Post by duncan on Jun 21, 2013 15:42:51 GMT 11
Apart from the basic information on the dash, and a report from Nissan at each service, there is not much detailed information that we can get from the car.
Like a lot of modern cars the Leaf uses a Car Area Network (CAN) to communicate between the various sensors and computers in the car. In fact, in the Leaf's case there are multiple CANs with different purposes (EV-CAN for the battery etc, car-CAN for most stuff and an AV-CAN for the audio visual system). The good news is that this means every piece of data the computers get can be seen by 3rd party tools...the bad news is that Nissan don't tell anyone what each message means so they have to be decoded one by one.
On the EV-CAN there are lots of messages about the remaining battery charge (read through the GID meter I've previously mentioned) but heaps of other information as well, including the voltage of each of the 96 batteries, and 4 battery temp readings.
The guys in the US have done some good work based on an Android App created for the Mitsubishi iMiev, porting it across to the Leaf. I've got it up and running on my car today.
The app reads the EV-CAN via a Bluetooth ELM adapter. These are cheap but the first one I got didn't work; I ended up getting a working one here: www.ebay.com.au/itm/330790894071?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649. You plug these into a port under the steering wheel and Bluetooth pair it with your phone.
(BTW, this same device can extract data for boring old fossil fuel burning cars build after about 2005 using apps like Torque.)
My dash was showing me this (ie not much)
12 battery bars available, 10 charged, DTE 131klm
Plug in the ELM reader, start up the phone, and open the App to get the following information:
Screen 1: Battery voltage for each battery unit and "shunts" (used to average out the battery pack). In my data you can see battery 66 is the lowest.
Screen2: Overall battery status, including SOC (% of current capacity, ie it will always show 80% or 100% after charging), GIDS (absolute measure of capacity, the GIDs at 100% charge will decrease over time as the capacity falls), and some other summary info
Screen3:
Battery pack temp. This is important because hot batteries can permanently loose capacity, and cold ones don't hold energy as well (eg cold when charging). It also has a second screen for Battery voltage history.
Screen4: another summary view
So, for about $25 all up, you can get good monitoring of the battery health. This app would also be handy for checking the health of a car you were looking at buying second hand
Like a lot of modern cars the Leaf uses a Car Area Network (CAN) to communicate between the various sensors and computers in the car. In fact, in the Leaf's case there are multiple CANs with different purposes (EV-CAN for the battery etc, car-CAN for most stuff and an AV-CAN for the audio visual system). The good news is that this means every piece of data the computers get can be seen by 3rd party tools...the bad news is that Nissan don't tell anyone what each message means so they have to be decoded one by one.
On the EV-CAN there are lots of messages about the remaining battery charge (read through the GID meter I've previously mentioned) but heaps of other information as well, including the voltage of each of the 96 batteries, and 4 battery temp readings.
The guys in the US have done some good work based on an Android App created for the Mitsubishi iMiev, porting it across to the Leaf. I've got it up and running on my car today.
The app reads the EV-CAN via a Bluetooth ELM adapter. These are cheap but the first one I got didn't work; I ended up getting a working one here: www.ebay.com.au/itm/330790894071?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649. You plug these into a port under the steering wheel and Bluetooth pair it with your phone.
(BTW, this same device can extract data for boring old fossil fuel burning cars build after about 2005 using apps like Torque.)
My dash was showing me this (ie not much)
12 battery bars available, 10 charged, DTE 131klm
Plug in the ELM reader, start up the phone, and open the App to get the following information:
Screen 1: Battery voltage for each battery unit and "shunts" (used to average out the battery pack). In my data you can see battery 66 is the lowest.
Screen2: Overall battery status, including SOC (% of current capacity, ie it will always show 80% or 100% after charging), GIDS (absolute measure of capacity, the GIDs at 100% charge will decrease over time as the capacity falls), and some other summary info
Screen3:
Battery pack temp. This is important because hot batteries can permanently loose capacity, and cold ones don't hold energy as well (eg cold when charging). It also has a second screen for Battery voltage history.
Screen4: another summary view
So, for about $25 all up, you can get good monitoring of the battery health. This app would also be handy for checking the health of a car you were looking at buying second hand