Remote HVAC operation

[alexank]

Hi
I have a question
Do the Souls with UVO have the ability to start the heater remotely even if not plugged into an EVSE?

I have a UK Soul EV and Kia decided we did not warrant receiving UVO in the UK!

I am pondering how easy it might be to add a remote control and obviously if the UVO enabled cars have that then maybe the UK cars HVAC system is already almost remote ready!

 

[notfred]

The HVAC is controlled by the Head Unit and I suspect it will be driven from the CAN bus. It's also going to have to engage the high voltage. A simple remote will not cover it.

 

[alexank]

I agree it will be via Can Bus and sending can bus messages remotely is not impossible with the correct hardware.

I think my question is best placed in the Soul Spy thread
It very much depends if anyone has captured the sequence of Can Bus messages yet that start and stop the preheating and also whether there is a physical dependency on the mains being connected for Euro cars.

I hope not because the US cars do have remote heating so I suspect it is purely can bus messaging.

 

[goev]

This is definitively a question that needs its own thread!

I've been looking into this as a part of the upcoming OVMS V3, but since I live in Norway and haven't got access to a car with UVO, so I don't know how they have solved this is the US.

However, if we look at the UVO-telemetics unit (http://www.kisouman.com/telemetics_unit_tmu_component-2060.html), it has a rather simple interface to the rest of the car: MM-can (M-can) and HS-can (which must be the C-can) are the only outputs. The rest of the connections are just inputs.
This tells me it is possible for the unit to control the HVAC using only the two can buses.

Are there any americans here that can put a can-logger on those two buses and do a trace while turning on the heating via UVO?

I have updated the Kia Soul EV CAN messages-spreadsheet with commands that can be used to control doors, lights and commands that can turn on IGN1, IGN2, ACC and Start relay. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YYlZ-IcTQlz-LzaYkHO-7a4SFM8QYs2BGNXiSU5_EwI/edit?pli=1#gid=0

 

[goev]

The telematics unit (UVO) seems to be connected to the rest of the car via the two c-can and m-can buses, so I believe it must be possible to do remote preheating using only those two. http://www.kisouman.com/telemetics_unit_tmu_component-2060.html
How it works though, is the big question.

Since I don't have UVO in my car, I've been logging both the c-can and the m-can when the preheating timer kicks in, but I haven't had any luck finding anything useful yet.
I can see the climate settings like temperature and fan speed being updated, but these messages seems to be just outputs from the climate controller, not commands to it.
Up until now, I've been working by the theory that it is the nav(igation)-unit that keeps track of everything, and that it is it that sends control messages to the climate controller. However, I'm not that convinced this is the case anymore since I haven't been able to see such control messages. (Of course, I might be totally wrong!)

Now, I wonder if it might be the climate controller itself that runs the timers and the nav-unit is just the user interface for the settings.
If this is how it is, that means we should be able to see messages going back an forth between the nav-unit and the climate controller whenever we change these on the nav-unit.
With these messages, we should be able to remotely program the climate controller. That would be great in itself, even though the car has to be plugged in for it to work.

Also, I've been thinking that we might be able to fool the ECU/controller that runs the preheating timers to believe that the charger is plugged in.
We could look into what messages are sent on the two busses when we connect the charge plug to a car that has a fully charged battery. Those messages should be enough for the controller to know that the charging cable is connected. Then we could fake that/those message(s).
If this is possible, we could use the preheating timer settings without beeing connected to a charger.

Any thoughts?

All help is much appreciated!

Geir

 

[notfred]

Remember that preheat fails if there is a scheduled charge that failed - e.g charge is set to 80% but battery is already at 90%. This would suggest to me that it isn't just the climate control system, there is something more involved.

Also something is driving the charging lights to say preheat. Another data point is that the preheat was failing if the weather was very cold (below -25C) and this was corrected with a BMS firmware update. So maybe it's the BMS that's doing all this?

 

[goev]

I don't think any of those facts necessarily are contradicting my theories

That the preheat fails when a scheduled charge fails, might happen if the BMS tells the rest of the system that there's no charger plugged in. It depends how the charge scheduler works, of course, but if this is the case, it fits my theory

The charge lights is just a display. The BMS ECU can listen for a certain value in a certain message on the can-bus and sets the light mode accordingly. That's the way can-bus mostly works.

The cold weather issue can also have multiple reasons which might not be any problem.

I'm very exited to see what we can find out. My theories are just theories, and I might be totally wrong. It has happened before

 

[jmogollon]

Have you found something on how to make the car think that the charger is plugged in?

 

[goev]

Unfortunately, no

It has been a few months now, so my memory is not clear, but IIRC the message containing the "plugged in"-status is sent so many times per seconds that it is impossible to make the car believe it is plugged in.