BMW i3s + OBD + Android app, losing connection via OBD
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Tobi |
Hi there,
first of all, I do love ABRP for what it can do for me, but just as much as I hate it for what it actually does to me.
Once in a while I do long trips in my BMW i3s. Thats what I do need ABRP for in the first place. Today was one of them. My Setup: ABRP on Android 13, BMW i3s with OBDLink CX, Wireless Android Auto. When everything is working, ABRP is just close to perfect for Live-SoC based routing. But for me on long trips it keeps losing ODB connectivity some time between "some minutes after start" and "after a couple of charging stops". And as soon as OBD connection is lost, the whole point of using ABRP for EV-routing is lost IMHO. So having a stable and reliable OBD connection is the only thing I NEED to be able to use ABRP reliably. I kindly ask you to give this some priorized investigation as it completely breaks the deal for me. If there is anything I can help you with in terms of debugging or testing, don't hesitate to get in contact.
FYI today I was taking extra care to keep the phone in the car while doing charge stops, to not interrupt OBD bluetooth connection while charging. Furthermore I ensured that phone will stay on all the time and that car ECUs won't go to sleep (all kinds of things I thought might be causing the OBD connection to break). Yet I still lost OBD on both directions of the trip. I once had the impression that this happens motly during charging sessions. But today gave me the impression that it also happens randomly while driving. Once OBD conection is broken, the only way to get it back is to reboot phone and sleep-cycle car-ECUs. Only then OBD live data will correctly connect again.
Then, once OBD live data is broken, there are further issues that drive me crazy when trying to deal with that situation on a trip:
- ABRP Android Auto still (sometimes) claims to have OBD connection (green bluetooth symbol close to SoC value) while actually it has not, making SoC display value untrustable. I determined the best way to tell if OBD is actually working is to look at the companion display on the phone screen. When there is the battery info bar (including battery temperature) this is a strong hint that OBD live data is valid a.t.m.
- the +/- buttons to manually adjust SoC to compensate for missing live data are too tiny and way to close to the "stop-routing" 'x' button in order to properly operate them while driving
- whenever it replans the route, SoC will jump back to a fantasy value so manually adjusting SoC in that state is close to pointless
I'm sure I missed some feedback I was thinking of while I was on my trip today as it was plenty. But I think these are the most important things I had in mind.
Sorry for that negative feedback, but as I said I do love ABRP when its working, and I want to encourage you to get it working in that perfect shape, reliably.
Thank you so much!
BR, Tobi
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Tobi
FYI i did do a lot more testing using different phones of friends of mine, like a Galaxy S10e and a new Pixel 8 Pro, all with the same result in breaking OBD live data connection, sooner or later. So I think we can rule out that its related to a single phone issue.
I noticed that you set this ticket to state "In Progress", does that mean you actually have an idea on how to fix what I'm experiencing?
Again, thanks for your support...
Manuel_ABRP
I added some more logging that will be part of the next release, maybe we can get a better insight then.
Tobi
Hi Manuel,
again, thank you so much for your support in this. Is there anything I would have to do in order for those logging data to be caught and visible to you, i.e. will I have to activate anything logging-wise or press the bug button for those logging data to be generated?
Which release will have it? So I know when to switch back to OBD Live connection.
Thats because right now, while waiting for your patch to reach a release, I test a different approach, I disconnected OBD from ABRP (yes, I'm losing live data for the moment) and having Car Scanner run instead in parallel to ABRP+AA-Wireless, to see if this happens with other OBD apps too, while maintaining same stress to the mobile phone / bluetooth stack. This would indicate a problem with the car rather than software, but as of now Car Scanner was working reliably in this scenario, though no real long-trip with this setup yet.
BR, Tobi
Tobi
Hi Manuel,
I just reported a bug through AA interface bug button. After I realized the release of 4.7.3 I reactivated OBD live connection a couple of days ago, to give it a try.
So far it was looking promising. I realized that visually there have been a significant change in UI for how OBD live data is rendered in comparison to versions up to 4.7.2. So have there been more substantial changes other than adding logging, which could be responsible for improved behaviour already, or was it really just adding logging?
Now to the bug-button report: just now I had a rather short trip. On my way there everything was fine. On my way back AA did not show the green bluetooth icon next to SoC, just a white battery symbol, which gave me the impression that it was not able to connect to OBD live data, making me think we are in broken connection state again, thus pressing the bug button. Additional indications were that companion screen on phone did show manual SoC adjustment buttons (+) and (-) and it was missing battery data information row at the bottom (the one containing battery temperature). So obviously at least parts of ABRP was "thinking" it had no data connection. So I stopped safely and opened settings on the phone from within still active route navigation in ABRP, opened vehicle properties where I can see live data (thank you for making this screen available without breaking current routing BTW!) and could verify that live data was actually updating properly. It there even showed to be connected in green and last update to be "a couple of seconds ago (obdble)".
So the bug associated with my bug-button-report actually should read like "ABRP thinks it has no live data while it actually has". It even seemed to use correct SoC in routing.
Bottom line for now: concerning this ticket, if there actually has been some changes to OBD live data reliability, currently there is some chance that this fixed my original issue, already. Yet I haven't had the chance to properly test it on an actual long trip, but before it tended to fail on me rather quick, so lets hope. Maybe you can clarify on this one, please? OTOH I'll report back when I had the chance to do proper testing.
For the bug-button report I mentioned above, it would be great if you could have a look into that, as yet this is by no means as much of a problem as my original bug report here, it still generates some lack of trust into whether live data is currently working or not.
Again, thank you so much for your support in getting this fixed!
BR, Tobi
Tobi
Hi, I'm afraid I have to report that today the original issue happened again on me while using latest 4.7.3 (2592). I wasn't doing anything special. Just routed driving. Suddenly I noticed that Bluetooth icon besides SoC display in AA started toggling red and green. A little later I realized that displayed SoC started deviating from actual vehicle SoC, and also battery details (including battery temperature) in companion view vanished. I did trigger a bug report using AA bug button one I noticed things got wrong. Could you please have a look and see if there is anything in the extended logging that helps identify the cause of those issues? Thank you!
BR, Tobi
Tobi
Hi,
sorry to bother you again but today I got another chance to test current version. I'm afraid things are still broken. I had a trip with about 1.5h per direction. No charging stops, just about 1.5h driving each. In both directions OBD live data just stopped working some time along the way. Phone was just sitting there with display on and ABRP doing the routing. No interaction with phone whatsoever.
Could you please check if you got some of those extended logging data to see if it helps identifying whats causing this isse?
Thank you!
BR, Tobi
Tobi
Another test, another fail. Today with 4.7.5 it just took about half an hour to lose OBD live data. Later on it seemed that OBD data connection was restored to a certain extend (showed battery temp again) but SOC was way off and not updating any more.
Meanwhile this thread has not received any update from your side for a very long time while I keep providing updated test results. I'm really frustrated with this and getting close to the point where I ask myself if this will ever be resolved. Am I the only one to experience this kind of unreliable OBD live data connectivity?
Manuel_ABRP
Hi Tobi, I checked the logs again but the last report I can see is from 6th of February. Could you please give it a try again and make sure it gives you the "upload succeeded" message after hitting the button? Thank you!
OBD can be very tricky since there is no OEM support and is mostly community driven. It is also very car specific so it may work fine for others when you still experience troubles. Maybe it is related to the OBD commands we send to the car but currently we are not aware of any "better" commands for the i3. If you are aware of any OBD commands that are working fine for your car you can point us to them and we'll try add them.
Best, Manuel
Tobi
Hi Manuel,
pleased to see that you do still see my activity on this thread, thought It went unrecognized.
I had another drive yesterday with just the same issue happening quite soon after I left.
Didn't want to bother you with yet another Bug-Button ticket each time, but if you need that to find those instances I will happily provide some more, soon(TM).
But as I understand from your latest response it seems like I might be the only one still using ABRP seriously on a BMW i3 with OBD data, and you not actually having an idea of what might be causing this particular issue.
I'd be more than happy to help out and improve ABRP on this point. With me being an ageing software developer myself, let me think a bit if I can come up with some solution at least for tracing the issue.
Could you think of providing some kind of local API (like json/rest, android way developer.android.com/training/sharing ) within the app as alternate approach for live data, so that e.g. another (custom) app could provide EV live data locally without having to send them through the internet and get it back from your servers which is not what I would be willing to use for a bunch of reasons. Such an API would also help those out there driving non-stock or converted ICE EVs using their own interfaces to locally provide live data to ABRP.
BR, Tobi
Tobi
Hi Manuel,
a short update from my side. The last couple of weeks I had more trips to do, so I was able to do more testing. Again OBD connection dropped rather soon after starting the trips. I did trigger the bug button at least on two of those occations as soon as I realized the OBD data connection from being interrupted. Maybe you could have a look at those logs?
But now to the more breaking news. For some reasons I still have to find out, the Android Auto box on my car currently fails to properly connect to my phone, starting last sunday. So all trips I did since then were without Android Auto connection. And what should I say, on none of those trips since then (today even a rather long one) the OBD connection had any issues. So there could be the chance that dropping OBD connection is related to simultanous wireless AA connection. Does that information help you in any way regarding this issue in general?
BR, Tobi
Linda
Status changed to: In progress
Tobi
Hi Manuel,
thank you for your reply and for giving me some ideas about what I can do in order to get this sorted. I'll be glad to supply you with debug information, but as I'm not doing long trips on a daily basis it'll take some time before I expect to be able to reproduce the issue.
But, I'll be prepared with "Bug Button" and Carscanner to get an idea of whats actually happening in such an instant.
Concerning your proposal related to wireless AA possibly interfering, in my setup I have no possibility to connect AA using USB. The only way to make sure it is not caused by wireless AA interfering would be for me to run ABRP completely without AA, which is inconvenient but would be worth a try just for science reasons ;)
Once I collected some debug data using the bug-button I'll report back here for a heads-up.
Thanks again for your support!
BR Tobi
Manuel_ABRP
Hi Tobi and thank you for your report. We are sorry to hear that you are having troubles.
To get some insights I would kindly ask you to upload some eventlog when you experience that troublesome behavior. To do so enable "Show bug report button" in settings menu.
You will get a bug button on the map then, feel free to hit it whenever you see some issues. Just ping us again here when you are done so we can check the logs then.
It could also be that Wireless Android Auto puts quite some stress on your phone causing weird issues. Do you see the same behavior when you connect your phone using USB?
One more thing you can check is to use some different app like CarScanner to see if you can see the same connection issues and report back how it worked out.
Best, Manuel
Manuel_ABRP
Ah and please make sure to use the latest ABRP release which is 4.7.2 at the moment. Thanks :)
Tobi
I already had 4.7.2 (2570) on my last long trip which made me report this bug.
I also sent a reply to your lengthy feedback above which I failed to create as a reply to yours but a seperate comment inside this ticked (see above). Just FYI to have a look, as I'm not sure if you get notified about my comment in that case.
Tobi
Hi Manuel,
way sooner than expected I was experiencing the bug. This time I could trigger it by simultaneously running Car Scanner while starting up ABRP which wanted to access the same OBDLink CX at the same time. What happened was that ABRP was reporting OBD Live data for a couple of seconds while data on Car scanner froze. While vehicle was in this state I tried restarting apps individually, then rebooted phone. But neither Car Scanner nor ABRP were able to re-establish a connection. Car Scanner in that state was a little more verbose telling me that it DID successfully connect to ELM327 but was not able to connect to vehicle through ELM327.
I then grabbed an OBDLink MX+ which I also happened to have at hand and first tried Car Scanner, again no connection to vehicle. Then I tried App 'electrified', an OBD EV data app dedicated to BMW i3 specifically. This one seems to be able to connect but will get some of the data looking unplausible. While battery temperature and SOH looked valid, other values like SoC were completely off with SoC showing something above 3-thousand percent, which obviously is not correct.
All the time today AA was completely disabled by removing AA bluetooth device from phone bluetooth settings, so for the moment wireless AA is out of the equation.
Stupid me forgot to hit the bug button in ABRP the moment everything started going south.
Does that information give you any idea what might be going wrong? Obviously its not ABRP's fault (alone). But is there anything I (or you) can do to fix this? Is anyone else in an BMW i3 experiencing similar issues?
BR, Tobi
Tobi
BTW what I forgot to mention was that to get things going again I had to wait for vehicle ECUs to go to sleep, then wake car again. Only now any app would be able to properly connect to OBD data again.
Manuel_ABRP
You probably should not run both apps at the same time. When ABRP is running with AA it will try to send commands even in background when it is not visible on the screen.
Even without AA you could cause troubles since our polling of data just stops in the middle and then Car Scanner tries to send commands that are unexpected.
So for your further tests I would suggest to use only Car Scanner for a while and see how that one works out. It could be that maybe we poll data to fast for the cars ecu and that causes troubles... Hard to tell since we can not get any insights on that nor do we get any OEM support to improve on that. :(
Tobi
Hi Manuel, to clarify on that one, the original issue is happening without running any other OBD app in parallel, actually I even had no second OBD app installed on the phone originally. Only after reporting this issue and looking into it I started experimenting with Car Scanner, and as you say when starting it in parallel it more or less instantly brings OBD connection to that broken state.
But funny enough, as you can read in my other reply a couple of minutes ago (overlapping with this your second reply) I wrote that I came to the exact same idea as you are proposing here. I disconnected OBD live data in ABRP and am running Car Scanner in parallel to ABRP(without-OBD-Connection)+AA-Wireless to see how that behaves, and up until now Car Scanner works reliable, though no real long trip with this setup yet.
Linda
Status changed to: Investigate