Open Vehicle Monitoring System

[ViviV]

3. When using my T-Mobile phone number as the “from number” on the Hologram Dashboard (without spaces) I did receive a “Permission denied” SMS message on my phone, so it would appear that this message did go out with the intended “from number”.

Did the final format for number include the "+" sign. In other words, for the hologram dashboard "send message from number" field should the number be +1XXXXXXXXXX or 1XXXXXXXXXX?

 

[Curt]

Did the final format for number include the "+" sign. In other words, for the hologram dashboard "send message from number" field should the number be +1XXXXXXXXXX or 1XXXXXXXXXX?

I've been using +1xxxxxxxxxx for my US number, and it has been working fine.

 

[Stuart]

Did the final format for number include the "+" sign. In other words, for the hologram dashboard "send message from number" field should the number be +1XXXXXXXXXX or 1XXXXXXXXXX?

I used +1xxxyyyzzzz

But I only got it to work once.

And “STAT? <password>” with my module password didn’t work (the number I was testing with to receive the responses is not the “registered” number).

The EDGE/GPRS connection is working with the app, so I gave up wasting money on trying more failed SMS messages.

 

[shrink]

I switched to Hologram around 12/1/2016. The initial setup was, indeed, rather easy. Thanks to Mark for setting this up and to Tom for his excellent write up.

I did have a slight initial issue with SMS. I paid the extra $1/month for the phone number, which has to be - in the US at least - in +1xxxyyyzzz format. In the summertime in Phoenix, I use a lot of COOLDOWN commands, so it's easier for me to use my iPhone to do that rather than the Hologram dashboard.

Anyway, I don't know why, but SMS messages were not going through at first. I'm not sure if there was a lag for the Hologram server to update my SIM with the newly issued phone number. In a most unscientific troubleshooting way, I started messing with settings and things seemed to start working after I:

1) Entered my Hologram-issued new phone number on my openvehicles.com account. On the openvehicles website it says listing the phone number is optional so I don't think this made any difference whatsoever.

2) Sending an MMS through the Hologram dashboard website first, and then later with my phone.

It's mentioned somewhere on the Hologram site, but when you do this, messages are sent to the issued number, but reply messages look like they're coming from some random 16-digit number. I don't know the technical reason for this, but Hologram said they're looking to improve that in later releases.

Now the MMS messages are pretty expensive at $0.19 per sent message from the OVMS module. I really look forward to less reliance on SMS with the next OVMS version. In the meantime, Mark, is there any way to stop the OVMS module from sending a reply automatically after it receives an SMS command? It would probably be more cost effective if I could just send SMS commands at no cost and assume they went through, but be able to double check settings with the STAT? command as necessary and get charged the $0.19 cents then.

The actual amount of data that is used looks rather minuscule thus far.

Also, for what its worth, in Phoenix, looks like Hologram is using the T-Mobile network and the signal is pretty strong where I live.

 

[markwj]

In the meantime, Mark, is there any way to stop the OVMS module from sending a reply automatically after it receives an SMS command?

I haven't played with it much recently, but we did implement FEATURE_CB_SOUT_SMS years ago. That should suppress ALL outbound SMS (including battery < 4% so take caveat emptor).

// The FEATURE_CARBITS feature is a set of ON/OFF bits to control different
// miscelaneous aspects of the system. The following bits are defined:
#define FEATURE_CB_2008      0x01 // Set to 1 to mark the car as 2008/2009
#define FEATURE_CB_SAD_SMS   0x02 // Set to 1 to suppress "Access Denied" SMS
#define FEATURE_CB_SOUT_SMS  0x04 // Set to 1 to suppress all outbound SMS
#define FEATURE_CB_SVALERTS  0x08 // Set to 1 to suppress vehicle alerts
#define FEATURE_CB_SVINFOS   0x10 // Set to 1 to suppress vehicle info notifies
#define FEATURE_CB_SSMSTIME  0x20 // Set to 1 to suppress times in SMS responses
#define FEATURE_CB_SCHGSTART 0x40 // Set to 1 to send charge start notifications

FEATURE_CARBITS is #14. You can set this either by SMS or by the App.

 

[tomsax]

Is there a way to view the current odometer reading via the iPhone app?

I've updated my OVMS web API Perl script to extract the odometer and CAC from the server records.

To use it, download the zip archive, open up ovms.pl, fill in your OVMS account username, password and vehicle identifier, then run the script as "ovms.pl s" to download and display the server records. At the end, it will dump out the latest odometer and CAC readings so you don't have to read through the records.

You can't do that from an iPhone, but you could put the Perl script on a web site (protect it from being downloaded, of course), or set up a text responder via Twilio, etc.

 

[tomsax]

I just updated my OVMS Hologram page with more info on my data use for the first month and an analysis of the Hologram data plans.

The short version is: I recommend you choose the Pay-As-You-Go plan, avoid using text messages, and monitor your monthly data use until you have a feel for how much data your vehicle sends through OVMS.

Hologram could change the data plans, and your usage may be quite different from mine, so keep an eye on things. It will also be interesting to see what happens with my reception when AT&T's GPRS network goes dark on December 31, as most of my data sessions are currently going through AT&T, with just a few using T-Mobile.

Here's a quick summary on what's on my page:

Data Use

The chart below shows data use per day in blue and the number of sessions per day in orange. The car was mostly parked in our garage (which has a metal roof, so not great cell reception). The days I drove it correlate pretty well with the days that saw increased data use and session counts.

The daily average was about 50 KB, or 1.5 MB per 30-day period.

Here's what the data plans look like in Zone 1, which covers the US and most of Europe and Asia.

As you can see, the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) plan is generally the best choice unless you can predict your usage fairly precisely and fall into one of the narrow valleys where the set data use plans are slightly cheaper. For 1.5 MB, PAYG is the cheapest with a pretty good margin on either side.

The plans for Zone 2, covering Canada, Mexico and the rest of the Americas outside the US are similar, with PAYG also being the best for 1.5 MB.

 

[markwj]

A short update on OVMS.

We are working hard on OVMS v3. The development environment for the microcontroller we chose for v3 has finally stabilised to a point where we can rely on it. There will be a new revision of hardware silicon around the end of 2017Q1 and we'll most likely try to time the first production releases of OVMS v3 to use that as soon as it is available. But, the good news is that we have the production development environments available now, and the CAN driver (although early beta) is working well. All the components are finally in place and usable. This has caused us delays in our plans, but we are confident that our choice of microcontroller was the right one. This will give us a great platform for the future and most importantly allow us to keep costs down without being constrained by RAM/Flash memory storage (as was the case for the v2 PIC18 platform). Bluetooth and Wifi support are a bonus. Work on the firmware for OVMS v3 is ongoing, and we're hoping to release this to the open source team any day now.

In the meantime, we continue to support OVMS v2. The hardware is still available on fasttech site, but we are over half way through what we think will be the very last batch.

We have partnered with hologram.io to provide a cellular network for OVMS users (both v2 and v3). Early feedback from our users has been fantastic, and this is now running in a bunch of OVMS cars. Use of this is entirely optional, and the cost-effectiveness will depend on where you are in the world and what other cellular options you have. We're not forcing you to use Hologram; just making it easy for you to choose them if you want. OVMS v3 will come with hologram.io SIMs included as standard (but easily replaced if you choose not to use it). For OVMS v2 users in USA, with the imminent shutdown of the AT&T 2G network, we recommend Hologram.IO now. You can get SIMs from Hologram directly at Store, and Tom has penned an excellent write-up of how to switch to Hologram at Hologram for OVMS.

Regards, Mark.

 

[Botbldr45]

Converted to hologram couple days ago. Followed Tom's instructions and had no problem. I have much better connectivity than I did with AT&T. Thanks Stuart for help putting phone numbers in.

All and all it seemed pretty painless although I did manage to loose one of those little screws from the OVMS ...... Go figure!

 

[thefortunes]

Ordered the SIM from Hologram 10 days ago - haven't heard boo. Unfortunately now my H20 is dead and I have no OVMS

 

[jbadger]

I ordered my Hologram SIM a few days ago and got it yesterday. Installed it today and it's working great so far.

Can't wait for OVMS v3

 

[thefortunes]

I must be doing something wrong. Finally received my Hologram SIM, activated and installed it. OVMS never gets connectivity (green light stays blinking 6 times). Status on the Hologram Dashboard says live.

Any recommendations?

 

[supersnoop]

I must be doing something wrong. Finally received my Hologram SIM, activated and installed it. OVMS never gets connectivity (green light stays blinking 6 times). Status on the Hologram Dashboard says live.

Any recommendations?

Did you update the server using the "GPRS hologram" command? You needed to do while you still had SMS capabilities.

 

[thefortunes]

Did you update the server using the "GPRS hologram" command? You needed to do while you still had SMS capabilities.

Thanks for the thought. I did not have connectivity with H2O anymore, so I used the AP command per the instructions. But without getting GPRS connectivity first, I don't believe it would have been received.

 

[thefortunes]

Anyone else have an idea to troubleshoot? Still blinking 6 times (no GPRS connectivity).

 

[Curt]

You shouldn't need existing GPRS connectivity to send the "GPRS hologram" message. You only need SMS to do this.

I wouldn't be surprised if you still have SMS connectivity on your old SIM.

 

[thefortunes]

You shouldn't need existing GPRS connectivity to send the "GPRS hologram" message. You only need SMS to do this.

I wouldn't be surprised if you still have SMS connectivity on your old SIM.

Thanks for the thought, but my H20 SIM account expired in December (right about the same time that they cut off 2G service locally).

To my thinking (which could be wrong), it shouldn't matter. I have sent the AP command via the Hologram website which should have done the same provisioning, right?

If I put my cell phone SIM into the OVMS, could it receive the "GPRS hologram" text and reprovision the OVMS?

 

[supersnoop]

Thanks for the thought, but my H20 SIM account expired in December (right about the same time that they cut off 2G service locally).

To my thinking (which could be wrong), it shouldn't matter. I have sent the AP command via the Hologram website which should have done the same provisioning, right?

If I put my cell phone SIM into the OVMS, could it receive the "GPRS hologram" text and reprovision the OVMS?

If the OVMS is not configured properly, it will spend all it's time trying to access the GPRS server and it won't recognize or respond to an SMS. You may need to open up the OVMS and flip the switch to disable GPRS, then boot it up, send the SMS, receive the response, and then flip the switch back to enable GPRS.

 

[dhrivnak]

If I put my cell phone SIM into the OVMS, could it receive the "GPRS hologram" text and reprovision the OVMS?

I think so, but you need to enter your from phone number so it knows the command if from you. +1xxxyyyzzzz

 

[thefortunes]

I did not need to switch out the SIM - I just sent the GPRS Hologram command from the Hologram dashboard and it worked right away.

I must have had some parameters wrong in the AP command.