[APP][Pro] ChargeAmps

You are right, it says not available, and charger turned off.

@nogren

Thanks for confirming this, good to know and have it confirmed, bad because it makes it more or less impossible to determine if a car is connected or not. This was much better in CAPI.

With the charger Off and a car connected to the charger it would be interesting to know:

Which statuses does the charge go though when turning ON the charge port:

  1. With you car set to charge as soon as there are power detected.
  2. With you car set to not charge even if there are power in the connected cable

My guess would be:

  1. Unavailable->Available->Preparing->Charging
  2. Unavailable->Available->Preparing->SuspendedEV

(In ChargeAmps stand-alone you will see slightly different ā€œstatusesā€ i.e. Not Available instead of Unavailable and Paused by EV instead of Suspended EV)

Would test myself if only VW would build the car that I have on order :slight_smile:

I have a new testversion of the App ready to be uploaded, have totally rewritten status handling in this and would be good to have the above tested beforeā€¦ If the statuses changes as I think it will, then it is possible to implement logic that if the charger is turned on and Status never get changed to Preparing then no car is connected and a push message could be sent to someone.

Same if you always have the charger on and control the charging from the car we can determine that a car is connected by evaluating the statuses.

I made a tight loop, that probably is not tight enough. I.e. 0.1 second delay between REST API calls.

  1. Unavailable ā†’ Charging
  2. (Set the charge percentage to less than current SoC) Unavailable ā†’ SuspendedEV

And as a bonus, when turning off the charger after lowering the wanted charge percentage:
SuspendedEV ā†’ Finishing ā†’ Unavailable

Also noticed that the ChargeAmps app got a ā€œStopā€ button when charging is active, and the ā€œTurn Charger offā€ is not available. But in your app there is no ā€œStop chargingā€ card. Perhaps you could add that, together with a ā€œStart Chargingā€ card, so that the Charger does not have to be turned off when smartcharging?

@nogren

Thanks for all your feedback, highly appreciated.(including the PM you sent me).

So then it seams that the Status takes the steps that I thought. As my App are not directly communicating with the ChargeAmps device it will most likely be hard to catch all the status changes. My App are interacting with ChargeAmps cloud services, and get data updated roughly every 15th second. At one point in my development work I had much more frequent data collection which only ended up in a e-mail from ChargeAmps who asked why I pulled so much data from them :slight_smile:

Data collection points of 15th second are fairly similar to what Charge Amps have in their own stand-alone app.

I am aware of the stop button and will implement support for that as soon as the Status issues have been sorted out. The code to handle STOP are already included in the App, in my app if the charger is turned on and you press the button to turn it off it will first send a STOP command before it sends the OFF command.

New TEST version published ChargeAmps | Homey

New in this version 4.1.3:
(Only changes for HALO chargers at this time. )

  • Charger status handling has been updated to better handle the different statuses in OCPP chargers.

One downside is the detecting when a car is connected to the charger isnā€™t possible in OCPP chargers. It is not a limitation in my APP it is a limitation in how OCPP works.

So the FlowCard ā€œCar is connected to chargerā€ is not super useful. Can still be used in some special use cases but not as useful as it was in CAPI versions of the charger.

Iā€™m still waiting for VW to build the car I have on order so unfortunately I donā€™t have any possibilities to test the App myself. So it may take some iterations with user feedback until this new way of handling Statuses works to 100%.

As soon as it is ā€œstableā€ for the HALO chargers it will be quickly implemented for the other chargers.

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@Borgen Sounds interesting and promising with the new update! As I have a DAWN charger with OCPP Iā€™m unable to test this version before the changes are implemented to my charger as well, but Iā€™m curious if you have added any new flow card or changes to flow card trigger when charger is changed from ā€Paused by Chargerā€ (as seen in standalone app) to ā€Paused by EVā€?

As I mentioned before, my scenario is that the charger is paused by an external integration from ChargeAmps to electricity spot prices, then when prices go down this will try to start the charger but then often my vehicle is hibernating which causes ChargeAmps to set status Paused by EV.

Iā€™ve noticed that the ā€Charging startedā€ flow card sometimes gets triggered the first time when my scenario happens after Iā€™ve plugged in the car and itā€™s trying to start the charging, but the common scenario is that the charger starts and stops multiple times during the night and then this is not triggered anymore (going from Paused by Charger ā†’ Paused by EV).

Would be much appreciated if you could look into this! Let me know if I can do anything to help.

@Swe

Have no Feedback so far on the new Test version ā€¦ So a bit difficult to say if it works as intended or not yet.

But as the DAWN charger are fairly similar to the HALO charger it is rather easy to implement the new Status handling. So I might release a new Test version later today or tomorrow with the same changes for the DAWN charger as already implemented for the HALO Charger.

At this point in time no new flow cards have been added, befor doing that I must see that the Status handling are working as intended. But once that is confirmed it will be fairly easy to add new Flowcard.

@Swe

New Test version published where same Status handling that was implemented for the HALO have been included for the DAWN charger.

Test version can be found here: ChargeAmps | Homey

Please test and see if statuses changes in the App as expected and cross-reference with ChargeApms own stand-alone App to verify that statuses are similar.

Please note that in their stand-alone app they are ā€˜translatingā€™ some statuses to be more user friendly and in my App I am currently using the actual OCPP status. (i.e. ChargeAmps stand-alone App shows ā€˜Not Availableā€™ and my App shows ā€˜Unavailableā€™)

No new Flow Cards have been added at this point in time, but as soon as I see that the Status handling are working as it should I will implement new Flow Cards that utilize the status changes.

@Swe

While waiting for feedback on the new way to handle Status changes in the charger I have started to work on new Flow Cards, to start with I will add ā€œCharging paused by Carā€ and ā€œCharging paused by Chargerā€.

Delivery of my new car is still 5-6 weeks away, so canā€™t test anything myself.

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@Borgen Iā€™ve installed the test version and so far the status seems incorrect and/or not updating properly. Immediately after installing test version I had ā€Paused by EVā€ in CA app but Homey showing - for both Effect and Status (didnā€™t make any changes though, the car was already connected from before).

Later today the CA app is still showing ā€Paused by EVā€ but Homey is now showing 0.11 kW Effect and ā€Chargingā€ as status. The car is fully charged since yesterday and latest update in Homey shows 2 hours ago so Iā€™m guessing the car was using some minimum power to stay fully charged but Homey app never updated when status went back to Paused by EV?

I will do some more testing after using the car but for now itā€™s fully charged so need to come back with that later.

@Borgen Some more updates from testing different scenarios after drivingā€¦

First when I got home and plugged in the car, the status in CA app went from Available ā†’ Paused by Charger (which is default since my CA integration to electricity spot prices pauses until the prices are better). In your Homey app this resulted in: Available ā†’ Charging ā†’ SuspendedEVSE. Maybe this is expected, Iā€™m not sure if it technically goes to charging very quickly before suspended, but in CA app I didnā€™t manage to see that, although in Homey it was clear. Just so you know.

Then when the charging later started (automatically through CA integration with spot prices) the CA app went from Paused by Charger ā†’ Charging and your Homey also went from SuspendedEVSE ā†’ Charging, so all good there. Effect also was updated to 3.55 kW as expected.

Later I paused the charging again from the charger. The CA app went from Charging ā†’ Paused by Charger. Your Homey app although didnā€™t update at all. I waited a few minutes but it was still showing ā€Chargingā€ and 3.51 kW effect. Both Status and Effect showed as updated e.g. ā€4 minutes agoā€ so they didnā€™t seem to get updated at all after the charger was paused. I guess this is similar to my last post, that your app doesnā€™t update after charging gets Paused by EV or Paused by Charger.

Let me know if you need me to test anything more or if you have a new version with fixes later so I can try again.

@Swe

Thank you very much for all the tests you have done, your feedback is highly valuable!

From what I can see the new way of handle status changes works as intended (up until it it reaches ā€˜Chargingā€™) This was highly valuable to know and I will look into what could be the cause of the issue that you see where it gets stuck in ā€˜Chargingā€™

What would really help me sort this out is if you when you have the time and possibility could issue a ā€˜Create Diagnostic reportā€™ in the Homey App when the error/problem occurs (When you pause the charging and you see the CA App changes to ā€˜Paused by chargerā€™ and the Homey App is stuck in charging)

Before issuing a Diag report please make sure that in the device setting in Homey of your DAWN charger and under Advanced settings change to Debuglevel Trace.

To create the actual diag report you go to the ChargeAmps app in Homey, go into settings of that App and then click the ā€œCreate diagnostic report ā€œ

One report: 3d2de640-52a6-4c2d-b589-8eb9a4a42f75

It was Charging, with correct status, then I stopped it in the CA app. It went to Finished there, but stuck in Finishing in your Homey app.

But if I also turn off the charger, not only stop the charging, from the CA app, it goes to Unavailable as expected.

When I use my Homey flows to turn on/off via your CA app, it seems like in the first tests that the status has improved from before.
Will continue to test.

(Halo occp)

@nogren

Thanks for your report. This was really interesting to see, I actually think my App are handling it similar to what CA Mobile App does. The difference is that they ā€œtranslateā€ the OCPP status ā€˜Finishingā€™ to ā€˜Finishedā€™ in their App, but in my App the actual OCPP status is showed and that is why you see ā€˜Finishingā€™ in my App but ā€˜Finishedā€™ in their App.

When I look through your diag report my App pulls data from ChagreAmps API several times and every time I get the status ā€˜Finishingā€™ in reply.

It was interesting to see that the status in your case got to become Finished/Finishing and not 'Paused by Charger/SuspendedEV" when you stoped the charging.

P.S. I will implement a Start/Stop feature in my App as soon as status handling and new Flow Cards for all statuses have been sorted out.

Thanks, the start/stop commands I will use in my ā€œavoid power tariffsā€ logic, and I guess if I donā€™t find other bugs, the status seems to be reasonable now.
Yes I wouldnā€™t be surprised if Chargeamps translate to finished when they know the session was stopped. From their app.

New Test version published: 4.1.6

Changes in this release:

  • AURA: Implemented new ā€˜Statusā€™ handling
  • LUNA: Implemented new ā€˜Statusā€™ handling
  • HALO & DAWN: A few more different status changes included
  • All models: Two new trigger flow cards ( Charger suspended charging & Car suspended charging)

@Borgen I did some more testing with the latest version. Unfortunately I havenā€™t been able to do perfect test scenarios, but mostly it seems to work with the statuses. The new flow card for Paused by EV worked as well. But still I have issues of your app not always updating when charger gets paused. I tried multiple times at the end today to charge, then pause it, charge again, then pause it. Both pauses from charger didnā€™t update in your app at all (both status and effect are stuck and donā€™t show any recent updates in time either) even after waiting a few minute nothing happens in your app - itā€™s still showing Charging.

I did a diagnostic report of this:
1cb1e12c-b3d8-40b4-85e3-4903823abf43

Let me know if you need more specific tests around this.

@Swe

Highly appreciate your testing and DiagReport!

The issues is visible in the report, there is a code problem that I need to find and fix. Hopefully I can do it based on your DiagReport, but potentially I need additional data which would be another DiagReport when the problem is ā€˜activeā€™ but this time with debuglevel set to ā€˜Fullā€™.

@Borgen Iā€™ve done another report now with log level full and when pausing wasnā€™t updated properly:

593f5298-02ad-481b-8b12-9acfec5d5022