Soul Spy?

[JejuSoul]

...The calculation based on average deterioration has now been proved wrong by a Kia Soul EV 2015: This car has been tested to be at 40% SOH by Kia, and having min det = 0% and max det = 64.7%, before as well as after the test by Kia...

Yes. In this case the SOH as tested by Kia, is only based on the Maximum Deterioration. Not on the average of Minimum and Maximum Deterioration.

For battery packs where a single cell has failed this makes sense. It is irrelevant what the state of the 95 good cells are if a single cell has completely failed. A single failed cell means the entire pack fails. Unlike the T esla battery pack with thousands of cells, where the BMS software allows any single bad cell to be isolated.

[warren55]

I tried out the new updated program yesterday, and sure enough my SOH went from 107% to 100%. Does it still go up to 110% with a new battery?

[langemand]

I tried out the new updated program yesterday, and sure enough my SOH went from 107% to 100%. Does it still go up to 110% with a new battery?

The SOH display is now limited to displaying max 100 %, so that value is displayed for a new battery. I suppose this behaviour is like what an official Kia readout would display with a new battery.

You can take a look at battery.max_deterioration on the Battery Management System page, that value seem to indicate the deterioration from the original "over-capacity".

[kimdavi]

I tried the latest Soul SPY on my 2015 Kia Soul Ev ( 58,500miles / 94,146Km ). My SOH reports 51.5% on 8/4/19 . This revised calculated value makes sense.

Based on my recent charging session on 7/9/19, I was estimating around 53% capacity. I charged from 7% to 100% on Level 2 charger. It consumed 13.4Kw total power. Estimated using 13.4Kw/.93=14.4Kw, and 14.4Kw/27Kw=53%. capacity.

[langemand]

Would you buy the Soul EV Spy android app, if it was priced at $15 at google play store?

Is it worth it?

Why or why not?

What is the value of the app, if not $15?

What are the currently existing need-to-have features of the app?

What features are wanted, but missing from the app currently?

What are the pain points of the app (i.e. what sucks)?

Thanks in advance for your reply. The current "early available" BETA release that is currently available on google play store, will soon be upgraded to a paid app.

[cixelsyd]

Would you buy the Soul EV Spy android app, if it was priced at $15 at google play store?

Is it worth it?

Why or why not?

What is the value of the app, if not $15?

What are the currently existing need-to-have features of the app?

What features are wanted, but missing from the app currently?

What are the pain points of the app (i.e. what sucks)?

Thanks in advance for your reply. The current "early available" BETA release that is currently available on google play store, will soon be upgraded to a paid app.

Definitely worth buying. $15 is a fair price though you might get more takers with something like $9.99.

Need-to-have features are the SOH and the battery map, though perhaps if you are asking about say free/Pro edition features, maybe anything that displays raw data is "free" and anything that you are running calculations for (like SOH) is "Pro"?

Missing features would include things like graphs/reports on trends over time based on saved runs, perhaps some basic diagnostic functions ("cell 22 reads as 4.18V while all the other cells are reading 4.00V, this may indicate a faulty cell" or similar. Maybe an alert function of sorts when SOH is approaching warranty-trigger levels.

Pain points - lots of data on the pages, some of the descriptions are curt, and the divisions between the sections don't always make sense as an end user (why is SOH under Car Information and not under BMS, for example)

[gday]

I agree the price may do better at $9.99 (silly really but that's how things work) and yes it is well worth it. I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for my OBD bluetooth device but can hardly wait to try it out.

I will happily join in the conversation about features but sorry I can't add anything right now.

[EVDee]

Is it worth it?
1. To me? Sure.
2. To me to suggest to someone else? Depends.

Why or why not?
1. I just want to know the battery capacity % for warranty purposes, and this app is the only one that will give me that info.
2. Unless they were techy like myself, I don't think the interface is all that friendly to the average person.

What is the value of the app, if not $15?
For it's current state - I think $5 is fair.
$15-$20 would be fair if the app had additional functionality and a better interface.

What are the currently existing need-to-have features of the app?
Battery degradation - literally the reason for me using this app. (Assuming I understood the question correctly)

What features are wanted, but missing from the app currently?
Driving Mode - it'd be great if this app had a screen/mode where it acts as a HUD. Best example I can think of would be the Hybrid Assistant app which lets a user know if/when their brakes are applied, SOC at a glace, fuel consumed (curious if kWh consumed is possible?).

Trip logging/recording - another useful feature of the Hybrid Assistant app. Would be super handy to keep track of battery health over time.

"Check Engine" diagnostics. Not sure what else to call it, but it'd be nice if the app was able to tell a user about issues much like other OBD2 apps.

What are the pain points of the app (i.e. what sucks)?
User interface. I wish the info was displayed in a better way both visually but also so that it explained better what each data point is. That, or perhaps a built-in user guide which does this.



For me, coming from a 2nd generation Prius, a Hybrid Assistant type app would be what I'd pay for. I really enjoyed how it added valuable info at a glace when you were driving, and it helped protect the battery by keeping it cooler due to the app changing the parameters for the fan turning on. It also had a function to test battery capacity and could automatically track trips and log them for easy viewing in future.

[notfred]

I agree with the others about the price point I think $9.99 is going to be more popular than $15.

I think SOH is the essential info. If you were to offer that on the free version (maybe with max/min det and cell numbers( and on the paid version let people drill down in to the individual cell map and temperatures, plus all the other stuff.

I suggest removing the charger map - you aren't going to compete with PlugShare.

Missing features are the ability to set various items when working on the car yourself:
1) TPMS sensor IDs for changing tyres (I think we have the PIDs for this)
2) Electric Parking Brake when servicing the rear brakes (unknown PIDs)
3) Run the Water Pump when changing the coolant (unknown PIDs)

I agree the drop down menu style isn't the most user friendly, and the need to enable / disable the Bluetooth connection can be a little confusing. Unfortunately I'm another embedded C programmer rather than a UI designer, so I don't have any good suggestions for you there!

[JeroenE]

I've discovered Soul Spy only two weeks ago. Yesterday I got an update of the app. The SOH changed from 83% to 45%. I'm getting a new battery at the end of next week. I don't actually know the real SOH, but from the range I've left I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually that low.


As far as I know I've got a Konnwei OBDII dongle. Of course, with all the fake stuff out there you are never really sure, I guess. Unfortunately Soul Spy stops working sometimes. It is not responsive and I need to force quit the app and restart. Other times the dongle is not responsive. Soul Spy says dicsonnecting and connecting. Usually it'll work again after a few of these cycles. Other times I need to remove the dongle and place it back before the connection works again.

Even if the connection works again it'll take some time to get new values. I mainly drive with the "Energy and Power" screen. That will start with the speed, quickly followed by the battery energy. Then usually battery SOC and the remaining range (sometimes in reverse order). It can take several minutes before the fourth value is added.

Usually I'm streaming from my phone to the car stereo. If I'm not streaming (but listening to the radio like a savage) it still happens so it doesn't seem related to each other.

Does anybody else recognises this? Is there something I can do to avoid this?


Regarding a paid app: I think 15$ is way to steep, and I'm not even sure if I would buy it for 10$ . I would pay 5$ for an app that is specifically for my car/model.


A few points I'd like to change:

The charging location screen doesn't add anything you can't find in other apps. I'd use the Soul Spy app for gaining access to values that are not shown in the dash. I won't be using it to find a charger.

Tire info shows pressure in PSI, but I'd rather see bar. So 2.7 bar instead of 39 PSI.

A lot of data show a technical description. For example "obc.in_AC_A". This is shown on the Onboard Charger screen, so I'd loose the "obc." part. Perhaps name he fields something like "AC in A", "AC in V", "DC out A" (which doesn't exist now?), "DC out V" and so on. Or even better have 1 line for "AC in" with values like "228 V / 13 A". Same for a lot of other fields/screens like Battery Management System were the fields are just displayed in Uppercase/lowercase alphabetical order.

Switching between screens should be easier. Perhaps just like Torque Pro by swiping left or right? I would still like the drop down for quickly going to a specific screen.

Some values are weird or wrong. For example battery.heat1_temperature will show "206 C". I'm pretty sure my battery is not 206 degrees Celsius. Even if 206 would be Fahrenheit this would be far to high. I don't think I have this value in Torque. At least not in the dashes I found on this forum years ago (and which I never changed).


In the CSV log file the values sometimes are long. For example a battery cell could have a voltage of "3.74", but another will show "3.7600000000000002". Why not show that one as "3.76" and skip all the zero's? The main issue with this is that Excel will show both values quite different. I live in The Netherlands and we use a comma as the decimal separator. So my Excel thinks "3.76" is some kind of text (not a number!) but "3.7600000000000002" it will show as a number like "37.600.000.000.000.000" because it thinks the point is the thousands separator. I know this is mainly Excels automatic formatting that is not really helpful at all, but even so I think all those zero's and a 2 doesn't really add anything.


That said I do love the log file. Perhaps an option to get smaller files would be nice. I'm not sure I would want to log all the cell values, all the time for example.

When comparing to Torque I find Soul Spy a lot more nice to look at. The dashes of Torque with a lot of dials and so on are really "busy".

The main thing the app does now which is better than any other app is show a more realistic SOH.