No bluelink, no problem

Hi guys!
I've purchased a kona EV 2019-64 for long range trips and its been a nice car so far (apart from being noisy and slowish to charge.. oh and that whining noise that - as per Hyundai - only the owner can hear).

Had one issue though, on our way to our vacation destination, plugged the car at a fast charger and went with the wife for some food, to come back after 40 minutes to find that the charging stopped at 18% (was 16%), we had to spend 30 minutes more to have enough juice to reach our next stop, a bit frustrating eh?

In Europe we don't have the `blue-link` app, and i needed a way to know if the car is charging at least and what is the battery percentage. Tried some mobile apps but all of them had much info, and were completely unreliable! so i built my own app and i liked it very much, so i decided after some months to share it, and it was just approved on play store (android only). yay. It's completely free, no ads, no tracking, no bullshit.

So if you ever needed a reliable app, please feel free to use it, and i hope that this thread (my first post in the form) will become an active feedback-gathering-place where you can help me improve this app for all of us.

Enjoy!

 

"Car Connect"
It might not be visible in play store yet as it is in "early access" mode. here's the link in case. sorry forgot to mention that in original post: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.okitoo.evconnect

 

What's your device? and android version?

 

Strange, That should be available!

Done! (might take 1-2 hours to update on play store)

 

Will create a video on how to user it / set it up

for starters you need an ELM bluetooth dongle (I tested only KONNWEI KW902 OBDII ELM327 OBD2 V1.5)
- Insert the dongle in the OBD port
- Connect a secondary android device to it (not your main one. I purchased a cheap android phone for this - you will need internet connection on the secondary device as well)
- Start the app, and setup the connection with the OBD dongle while the car is running
- On your daily mobile device, login and click the + icon on top right for instructions on how to link the 2 devices together.

You can completely close the app on the "car device" as it runs as a service in the background (you can confirm this by the notification)

On your daily device, you can setup a widget (2 widget designs available) those will show you the SoC (state of charge) and if the car is charging or not.
The widget will spawn a background process that keeps a connection between your mobile and the one in the car. This background process will be killed automatically if the car is not charging/running (to save battery)

 

Lucky you . In Germany only some chargers have that with ENBW, but they only show the charging time and how many kwh was charged, no SoC, no battery temperature. Also when charging at home/hotel, it is nice to know if the car is still charging and how much it was charged!

 

You are right,do you by any change know how to extract charging information from a car without OBD? and how to send this information to your phone without internet? If you have a method please let me know and i will gladly apply it!
for now, the universal way to extract information from any car is via OBD. and there is no other way of sending the data to your phone except via internet (unless you're fine with 5-20 meters over wifi/bluetooth). so cheapest solution was an android phone (it can connect to the OBD and it is connected to internet).
Bluelink works kinda similar, you have an actual cellular connection (not sure if they use SMS or internet tho) and you have to pay for it afaik.

 

You can find cheap brand-new android phones ~50EUR, those are cheaper than some 4g usb modems, I used about 100MB for the whole month (I only switch the internet on when charging/driving), so the cheapest data plan does the job (I pay 3EUR a month VS 10 EUR for app connectivity for cars like BMW/Audi...)
As for Android as 2nd device, I will prepare a website where you can login to view the SoC and the process? or a Telegram bot that can send you messages over Telegram when charging starts/stops ?

 

Will do a small update this weekend:
- Monitor voltage difference between cells during charging, or once every minute when battery is less than 20% and send push notification if voltage difference is more than 0.2v .
This should warn owners about a bad battery!

 

Sending my car on Friday for the BMS recall, my friend at Hyundai said it is a 20 minute job.
in the recall manual it states the update is a 20 minute job (includes connecting to the car and pushing all buttons and stuff ... step by step image instructions) you have a lazy dealership or they are fixing the battery (I've seen your post about the not-charging problem )