Category: Teaser

The weekly build we have coming up for you is mostly one of serious un-cluttering. We have moved all  experimental and playground stuff out of the way and to a new screen. This can be accessed through the “three dots” menu, just next to the settings. Developers now have each have their own playground. Go there at your own risk!

A very nice enhancement is that time-plots are now saved, so their data is not lost when switching screens.

The driving screen now displays a real time kWh/km. I’ve been running this for a few drives and I’d say it is more pressing than the raw kW in the dash. Quite the eye opener!

For the UK drivers, there is now a “Miles” tick in the settings screen, and it already works for the text based screens.

Maybe somewhat boring but still worthy news is that we have significantly stabilized and speed up ELM again. And as we’re getting more confident about CanZE restoring order when things go wrong, there is now an option in the setting screen to change the log level, enabling you to get rid of those blasted warnings popping up. For the daring, builder people, the Due based hardware is getting more integrated too and is VERY responsive. See Bob’s blog post below this one.

We discovered that Firmware versions can be dependant on the hardware version of certain components. We’re not ready to take up that challenge for several reasons. Just know that the dealer might be right if he tells you that really no, there is no update for your car while CanZE says there is.

Enjoy and stay tuned!

We have exciting features in this weekly release. Most are a bit under the hood, but you will notice them anyway.

ELM327 stability has improved a bit and it is a little bit faster too. As I mentioned last week, we’re shaving and modifying there in tiny steps. It might be a tad more talkative when things go wrong.

Behaviour when CanZE goes out of focus has improved a lot we believe. In essence, CanZE is paused and communication with the ELM or other device is stopped.

A few timed graphs have been added on request, i.e. state of charge over time.

The driving screen now has a function where you can add the distance to destination, and CanZE will update you on the expected distance available in the battery on arrival. You can also choose to double the distance to destination when planning for a round trip. Just tap the “distance to destination” line to get a pop-up.

A feature that we really like is that the last values that were requested from the car are now retained so you can open all the screens even when not connected and they are showing real information.

Stay tuned and don’t forget to report issues, or requests on gitub.

Stay tuned

Behind the scenes a lot of things are happening, most of which are team members climbing up the steep Android development curve. Many have an IT background but have not done Android development or VCS through Git before. So, a lot of learning-by-copying, installing Android Studio, getting heads wrapped around git and github usage, and tiny little experiments. You won’t notice much about those, but regard it as planting seeds and waiting for them to grow and blossom.

We are still trying to improve ELM stability and speed. It is a complex part of the project and it is hard to anticipate on the many things that can (and do) go wrong. Don’t expect leaps there, but gradual improvement.

We received a lot of feedback about the firmware version screen, thank you all! We have simply implemented in the reference (per ECU, per car type) the highest firmware number we have seen reported in the wild. Please do continue to report to us if the application reports an ECU in your car that has a higher version than what we have seen, indicated by [your version] > [ref version] in the display. If you notice your versions being older, you might want to head to the dealer (no, we will not try to implement firmware uploading in the app). Upcoming Sunday’s release should have all these new version numbers implemented.

And then there is of course tons of little tweaks and fixes.

For the (upcoming) developers, information on how to get started is compiled in the WiKi on github.

Stay tuned!

An awful lot of work went into CanZE the last week. Here is some teasing info:

• A lot of work went into more stability on the ELM327 handling. We believe we have made serious progress here. Let us know your results please.
• There is now a Safe Driving Mode that basically forbids any tinkering while the car is on the move. It is enabled by default and yes, you can override it. Be smart, be safe please!
• Speaking of smart, when you download the App, you will find now some informal and formal disclaimer stuff. Please do read it. You really need to know what you’re doing. We are emphasising this as we have had reports of the setup interfering with the car’s behaviour, which is something anyone should be uneasy about. Use common sense, and use hardware that is reported by the community to work with CanZE.
• Many screens have improved – or have been debugged substantially.
• A new firmware screen has been added. This allows you to query the software version information from all reachable ECU’s. We would love you to post comments here when you have noticed a new software load and we might be tempted to post a page with the “highest seen” software loads per car model and per ECU.

Come back here Sunday for a new download. And don’t forget to post issues on Github: https://github.com/fesch/CanZE/issues