone from trying to connect to a cell-phone service.

8. Scroll down to the Personal section, and choose Security.
Scrolling down, I uncheck the Make Passwords Visible option.
Continue scrolling and check Unknown Sources under
Device Administration. We need this checked to download
and install Turbo3's LEAF Battery Android app. Tap Return
to exit the Security area, and tap Return again to exit Settings.

9. Set up a WiFi connection to download the LEAF Battery app.
Enter Settings again, and tap WiFi to enter the WiFi setup mode.
Slide the On/Off slider to On, and the phone should scan for
nearby WiFi access points (if necessary, press "scan").
Choose your WiFi access point with a tap, and supply the
required password or key, and tap connect. If all goes as
expected, the status under the name of your WiFi access point
should change to "getting IP... ", and then "connected".
Tap Return once to exit the WiFi settings, and once again to
exit the Settings app.

Notice the WiFi "fan" icon and the Airplane icon on the top
line of the display, the System Status line.

10. Find and start the Browser app, and (if connected) the Google
search page should be displsyed. Start to enter "mynissanleaf"
(without the quotes), and choose the "mynissanleaf" suggestion
after you type only "myniss". The auto-search will probably find
MyNissanLeaf.com and the LEAF CANbus subforum will probably
be the listed as a choice below. In any case, navigate to the first
post of the "Using Clone ELM327 Bluetooth... " thread in the
LEAF CANbus sub-forum. Near the bottom of that post should
be a link to the latest released version of the LEAF Battery app.

11. Download the app by clicking the link after the "Direct .apk Link==>"
and tapping the Download button that is presented. In a few seconds
the download of the app should begin, and then a downloaded icon
(down arrow over a horizontal bar) should appear on the System Status
bar at the top of the screen. A number of Returns should get you
out of the Browser app.

See the next post to install the downloaded app, and prepare to run it.

Install the downloaded app:

12. Swipe down on the Downloaded icon, and the Notifications
will appear. Tap the Qualcomm Izat notice, if any, make sure
that the "Allow?" checkbox is not checked (probably you r preference
for now), and Close that app, just to get rid of that notification.
Swipe down again, and tap the Leaf-Batt... Download Complete
notification to begin the app-install process.

13. Tap Install, and Done. You may run the LEAF Battery app
if you wish. However, pairing a Bluetooth ELM327-type device
with your Android device is necessary before you can see live
data with the app.

14. Pairing... with the app closed, use the Android system Settings, and
tap Bluetooth to enter the BT management, ready to turn Bluetooth On.
"Start" the car and let it get Ready to drive. Turn Bluetooth On in your
phone.

15. Then, quickly plug the ELM327 device into the car's OBD connector.
Assuming no BT devices have been discovered or paired, the phone
searches for discoverable BT devices. Otherwise, ask the phone to search.
When it finds a new (new MAC address) ELM327-type Bluetooth device,
often called OBDII, it appears on a list, as not yet paired. Quickly tap
the item on the list, enter the pairing code (most often 1234, rarely 0000,
and very rarely 6789), and attempt to pair with the ELM327 device.
If successful, the listing will show paired, but not connected. If not
successful, try to enter the pairing code again. If the second try fails,
unplug the ELM327 device dongle and start this step again.

16. Successfully paired, you can turn your phone's Bluetooth Off,
since the LEAF Battery app will turn it On when needed.
You can now run the LEAF Battery app and you should see
live data in just a few seconds.

Notes:
If you have trouble, try to get with another LEAF Battery app user,
and see their system working on their car, try their system on your
car, try your phone with their ELM327 device, and finally try your
ELM327 device again.

The most often problem is a stubborn ELM327-type clone device,
even from the same supplier. Sometimes you will get different
circuits, or different firmware in devices from the same vendor.

Clone firmware 1.5 is to be preferred, I think.
Genuine ELM327 devices have 1.4b as their latest version, I think.

I ordered the AGPtek® Super Mini ELM327 V1.5 Bluetooth OBD2 OBD-II CAN-BUS Auto Diagnostic Scanner Tool. Plugged it into the vehicle. Red light came on. I was able to scan for and locate the device from my phone no problem. Successfully paired it no problem (BTW, pin=1234). Brought up the Leaf Battery App, and device OBDII showed up in the list of Bluetooth devices, and I select it of course.

That's about as far as I can get with my phone. Most of the time it stays on the red "Not Connected" status. Every now and then it flips over to "connecting" or some such message, but almost immediately it reports "Bluetooth connection lost".

My phone is a rather "old" Samsung Infuze (SGH-I997) running Android 2.3.6

Tried on my son's HTC-One and it worked fine (so all the other hardware is working).

It's likely my phone and/or the Gingerbread-level Android I'm running that's the problem, but there are a few other possible culprits. Anyway, I thought I would share my results.

Mine is a Nexus S 4G (not to be confused with any other combination of "nexus", "S", and "4G", of which the combination variations are many). My story is exactly the same - same Amazon item and all - and came to a much better conclusion.

For mine, it just works... same Android version too, no less. I get a chart of battery voltages and such, sometimes interrupted with a yellow "Waiting..." indicator. It's a frustratingly slow and problematic phone too - so if mine works, anything should work. My phone is mounted on the left-hand (door) side of the dash, with a suction-cup flexi-arm from the windshield, over the driver door-side vent.

It also connects to the car's Bluetooth for audio/music (Spotify) at the same time, no problems except those inherent in the painfully unstable Bluetooth audio service in Android/Spotify.

1) Install APK
2) Pair Bluetooth device
3) Turn car -ON- (or actively charging)
4) Launch, select device

That's it.

A Caution:
Remember, in California it is illegal to stick anything to most of the
front windshield. The exceptions are only the rather small 5" x 5"
(or possibly 6" x 6") area at the lower left and lower right corners
of the windshield.