Lightning Flight Recorder / Black Box

[mr.Magoo]

I've been tinkering with my own "black box" for the LIghtning based on a Raspberry Pi and the OBDLink MX+ OBD adapter and below is a sample of where I'm at right now, the "black box" is also integrated with ABRP and HomeAssistant to feed them various data.

I have four modes, default, driving, charging and sport, each with it's own set of configurable parameters.
Default, driving and charging are all automatic and sport is a special mode that logs a few values every second and mainly intended for acceleration / braking tests (to check regen and those kind of things). Sport mode is enabled though HomeAssistant / Alexa (I just tell Alexa in the car to enable sport mode).

I'm using a Pi CM4 with a case / mainboard that has M2 SSD support (to get more storage, better response and less risk of a corrupt sdcard).
The main "controls" is in Node Red, logging to InfluxDB and graphs by Grafana.


It's still work in progress, but it works reasonably well.



Charging View

Charging Heatmap with charge locations and average charge rate

Driving View

12V Battery overview

HV Battery overview (mainly a "health view")

Available parameters (for now, looking at adding some more if I find something of value)

 

[Skidrowe]

Can you show timing retard for each cylinder so we can better tune it for performance?

Are you able to view those output screens in real time or is it on a PC after you've done a data collection with the raspberry?

 

[mr.Magoo]

Are you able to view those output screens in real time or is it on a PC after you've done a data collection with the raspberry?

Technically it's totally possible.
Node-Red have a UI function (that's what the parameter page is created with) that can display text/gauges so I could create a page that contains some information and just send it there as well (kind of what I already do with ABRP and Home assistant). Raspberry can also drive a display so one could create a gui there as well but there's probably better tools (i.e. car scanner) if you want live/realtime data.

Grafana/the graphs is web-based so there's no issue connecting to it from your cellphone and you can set the graphs to "kiosk" mode and auto refresh every so often (15/30s). Not "real time" but probably good enough for most use cases.

Ideally I had hoped to find a way to present webpages on Android Auto, that way you could have it "built in", but I haven't figured out a way to do it - yet

 

[Jsfrye]

Following. Love this

 

[Galactus55]

I've been tinkering with my own "black box" for the LIghtning based on a Raspberry Pi and the OBDLink MX+ OBD adapter and below is a sample of where I'm at right now, the "black box" is also integrated with ABRP and HomeAssistant to feed them various data.

I have four modes, default, driving, charging and sport, each with it's own set of configurable parameters.
Default, driving and charging are all automatic and sport is a special mode that logs a few values every second and mainly intended for acceleration / braking tests (to check regen and those kind of things). Sport mode is enabled though HomeAssistant / Alexa (I just tell Alexa in the car to enable sport mode).

I'm using a Pi CM4 with a case / mainboard that has M2 SSD support (to get more storage, better response and less risk of a corrupt sdcard).
The main "controls" is in Node Red, logging to InfluxDB and graphs by Grafana.


It's still work in progress, but it works reasonably well.



Charging View

Charging Heatmap with charge locations and average charge rate

Driving View

12V Battery overview

HV Battery overview (mainly a "health view")

Available parameters (for now, looking at adding some more if I find something of value)

We need more of this, just to see what's inside and what to tweek.
This is the best I can see with Torque connected to ODBII port via bluetooth there are many pages lots of information. This is the Charging page shows battery charge in %, coolant Kw used, amps into battery, and Kwpower into battery. Plus motor temps power output from motors in Foot Pounds. It shows in real time update.

 

[BennyTheBeaver]

I've been tinkering with my own "black box" for the LIghtning based on a Raspberry Pi and the OBDLink MX+ OBD adapter and below is a sample of where I'm at right now, the "black box" is also integrated with ABRP and HomeAssistant to feed them various data.

I have four modes, default, driving, charging and sport, each with it's own set of configurable parameters.
Default, driving and charging are all automatic and sport is a special mode that logs a few values every second and mainly intended for acceleration / braking tests (to check regen and those kind of things). Sport mode is enabled though HomeAssistant / Alexa (I just tell Alexa in the car to enable sport mode).

I'm using a Pi CM4 with a case / mainboard that has M2 SSD support (to get more storage, better response and less risk of a corrupt sdcard).
The main "controls" is in Node Red, logging to InfluxDB and graphs by Grafana.


It's still work in progress, but it works reasonably well.



Charging View

Charging Heatmap with charge locations and average charge rate

Driving View

12V Battery overview

HV Battery overview (mainly a "health view")

Available parameters (for now, looking at adding some more if I find something of value)

Very cool.

Now I'm tempted to figure out a way to have Alexa, or some IFTT command, automatically put my truck in Sport mode.

The notification on vehicle start to place the vehicle back in the last mode you used is a frustrating inconvenience. I, unfortunately, had to set the Drive Modes tab to my favorite on my SYNC menu bar due to this.

Hopefully @Ford Motor Company fixes that annoyance.

 

[mr.Magoo]

Guess I need to work on some new dashboards suited for the new screen layout

 

[eRockBoon]

This is so cool I wish I could have something like this for my truck

 

[mr.Magoo]

OK, so I tried out a local fast charger that is free (for now) and during this time I tinkered a bit more with the on-screen setup to the point where I think it looks OK / is informative enough for what you might need in the car.

If you look at the bottom right hand corner of ABRP where it says 79%, that's your SoC which is handy since you don't have to use the calm screen anymore to view it, but it is also the indicator that you're receiving live data from your OBD reader or in my case "black box".

The screen supports touch / swipe, so the only "action" between the two screens is a swipe.
The screen at the bottom is the view from the ABRP app on your phone.

I tried to create an image from by PI's SSD onto a USB drive and that booted just fine on a Pi4 I had laying around, so I can clean up a few things and share the image if anyone wants to play around / tinker with it. It's by no means plug and play so you really need some level of computer savviness to get thing running. At a bare minimum you'll need to change the MAC address of the bluetooth OBD adapter in node-red plus you need to go into Linux / Raspian via SSH and pair the adapter. If this all sounds like gobliguck to you, then it's probably bit too early to test it
I'm by no means an expert, I know enough to be dangerous but I'm not smart enough to do debugging and support on someone else's setup.

Later when this have matured beyond tinkering I can make a writeup on how to get things going from scratch.

Another thing worth noting is that the display on the car-screen / android auto, it's called "custom app" and installable from AAStore, not sure if this requires a rooted phone or not (mine is), but it might be worth trying that as well to see if you have a chance of running it on your cars screen.

 

[jdmackes]

Where are you getting the Pi4's from? They all seem to be out of stock whenever I look...

 

[Zprime29]

I have a Pi4 and a couple Pi Zero W's from before the "supply chain" issues started popping up. They do get some in from time to time, you just have to sign up for notifications and hope you see them fast enough. There are competitor boards out there as well, though I don't have any personal experience with them.

EDIT: Forgot to specify that I usually buy from Adafruit.

 

[mr.Magoo]

Where are you getting the Pi4's from? They all seem to be out of stock whenever I look...

I bit the bullet and bought one at a premium on eBay because I wanted a CM4 module (external antenna connection for BT and WiFi + native PCI = real SSD / M2 and not via USB).
At the time (December 2022) I also placed an order via Newark that was backordered and I completely forgot about it - well, it just showed up - 7 months later, so that'll tell you something about the wait if you order through normal channels.

My regular Pi's are project Pi's that I got before the whole chip-shortage craze started.

 

[viennaxmas]

How did you get Grafana to show on the 15" screen? That looks awesome (and I have a spare Pi)

 

[mr.Magoo]

Sorry for the delay...
I'm using an app called AAStore - https://github.com/croccio/Android-Auto-Store/releases
It allows you to install a web/http link as an "app" (Custom App) on android auto, the little red icon with CA2 (Custom App 2) in my screenshots is that app. I'm running a rooted Pixel 7 in my car, but I just tested to install it on my non-rooted S23 and that seem to be working on it as well.

Now, a word of advice:
While you could put your phone in hotspot mode and have the PI connect to it, the issue will be that the the IP address on your phone (on android anyway) gets randomized every time you restart your phone, plus the name resolution / dns isn't all that great - and - once you created a link with CA you're stuck with it, you can not change it. The only way around it is to create a new link (gets cluttered since you cant name the links either, they're just named CA1,2,3,4 and so on - or - factory reset your phone. (uninstalling the app, clearing data/cache won't help).

So, the solution is to use a travel router which will allow you to set a fixed IP. Amazon has both Netgear and GL-Inet for $30-40, I would personally recommend the GL-Inet as I had it, returned it, got the netgear, regretted it too late and I'm now stuck with it. They both do a good job, but I found out that the Netgear won't switch wifi networks automatically but the GLInet will. Another benefit of the travel router setup is is that your cars streaming (youtube, amazon music, etc.) can now use the built-in ATT data plan should you wish to. ATT Plan >> Travel Router >> Car

 

[MRButtler]

Which case/board do you use for the SSD?

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