Tuesday, December 23, 2014

R19

News:
  • HV Fitness is now an additional analytic
  • Resistance measurement (new PIDs required)
  • Orion BMS support (select it in the options) 

  • Near-critical (10% difference) cells are now highlighted


Saturday, December 20, 2014

R18

New version available:

  • HV Battery Fitness: check your HV battery health
  • New PIDs for battery fitness: read the FAQ
  • Battery Block chart



HV Battery Fitness

The HV Battery Fitness sheet gives an overview of the battery block behavior

For every battery block, the following parameters are reported:

Avg Bias: every block value is compared to the max value of the whole battery. The difference of the block value from the max value is called Bias. This is the average bias over all the trip. This should be as little as possible. High bias may be a clue of a faulty block

Max Bias: maximum observed bias in the whole trip. A high value suggest the block is fluctuating more that the others

Highest Voltage: highest voltage the block has reached. At least one faulty block has been observed having both the highest and the lowest value of the whole battery

Lowest Voltage: lowest voltage the block has reached. Deteriotated blocks may have lower voltage than the others

Std Dev: standard deviation from average value: Blocks that fluctuate more have higher deviation. This is another sign of anomalous behavior.

Avg Local Delta: each block value is compared to its neighbours

Max Bias @stress: this bias is measured only when the battery is used with high current values. This should give a measure of how well the block behave under load.

Max Resistance: maximum measured resistance. Degraded cells may have higher resistance.

%Time @MinV: Time in the whole trip, the block was the one with the minimum voltage. This parameter filtered on delta above 0.2V, as lower values are considered not significant.

Max Est. R: maximum estimated resistance

Avg Est. R: average estimated resistance

Red and green highlight best and worst blocks for every measure.
Orange values are within 10% of the worst value.

Other measures are related to the whole battery:
Long sequences of delta values above various thresholds are primary suspects of impending battery faults, as explained in this article: http://artsautomotive.com/publications/7-hybrid/140-predictive-battery-failure-analysis-for-the-prius-hybrid/

Required PIDs:

HSD3:
"Batt Pack Current Val"
"Battery Block Voltage -V01"
"Battery Block Voltage -V02"
"Battery Block Voltage -V03"
"Battery Block Voltage -V04"
"Battery Block Voltage -V05"
"Battery Block Voltage -V06"
"Battery Block Voltage -V07"
"Battery Block Voltage -V08"
"Battery Block Voltage -V09"
"Battery Block Voltage -V10"
"Battery Block Voltage -V11"
"Battery Block Voltage -V12"
"Battery Block Voltage -V13"
"Battery Block Voltage -V14"
"Internal Resistance R01"
"Internal Resistance R02"
"Internal Resistance R03"
"Internal Resistance R04"
"Internal Resistance R05"
"Internal Resistance R06"
"Internal Resistance R07"
"Internal Resistance R08"
"Internal Resistance R09"
"Internal Resistance R10"
"Internal Resistance R11"
"Internal Resistance R12"
"Internal Resistance R13"
"Internal Resistance R14"
"Temp of Batt TB1"
"Temp of Batt TB2"
"Temp of Batt TB3"

HSD2:
"HV Battery Current"
"HV Battery Block-01 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-02 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-03 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-04 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-05 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-06 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-07 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-08 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-09 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-10 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-11 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-12 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-13 Voltage"
"HV Battery Block-14 Voltage"
"Internal Resistance R01"
"Internal Resistance R02"
"Internal Resistance R03"
"Internal Resistance R04"
"Internal Resistance R05"
"Internal Resistance R06"
"Internal Resistance R07"
"Internal Resistance R08"
"Internal Resistance R09"
"Internal Resistance R10"
"Internal Resistance R11"
"Internal Resistance R12"
"Internal Resistance R13"
"Internal Resistance R14"
"HV Battery Temp 1"
"HV Battery Temp 2"
"HV Battery Temp 3"

While not strictly necessary, additional PIDs like Speed and SOC, may give a better overview of what's going on, as in this investigation.


Monday, December 15, 2014

Monday, December 8, 2014

Torque Log Analyzer needs you!



Android programmers wanted!



Torque Log Analyzer has been appreciated by several dedicated hybrid drivers around the world, and I'm willing to try the next step: bringing the level of analysis featured by my Log Analyzer to a real time, on-the-road application.
While I'm able to do some programming, I'm completely out of the Android development world, so I'm searching for an experienced developer willing to join forces on this project.
Here is a brief statement of work: if you're interested, get in touch with me.

Abstract
The standard dashboard of Toyota Hybrid cars show only minimal information about the car status; the base version of the new Yaris even lacks the battery level indicator.
An Android app can show car parameters that are missing from the standard cockpit with the aim of improving your driving.

High level draft
The app should read data from the CAN bus of the car by using a standard Bluetooth adapter.
The app may be a Torque plugin or standalone, if it has the ability to read CAN bus directly.
In case of a Torque plugin, the app should be able to add a predefined set of custom PIDs to the ones Torque already has.
PIDs and trigger values are specific to each car model, PIDs for Yaris, Auris and Prius are well known and already available.
For the ease of user experience, there should be an app version for each supported car.
Those versions may come from the same source code, just compiled with different defined constants.

Results
The app will display at least two sets of values.
Real time values:
  • Battery charge value
  • Engine coolant temperature
  • Current from battery
  • Brake usage (friction pads or regenerative)
Statistical (or cumulative) values:
  • % time of engine off
  • Km run in EV mode
  • Number of brakings
  • Braking efficiency

Code license
I'm not a professional programmer and I'm not planning to earn significant money from this.
As this is just a hobby for me, I favor the option of going open source for this project and releasing it for free on the market.
Different options may be considered. If a paid version is considered, I'm willing to evaluate how to share revenues based on the contribution of each of the parties involved.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

The missing cockpit

It's my opinion that, for the sake of simplicity, the current Toyota Hybrid cockpit is missing some valuable information for the driver.
Even the touch screen, that would be the perfect place to show more data, maybe out of an advanced mode, has little use.
Here is a Torque layout that shows what I consider the minimum useful info:

  • RPM: see if you're running on petrol or on battery, and when you're riding a sweet spot.
  • Battery State of Charge: as the Yaris charges the battery during the S1 phase, make sure you don't park the car with a full battery.
  • Battery Current: useful during the S1 phase, to check if you're demanding too much power from the battery.
  • Wheel Cylinder Pressure: check if you're braking using pads and thus wasting energy that would be recovered by the regenerative braking system.
    Note that the chart widget shows 10 seconds of history, so you can check braking performance later, without putting yourself in danger while driving.
  • Coolant Temperature: the S1 phase lasts at least until 40, and this guage will help you measure effects of winter radiator cover.



Tuesday, October 28, 2014

R16

just a bug-fix release: if you experienced the "empty menu" bug, then this new release should solve it.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Visualization of Torque Log Analyzer data with ParaView

Google Sheet charts are handy but limited in scope: there is no easy way to produce a 3D chart.
3D charts can help discover relationships with multiple variables.
We'll use ParaView, an open-source, multi-platform data analysis and visualization application.

As an example we can use the Hybrid System Indicator:


The power meter is indeed related to the accelerator pedal but, as the experience suggests, its behavior seems to be affected by the SOC level also.

We'll use with a trip of 43Km with a SOC excursion from 38 to 63.
The analysis will be limited to the 0-100 HSI range, we'll exclude the regenerative braking range.

First, here are the values, as a function of the accelerator pedal:


Values seems to be limited by a minimum and a maximum straight lines.
Some values are outside this area: they may be transition values, when the accelerator was just pressed and the HSI indicator was still settling on the target value.

We can try to filter out those values by considering only HSI values associated to accelerator pedal values that are constant for at least 2 seconds.

The resulting chart is cleaner.

To add SOC values to the chart, we must switch to 3D with ParaView.

Export the Data sheet of Torque Log Analyzer in CSV format.
Note: you can't use the Torque log file directly, as the missing values will cause the data to be marked as text instead of numbers.
Torque Log Analyzer corrects those values when running an analysis, so just export a processed log file, not a raw one.

Open the CSV file in ParaView.
Add a Table To Points filter and select which column to use as X and Y (the same from the 2D chart) and Z (SOC, that wasn't used before)
X: Accel Pedal Pos
Y: HSI
Z: SOC


Adjust scaling and set Coloring at Batt Pack Current Val


Here's the chart:


Points color is related to battery current: charging current in blue, discharging in red.
Most of the blue points are in the upper part of the chart, where the accelerator pressure is higher.
There are really few red points (electric contribution to the car movement), but we must remember that these point represents constant accelerator values, not spikes where the electric engine is more likely to set in.

A little animation gives a better view of the data.


Wednesday, October 1, 2014

R13

News:
  • New Ford PIDs: previous ones were slightly wrong, download the new ones from the download section. (thanks to larryh and HighwayJerk from fordfusionhybridforum.com)
  • Altitude statistics: start, end, min, max, delta.
  • Options are saved and restored when the sidebar is displayed.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Live Example

A live example could be viewed at this link.
Best results using a desktop browser, Safari on iPad have issues.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

myfordmobile.com

Ford is really ahead on driving gamification and driver gratification.
Here's a screen shot from myfordmobile.com where stats from your driving are collected.



Ford Hybrid PIDs

Here are the PIDs for Ford Hybrid cars.

http://i-fix.us/Torque-Pro-Settings-for-Ford-Fusion-and-C-MAX-Energi.php

You can download the CSV file for Torque in the download section.

This cars should be supported:
C-MAX Hybrid
C-MAX Energi
Fusion Hybrid
Fusion Energi


Friday, September 19, 2014

R12

News:
  • added support for Ford hybrid cars (a big "thank you" to Dido for his help)

RPM Chart

The RPM chart displays RPMs of all the cars engines, both petrol and electric.


FuelFlow Chart

The Fuel Flow chart shows fuel consuption with speed and engine RPMs.


Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Force reported mileage

Torque needs to be calibrated to report correct fuel usage.
If your Torque is not calibrated you can correct the log file while processing it.

If you have a log file and you know your car fuel consumption meter reading at the end of the log, you can force it in the option below.


Mileage and Fuel Flow charts will be scaled according to the preset value.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Highway Star

It's a common misconception that hybrid cars are not suited for highways.
Some people says the electric engine won't even kick in.
That's not correct, as the electric engine is nearly always contributing to the car movement.
Here's a chart of a 220 km highway trip: the red line shows how many amperes are flowing out of the HV battery, thus flowing through the electric engine and helping the petrol engine.



R11

News


Tuesday, August 26, 2014

MD Tech-nicolor

MD Tech sheets are now painted (by kind request) according to the following schema:

Row colors:

  • Light green: car is charging the plugin kit
  • Turquoise: car is charging the plugin kit and the HV battery
  • Wheat: the plugin kit is supplying power to the car
  • Grey: the plugin kit is not in use

Cell colors:

  • Green: cell with highest value
  • Red: cell with lowest value



Saturday, August 16, 2014

Little Diesel Engine vs Yaris Hybrid in a urban landscape

I had the chance to test a car with a little diesel engine (Opel Corsa 1.3 TDCI 95cv) on one of my daily urban commute trips.

The same trip was driven first with the Yaris Hybrid and then with the Corsa, at the same time of the day in 2 consecutive weekdays.

On this road, with the Yaris Hybrid, I have a personal record of 3.5 L/100km, attained in optimal conditions, in the evening, with no traffic, but the recording I'm going to analyze refers to a less than stellar 4.2 L/100km.
On a trip of 4 km, the engine was off for 63.56% of the time, with a total of 2.23 km driven with the electric engine alone.

On the same track, the diesel engine scored 5.2 L/100km, with a comfort and a noise far worse than the hybrid car.

The diesel engine was equipped with a start-stop system, but it never kicked in.
I suspect the A/C was preventing the engine from stopping.
This is another notable difference with the hybrid, that doesn't suffer from this limit.


There are some others different behaviors of the engine:
On the diesel car, RPMs of the engine are mostly proportional to the car speed.
On the hybrid car, this is not the case.
In the same chart, the engine load is also present: the hybrid engine always works with an high load.
The diesel engine, especially when decelerating, has a low load.
The average load value for the hybrid is 84.63% versus 53.35% of the diesel.


There's a thread about this on the Hybrid Synergy Forum


Tuesday, August 5, 2014

R10

News:

  • fixed occasional "Service Error" when generating maps

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Tutorial

Here's quick way to use Torque Log Analyzer.

Make sure you've installed it first, as explained in this link.

Log in to Google Drive and select "Settings"


Make sure "Convert uploads" is NOT selected


Change language settings


Select English / United States


Go back to Drive
Drag and drop a Torque CSV log file


The imported file will be uploaded to your Drive


Now select it with the right mouse button and open it with Google Sheet


Select "Add-ons/Torque Log Analyzer/Start"


A sidebar will open: select "Analyze" to start.
You can add additional analytics before selecting "Analyze", or just add them later and run "Analyze" again.



Use Torque Log Analyzer as a stand-alone sheet

Before becoming an Add-on, Torque Log Analyzer was available as a stand-alone sheet.
This page contains instructions about using it, mainly for historical purposes: this is not the preferred way of using it.

Torque Log Analyzer is still available as a stand-alone script in the download section of this site.
Note that you can view the full source code also, so it may be useful if you're learning Google Script.

Anyone interested can go to the Downloads section and get Torque Log Analyzer.
Make a copy of the spreadsheet into your own Google Drive.


Open your fresh copy.
Select from menu "File / Import"


Select "Replace current sheet" and then select your trackLog.csv file
Check the preview and then select "Import".



Select "OK" and "Accept" the following authorization requests



The sheet will be replaced by the content of your log file.
Select analytics and then click "Analyze".


If the sidebar doesn't appear, select "Start" from the "Add-ons" menu.



Spreadsheet will be populated with new columns and new sheet containing analysis and statistics about the trip you logged in trackLog.csv.
Also check for the "Log" sheet for any errors.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

R7

News:



Current Flow Chart

The Current Flow Chart shows electric current in and out of the traction battery.
With negative values, the battery is charging from braking, coasting or the petrol engine (see spot 1), while with positive values, current is actually flowing out of the battery for traction (see spot 2).
By using the EV Behaviour and the SOC Discharge charts, you can actually see where the current is coming from or going to.


Sunday, July 27, 2014

The new Google Drive and Locale Settings

If you switched to the new Google Drive, you may have experienced strange results.


It seems that new spreadsheets created in the new drive don't have a default locale setting.
When you load a CSV log file, first check "File / Spreadsheet settings..." and make sure to have "United States" selected: this is mandatory for decimal numbers usage.