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Post by southleighracing on Oct 11, 2018 12:23:26 GMT
We are considering buying this as one of our winter projects but it is not clear if it can provide in real time the piece of information we really want, which is the average current over a period - usually a lap or sequence of laps. Is this something the kit can do or be configured to do? I imagine standing with a connected phone and pressing a start / stop button as the car passes the start line and getting an instant current average for the period without having to download the csv information and load into excel. Thanks, Hugh.
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Post by Rowan on Oct 11, 2018 13:02:33 GMT
Hi Hugh, First for your connected phone comment - the phone connected to the eChook board has to be in the car as bluetooth range is only a couple of meters. This does then upload the data (assuming it has as sim and 3G/4G signal) which can be accessed from any online device. The only 'periods' that the phone uses is laps, as calculated from GPS. For each lap it averages the voltage, current, calculates Amp Hours used etc and can display them on the phone screen, also uploads them. The online display of this data is currently quite weak as it only shows the most recent laps data, but this will be improved as the eChook live data page comes out of Beta. A more DIY take on this would be to upload the telemetry to the dweet.io service (standard option in the eChook app) and then use Node-Red or similar to receive the data and do any calculations you want on the incoming data. If you have any computer science students, or students fluent in Raspberry Pi this could be an interesting exercise and give you complete freedom in how you want to analyse and display the data in real time. Hope that helps? Rowan. Edit: on the data.eChook.uk page, the bottom box currently gives the last completed lap statistic. The app on the play store does not currently give access to this as it is in Beta, but it should be open to all for next season.  |
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Post by Rowan on Oct 12, 2018 9:55:39 GMT
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Post by southleighracing on Oct 14, 2018 15:40:55 GMT
Thanks for the quick response, when I said connected phone I did mean connected online. I must admit I hadn't taken in that the data was averaged for a lap, I thought it was just real time. I have read through it all again and can see now how the lap count works but its activation this sounds fine for a race but less ideal for practice which is when the data is most useful. Am I missing something about how to activate this in practice? Thanks, Hugh
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Post by Rowan on Oct 14, 2018 16:17:15 GMT
As it stands we don't so much with the averaged data - it's only used in the data.echook.uk site which is not open to everyone yet. If anyone wants to try it and give us feedback though we welcome it! We should get it open to everyone for next season, but we've been able to spend less time working on it than we'd hoped recently. By practice, do you mean raceday practice or practice somewhere else? The lap counter would work fine on any circular track. If you're not on a circular track you'd need to do it some other way. I hadn't really considered this, but I can definitely see it as something that would be useful. My current thoughts are that a 'stopwatch' feature on the live data website could work - start it, and it starts averaging everything, then you can stop it, or mark a lap to reset the averages and start the next ones. You could then have a table with all the data from your custom time periods. Would probably be good to have the option to export this out as a csv so you can save it locally too. Is that what you're after? I'm currently focusing on the new app so I don't have time to implement it immediately, but I'll add it to my to-do list! If anyone feels like giving it a shot sooner, let me know  It would also be quite possible to build this in node-red on a raspberry pi or similar if you need it sooner than I can get it coded. |
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Post by southleighracing on Oct 15, 2018 9:16:57 GMT
By practice I meant race day practice sessions, basically where you leave the pits is not on the start finish point so activation position leaving the pits during practice would be different to that of a race start. To be honest there is lots you are saying which I am struggling to follow simply as I have no experience with the kit. However I think you have given me enough information that we will be able to get what we need from the unit so the best plan is to get a system running at which point I'm sure all of the details will start to become clearer and I can ask more questions then. Hugh
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Post by Rowan on Oct 15, 2018 9:41:05 GMT
Ah, I get what you mean. If you started the lap counter at the point of leaving the pits it will still work to count laps, but it will take the start/finish line at the end of the pits. The fact that you're on the track rather than in the pit lane doesn't matter. It will still count your laps, just with the start finish line offset from the real one.
Sorry if I'm not explaining very well - if there's anything specific you would like me to give a fuller explanation of let me know.
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Post by southleighracing on Nov 8, 2018 12:39:16 GMT
We have now bought and successfully built and powered up our echook. I am very impressed so far as by following your instructions and video it has all gone very smoothly. My one small point was it wasn't obvious which of the 3 pins were positive and negative when attaching power! however we have sorted that now.... When attaching the unit to the PC to load the program it became clear that the unit is happy to be powered by the USB plugged into the arduino. Is there any reason not to do this as it opens up the possibility of using an external power source such as a mobile phone booster battery? This would then mean the unit doesn't shut down during pit stops etc.
Now we are digging into the unit and its app some of the things you mentioned are becoming clearer! I now see your website for live data, when do you envisage this will become available to us? We will explore the dweet.io and node red in the next couple of weeks but if your website is about to become available it will make this unnecessary. Thanks, Hugh.
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Post by Rowan on Nov 8, 2018 13:09:28 GMT
That's great to hear We generally only hear from people when something's gone wrong! The power connector pin out is the first thing in the 'Connecting to the car' section, but as you do need to power it up before reaching this point I should probably add it or link to it earlier in the documentation, thanks. (Edit: Added a link to the pin outs from the First Power On section. Should make it clearer for everyone!) The board runs very happily on the USB 5V, there would be no problem using this to keep the board powered up through pit stops. The 24V and ground would still need to be connected for logging though. If you wanted to make it so that it couldn't be powered through the 24V it would probably be easiest to desolder the Tracopower dcdc regulator. While it's not strictly checked during scrutineering, there is a limit on the capacity of auxiliary batteries in the Greenpower regulations, and a phone counts against this, as would a power bank. If you like I can email you the installer for the beta app that works with the data.eChook.uk website? It's rougher around the edges and throws a couple of errors in the settings menu, but does work! I am slowly improving it and really hope to have it on the play store for the start of next season. |
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Post by southleighracing on Nov 8, 2018 13:45:55 GMT
I get your point about scrutineering, you can argue that a phone is ok as it is proprietary and unmodified - however that is an argument for another day!
More importantly at the moment I would like to understand the live data. The site appears to work on a web browser so what is the app?
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Post by Rowan on Nov 8, 2018 13:49:43 GMT
The app is simply a newer version of the eChook android app on the play store, that allows you to enter your login details from the eChook.uk site, and send data to it.
Create an account on the website, use those login details in the android app, and uploaded data from the app will go straight to that account on the website.
I'll email it to the email you signed up to the forum with shortly. If you want to roll back to the old app, just uninstall and reinstall from the play store.
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Post by southleighracing on Nov 8, 2018 13:57:22 GMT
Brilliant, thanks.
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