Editing the Nav Stored Locations via SD Card

[EVNation]

Looking for useful files on the Nav-SD might be instructive?

Is it read-only, or do files get written or updated there?

Can one make a backup copy that will work, and then experiment with that?

No marking of size. Not locked so "Read/Write" I bet it stores downloaded info there.
But can't be read by my SD card reader on PC so it is in some proprietary format I would guess that is not user readable.
So no backup without some tools. I could be a NavTeq format that is known but likely a Hitachi system format.

 

[EVNation]

Update: I have loaded 25 custom J1772 locations around the LA area into my NAV system. There seems to be a little drift in my math of about a car length in some cases.(Not surprising since the encoding is pretty wacky) I may need to adjust once I go much past my calibration points here say to Florida.

One disappointing thing is there is an additional toggle in the nav system to mark the loaded points as an "official" charging point. This is not saved out in the data and I am not sure if encoding something on the import could toggle it on. There are a lot of 0 fields in the data I don't know what they do. I worry that they save those marked data points to the internal database I don't have access to. That enables the "find nearest charging station" feature. I can change the on map icons to whatever I want though.

But it is cool to see all the points on the map and be able to route to them.

One added benefit is I can load the datapoint description in mixed case so I don't feel like the locations are SHOUTING at me.

Pending a test on another Leaf and some other beta testing, I can release a file for use by others. For "academic research purposes only" of course.

Seriously, if anyone knows someone at Hitachi or whoever build the software, let me know. This is very close to being extremely useful for people and I can see it doing nothing but good if people could easily get locations they want into their car. There are just some minor pieces that I think just got to be in there somehow. It is incredibly easy to delete these points back to original state (I've done it a lot). So no way to do any real harm.

 

[garygid]

Please explain the load/save details here, or send a PM so that I can call you.

Please explain your process for taking "Point" data and turning it into a file.

Do you put your data into a spreadsheet, export it as a "csv" file, and then run some program to produce the "LEAF" file?

Or, have formulas in the spreadsheet to make the "LEAF" values, then export them?

Please, let us learn with you. Thanks.

 

[EVDRIVER]

Would be nice to add favorite spots restaurants, etc.

 

[garygid]

Right, and get the input to your conversion in a standard Google-Map POI format.

And, get some of the several competing or overlapping charge-station databases to extract their hard-gathered data in "POI" format.

Hopefully Nissan's Carwings is working on getting both location and real-time "charger" data for us.

 

[EVNation]

Load/Save is easy. Go to Settings/Nav/Address Book and select Import Data or Export Data and select "Stored Locations". That will read or write the file to the SD card.

The format though as I have described is not like other Nav systems where it can just read a CSV from what I can tell. It can only read this custom Bin format that I have described in this thread. So what I have now reads a CSV file that I generate from my EVChargerMap data and converts it to the format. It is non-trivial though so I couldn't use an XLS macro like I would have liked. It is a binary C program. Not pretty or bulletproof yet so not ready to be released. But probably in a week or two once I do the brute force of decoding all the icon codes and test some locations around the country to make sure my conversion math holds up well enough. I don't feel comfortable releasing a program publicly until I do that work.

There are many other fields still to test and decode that I don't know what they do. It will just have to be slow test and examine results kind of thing.

I agree Nissan should have had some data in the database already but they haven't yet so that's why I went to the effort. I love my iPhone app but having my nearest points in the car Nav is way more convenient. Hopefully they will push data and make this work unneeded. But if not, if they could just give us a little more info, the community could do it ourselves.

If you are tech enough to do some hex-dec and bit level coding, I could use help decoding the rest to speed up the process and would be glad to share all the gritty details. Not appropriate for this forum though I think. Lots of math and code.

I have documented the rough details at http://www.leafic.com/wiki/index.php/Navigation_System#Example_POI_Data

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

wow, would be nice to compile a database of locations. much easier than actually driving to all those places and selecting "store this location"

anyone in Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia doing this? i dont have the coding skills to even attempt something like this

 

[EVNation]

wow, would be nice to compile a database of locations. much easier than actually driving to all those places and selecting "store this location"

anyone in Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia doing this? i dont have the coding skills to even attempt something like this

My public J1772 listing has 8 locations in WA right now. I haven't added all the WA Nissan dealers yet like some of the sites have since I am not sure if any are active. If you can confirm some others I will add them. Then in a week or so, I could send you a file with those locations to be my NW tester.

Here is the public facing of my J1772 database.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtpjYvmqsCJcdFVvVEZQZVh4bEVwbG90Y0JobE8ySlE&hl=en

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

wow, would be nice to compile a database of locations. much easier than actually driving to all those places and selecting "store this location"

anyone in Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia doing this? i dont have the coding skills to even attempt something like this

My public J1772 listing has 8 locations in WA right now. I haven't added all the WA Nissan dealers yet like some of the sites have since I am not sure if any are active. If you can confirm some others I will add them. Then in a week or so, I could send you a file with those locations to be my NW tester.

Here is the public facing of my J1772 database.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtpjYvmqsCJcdFVvVEZQZVh4bEVwbG90Y0JobE8ySlE&hl=en

Olympia, Rairdons in Auburn, Younkers in Renton, all active. dont know about Tacoma. have not had chance to go up there yet.

 

[EVNation]

Olympia, Rairdons in Auburn, Younkers in Renton, all active. dont know about Tacoma. have not had chance to go up there yet.

Thanks. I had all but Olympia and Tacoma so added those with a Verify on Tacoma.

 

[EVNation]

I used the data with the location of the SCE Irwindale site to navigate to the EV Rally. It worked great other than my coordinates from Google maps put me on the side street. The SCE manager said that happens to everyone. I used that visit to upgrade my coordinates.

At the rally, I loaded data into a second Leaf. Worked exactly like mine so that was great. Next up is to test data at points across the country and fine tune the math to get rid of the little drift I am seeing at locations. I will keep all posted.

 

[garygid]

1. I suspect the 3rd parameter is altitude.

2. the next 3 entries (0x3030) are probably text fields.

3. The, the "street" or "address" text field, followed by another text field.
(these 5 fields could be name, phone, and address lnformation)

Unfortunately I do not have a LEAF to try out variations.

In the first 256-byte header, have you discovered anything other than the record count @0x24 that is not a fixed value?

Is @0x25 the high byte of the count?

 

[KeiJidosha]

Is the intent to have a program that will take the evchargermaps data and convert it for the Nissan LEAF, or to have a standalone spreadsheet that will be independent of the evchargermaps data? In essence, is the data source going to be evchargermaps or the spreadsheet?

 

[EVNation]

Is the intent to have a program that will take the evchargermaps data and convert it for the Nissan LEAF, or to have a standalone spreadsheet that will be independent of the evchargermaps data? In essence, is the data source going to be evchargermaps or the spreadsheet?

I don't have a simple answer to that question.

There are several efforts underway to try and get good sources of data out there. I am trying to be agnostic to those efforts (though helping out where I can). From my point of view I would like a publicly accessible source of charger data that all kinds of websites, mobile, and PC apps can use to make the cars easier and better to use.

I personally have access to the EVChargerMaps data and my own data I have compiled and released in a public google spreadsheet. I have given that data to other efforts (electric.carstations.com and www.openchargemap.org for two) to add to their databases.

Actually, I think the little utility I am working on is a short term solution until Nissan populates their database. If it turns out they are not going to really get that data out their themselves, I will probably work to make it more automated.

 

[KeiJidosha]

Is the intent to have a program that will take the evchargermaps data and convert it for the Nissan LEAF, or to have a standalone spreadsheet that will be independent of the evchargermaps data? In essence, is the data source going to be evchargermaps or the spreadsheet?

I don't have a simple answer to that question.

There are several efforts underway to try and get good sources of data out there. I am trying to be agnostic to those efforts (though helping out where I can). From my point of view I would like a publicly accessible source of charger data that all kinds of websites, mobile, and PC apps can use to make the cars easier and better to use.

I personally have access to the EVChargerMaps data and my own data I have compiled and released in a public google spreadsheet. I have given that data to other efforts (electric.carstations.com and http://www.openchargemap.org for two) to add to their databases.

Actually, I think the little utility I am working on is a short term solution until Nissan populates their database. If it turns out they are not going to really get that data out their themselves, I will probably work to make it more automated.

Agree on the common public access source database. I'll keep copying updates to all for now.

 

[evnow]

Then in a week or so, I could send you a file with those locations to be my NW tester.

If you are ready I can test ... send me the file. BTW, does Leaf take just SD or SDHC as well?

 

[garygid]

I was hoping to get SOME response from owners (who have "LEAF-collected" charging-locations) who would be willing to send in a copy of their "Backup" file(s) from an inserted SD card.

But, no PMs of interest yet.

I hoped to get at least one contributor to fully edit at least a couple of entries before making their Backup.

If you have put a lot of time and effort into visiting and "collecting" these locations, you should at least make a Backup for yourself.

 

[turbo2ltr]

I'm open and willing to test anything.

 

[evnow]

I'm open and willing to test anything.

Did you save the charging locations you visited ? Then, you can export those locations to an SD and share the file.

 

[EVNation]

I made a test file for Pacific NW (Oregon and Washington). It has 17 locations in it.

The location GPS conversion may not be perfect since that is some distance from my calibration locations in SoCal. I still can't find any way to just convert the Lat/Lon data directly over. It has to go through my complex math conversion to their internal map format.

Anyway, to try out.

1. Get an SD card (like for a camera) I am not sure if SDHC will work.
2. Open the Nav panel display and remove the little plastic cover on right.
3. Put SD card in the left empty SD slot.
4. Close display and select "Settings/Navigation/AddressBook/Transfer Data/Export" and select "stored locations" (not "home").
5. Export data (that will create the file on the card).
6. On the PC, save the "storedlocation.slc" file somewhere so we can fix things back to original.
7. Replace the file "storedlocation.slc" with my file from http://www.ev-nation.org/storedlocation.slc
8. Put the card back in the car and select "Settings/Navigation/AddressBook/Transfer Data/Import" and select "stored locations"

It should say import succeeded or something like that.

You will then have 17 new locations added to any you have saved. Every time you import, it just adds to what is there. You can clear the address book by selecting "Settings/Navigation/AddressBook/Delete Stored Locations"

Let me know if you have problems trying this.