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tomsax
Member
With H20, $10 should cover you for 90 days, so a bit over $40 per year. How does that compare to your AT&T deal?
The best you can do is $100 for the year then the dollars expire. I've called back twice and got them to push the expiration date back but doubt they'll keep doing that. Will check our H2O when they do. Thanks.
Nvbob
Roadster 1256
I just completed the setup of our OVMS and here's the procedure I used.
1. Go to Open Vehicles | Open Vehicle Monitoring System and sign up for an account.
2. While you are awaiting for your account to be approved, review the install documents & videos listed on the website.
3. Purchase the necessary components - OVMS module, Pickit2 hardware/software and cable (for doing firmware updates) , and the module cable to connect to the Roadster.
4. Once you receive your components, upgrade the firmware on the module to the latest version.
5. Order your SIM from Consumer Cellular (it gets added to your present plan for $10 per month). Provide them with the IMEI (listed on chip inside OVMS module). Your SIM will be shipped activated.
6. While you are waiting for your SIM, complete your review of the user guides on Open Vehicles | Open Vehicle Monitoring System (Roadster User Guide is the one I used) and set up your vehicle in your account. Note your settings in the user guide. The APN they are using is ATT.MVNO.
7. Complete your setup of the module on page 6 of the Roadster user guide.
8. If you do not receive any response from your module when attempt via SMS then you will need to verify your IMEI with Consumer Cellular.
9. They will re-activate your SIM using your IMEI.
10. Restart your module and you should be able to continue your configuration.
I mounted the module on the front wall of the passenger footwell behind the Tesla heater redirect using the velcro tape. I mounted the GSM antenna in the back window behind the passenger’s seat. The windows in our Roadster are tinted so the antenna is virtually invisible. I routed the antenna cable inside the trim next to the passenger seat and under the carpet next to the door sill.
It was a lot simpler than I expected.
1. Go to Open Vehicles | Open Vehicle Monitoring System and sign up for an account.
2. While you are awaiting for your account to be approved, review the install documents & videos listed on the website.
3. Purchase the necessary components - OVMS module, Pickit2 hardware/software and cable (for doing firmware updates) , and the module cable to connect to the Roadster.
4. Once you receive your components, upgrade the firmware on the module to the latest version.
5. Order your SIM from Consumer Cellular (it gets added to your present plan for $10 per month). Provide them with the IMEI (listed on chip inside OVMS module). Your SIM will be shipped activated.
6. While you are waiting for your SIM, complete your review of the user guides on Open Vehicles | Open Vehicle Monitoring System (Roadster User Guide is the one I used) and set up your vehicle in your account. Note your settings in the user guide. The APN they are using is ATT.MVNO.
7. Complete your setup of the module on page 6 of the Roadster user guide.
8. If you do not receive any response from your module when attempt via SMS then you will need to verify your IMEI with Consumer Cellular.
9. They will re-activate your SIM using your IMEI.
10. Restart your module and you should be able to continue your configuration.
I mounted the module on the front wall of the passenger footwell behind the Tesla heater redirect using the velcro tape. I mounted the GSM antenna in the back window behind the passenger’s seat. The windows in our Roadster are tinted so the antenna is virtually invisible. I routed the antenna cable inside the trim next to the passenger seat and under the carpet next to the door sill.
It was a lot simpler than I expected.
Cottonwood
Roadster#433, Model S#S37
I own a 2008 Roadster 1.5 that was delivered in 2009. How well does the OVMS work for this version Roadster? Should I consider getting one.
wiztecy
Active Member
Mark, curious what the limitation is with the dig speedo on the 1.5 is and why the 2.x have support.
Also as a side question, any ETA on when the sms ACC functions will be integrated into the GUI, most importantly the cool-down?
Thanks a bunch as always
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I can attest it works very well on the 1.5 and I highly recommend!
Mark, curious what the limitation is with the dig speedo on the 1.5 is and why the 2.x have support.
Also as a side question, any ETA on when the sms ACC functions will be integrated into the GUI, most importantly the cool-down?
Thanks a bunch as always
The digital speedo stuff involved some can bus trickery and considerable fine tuning to get it as good as it is today on 2.x cars. The can bus messages for the dashboard display are different between 1.x and 2.x cars (the dashboard itself is also different).
I guess the primary reasons it is not available on 1.x cars are (a) I don't have a 1.x car, and (b) no developers with 1.x cars tall enough to need it ;-)
More seriously, I am not sure it is even feasible. It would need a lot of access to the car, can bus dumps and test writes, then lots and lots of testing and find tuning.
Regarding ETA for ACC from GUI, I can't promise anything at the moment. There are quite a lot of things we want to do with the apps, but no one has really stepped forward to help on the App side, so it depends on my spare time. I am hoping to revamp the settings (PARAMS, features) pages to be more friendly, and it will probably come when that comes.
wiztecy
Active Member
Makes total sense about the 1.5 / 2.x Speedo Display and I agree, unless people are complaining about it, works fine for me! Was curious what the limitation was.
As for the ACC/GUI I'd be happy to contribute but never coded for the Android or IOS environment. I'm happy to get an environment setup and learn which I've always wanted to do and can play around in a sandbox until I get something that's stable and useful. I also have a friend who does IOS development, so if porting code that I have that works over isn't all that bad, that could be an option for the cross platform. Otherwise if there's someone out there with Android / IOS app development experience feel free to chime in and contribute.
Been very happy with what you've contributed and done Mark and just saying thank you is not even close to being enough. Thanks for being such a resourceful and active TMC member from the heart!
I'll do some research to see what type of Android build environment I can get going and download the latest build sources.
As for the ACC/GUI I'd be happy to contribute but never coded for the Android or IOS environment. I'm happy to get an environment setup and learn which I've always wanted to do and can play around in a sandbox until I get something that's stable and useful. I also have a friend who does IOS development, so if porting code that I have that works over isn't all that bad, that could be an option for the cross platform. Otherwise if there's someone out there with Android / IOS app development experience feel free to chime in and contribute.
Been very happy with what you've contributed and done Mark and just saying thank you is not even close to being enough. Thanks for being such a resourceful and active TMC member from the heart!
I'll do some research to see what type of Android build environment I can get going and download the latest build sources.
nvidia has an android developer pack that installs all of the crap you need to write an android app. Despite its name, it's not limited to android development for Tegra devices.
Tegra Android Development Pack | NVIDIA Developer Zone
Tegra Android Development Pack | NVIDIA Developer Zone
I just went through the process of looking at all choices in the US for a cheap GSM SIM card. The best I could find was a AT&T reseller, Consumer Cellular. You can choose no voice minutes, 200 text messages, and 20 MB data for $11.88 / month (5% AARP discount). For a couple of bucks more you can go to 1000 text messages and 100 MB data ($14.25/month). On top of that, they are giving a $20 credit if you signup through a referral link (until July 15, after that the credit is $10) and the SIM card is free if you choose "Bring your own device". Really a great deal for us. Here is the link to save $20:
Sign up today and save $10!
Phil H.
Sign up today and save $10!
Phil H.
I’m late to this game, but I’ve finally ordered an OVMS for my Roadster.
I more than happy to pay $100 to the enterprising individuals who worked hard to create the OVMS; but it pains me to pay $10/month ($120/year) for the very modest data usage OVMS requires.
AT&T’s offering at 10¢/min, 20¢/SMS, and $2/MB, costs at least $100/year because of their credit expiry policy.
I’m generally a fan of T-Mobile, with their Pay As You Go plans at 10¢/min and 10¢/SMS, but they offer no reasonable data plan. Their lowest plan is $10 for 1GB/month, which is about 998MB more than the 2MB/month that OVMS requires.
So that left me choosing between H2O Wireless and Air Voice Wireless.
Based on your comments I was willing to try Air Voice Wireless and report my experiences, but Air Voice Wireless has a $1 “[URL="https://www.airvoicewireless.com/PlansB.aspx”]monthly maintenance fee[/URL]” which adds $12/year to the cost. So, even though their 6.66¢/MB data charge is lower than H2O’s 10¢/MB data charge, the monthly maintenance fee is likely to eat that difference.
Based on this, I’ve ordered an H2O Wireless SIM, and I’ll report how well it works. At $10 per 90 days that works out at about $41/year, so if it works well, that’s a lot better than the other options.
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tomsax
Member
Hi Stuart,
I saw you were at WWDC, but missed my chance to say hello.
I just checked my H20 balance. I've been using it for 33 days and my balance has dropped $3.55. So the $10 probably won't last 90 days for me, but I do a fair amount of texting. I'm pretty pleased so far.
I saw you were at WWDC, but missed my chance to say hello.
I just checked my H20 balance. I've been using it for 33 days and my balance has dropped $3.55. So the $10 probably won't last 90 days for me, but I do a fair amount of texting. I'm pretty pleased so far.
I, too, was late to the game because I did not want to give AT&T any more money. However, smorgasbord offered his old OVMS, which was replaced by the newer version in his car, and suggested that I follow the recommendation in the OVMS documents to use the GeoSIM Standard card from the UK with an initial cost of £14.99 including £10 Call Credit, plus £3.50 for shipping. Curiously, the initial balance after signup was £15.00 and the total billed was £18.50, converted to $30.59. I presume that the last £4.99 or £5.00 of the balance can't be used for calls or data. There is an annual renewal fee of £4.99, so I'll see next April what that does to the account balance.
The text fee is somewhat high at £0.17 and we did need to use some text commands to get the device set up, so the total spent in April was £2.52. However, I don't plan to use the text mode at all, only data, which is very cheap, typically 1 or 2 pence per session as shown on the call detail list for my account on their web page. During the month of May I used 68 data sessions for a total of £0.85 including one outlier on May 31 at £0.16. I'm waiting to see if something similar occurs on June 30.
So far in June I have used 90 sessions for a total of £0.92 (some result in 0 bytes and no charge; these might be failed connections). In June there have been 9 days with no data sessions at all, while on June 23, while we were driving home to Sunnyvale from Santa Barbara with two charging stops, there were 15 data sessions, each costing £0.01. The total duration of those sessions was 95777 seconds, which is more than a day, so some of them overlap.
The text fee is somewhat high at £0.17 and we did need to use some text commands to get the device set up, so the total spent in April was £2.52. However, I don't plan to use the text mode at all, only data, which is very cheap, typically 1 or 2 pence per session as shown on the call detail list for my account on their web page. During the month of May I used 68 data sessions for a total of £0.85 including one outlier on May 31 at £0.16. I'm waiting to see if something similar occurs on June 30.
So far in June I have used 90 sessions for a total of £0.92 (some result in 0 bytes and no charge; these might be failed connections). In June there have been 9 days with no data sessions at all, while on June 23, while we were driving home to Sunnyvale from Santa Barbara with two charging stops, there were 15 data sessions, each costing £0.01. The total duration of those sessions was 95777 seconds, which is more than a day, so some of them overlap.
I ordered my 1¢ H2O SIM on Tuesday; it arrived on Friday, much quicker than the Amazon estimate.
I set it up my OVMS today. Total time was about 90 minutes to:
- Open SIM package
- Activate SIM using an old phone
- Register at Open Vehicles
- Open OVMS package
- Install SIM in OVMS
- Connect OVMS to my 2008 Roadster 1.5
- Set up via SMS
- Install and configure smartphone apps on both Android and iOS
Permanent installation of the antenna will wait for another day.
Yes this caught me too. It silenty truncated my 12-character password down to 10 characters, and then wouldn’t let me log on with the 12-character password. Clicking the “forgot password” link emailed the truncated password to me.
Some minor feedback on the manual for markwj:
Page 5: OVMS uses Mini-SIM not Full-size SIM. A Full-size SIM is credit-card sized — that’s what you have if you don’t pop your nano/micro/mini SIM out of its plastic carrier. Phones used to have a slot for this credit-card sized SIM!
Page 14: “You may want to hide *a* light with your finger”
Page 16: “When you eventually see a solid GREEN light, your OVMS Module is ready to receive and send Text Messages”
Actually at this stage you get two green blinks, because GSM is ready but you’ve not yet send the SMS commands to configure GPRS.
I also saw 5 green blinks (GPRS Network initialization) and 7 red blinks (GPRS Network initialization failed) too, but I decided to press on regardless and try sending the SMS commands to configure it, and everything worked fine.
Page 18: “Write it down in the space on page 6 of this manua.” (missing “l” at the end)
Thanks to Mark and all the others who worked to create OVMS.
Mark77a
Member
Just installed in UK#335 with GeoSim :biggrin:
Installation and setting up ALL went together like a dream.
... this is an awesome addition to the roadster.
HUGE thanks to all you OVMS [volunteer] guys !!
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hear hear !!
Installation and setting up ALL went together like a dream.
... this is an awesome addition to the roadster.
HUGE thanks to all you OVMS [volunteer] guys !!
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hear hear !!
I found that I misunderstood some of the GeoSIM details, so here is a correction:
The rounding up of £14.99 to £15.00 is still unexplained. Support says, "This is possibly a rounding error. I will look in to it." However, I now understand that the call credit balance is stated in US$ not GB£ (for all customers, not just those of us in the US), and that GeoSIM uses a fixed conversion rate of £1.00 = $1.50, so the initial call credit is $15.00.
The correct text fee is $0.17 and the data fee has been 1 or 2 cents per call. There was no outlier on June 30. I'm still not certain which carrier and profile I am using, and the cost varies significantly among them. I thought it was AT&T, but when I try to recalculate the data call charges for myself, the closest match to the reported charges is T-Mobile at $0.20 per MB in increments of 10kB and with a minimum of $0.01 per call.
There were three data calls overlapped on one day during the trip, but I think that was an aberration. Normally there is one call in progress all the time except when the OVMS is unable to reach a cell tower. When the car is idle, a single call may continue for days. However, when driving, the connection breaks and new connections are established. Since the data rate is so low, the long call may only cost 1 cent, yet each of the several calls while driving also costs 1 cent. If users really want to minimize the cell charges, perhaps OVMS should have an option to not call while driving. That would preclude the location tracking function, though.
The rounding up of £14.99 to £15.00 is still unexplained. Support says, "This is possibly a rounding error. I will look in to it." However, I now understand that the call credit balance is stated in US$ not GB£ (for all customers, not just those of us in the US), and that GeoSIM uses a fixed conversion rate of £1.00 = $1.50, so the initial call credit is $15.00.
The correct text fee is $0.17 and the data fee has been 1 or 2 cents per call. There was no outlier on June 30. I'm still not certain which carrier and profile I am using, and the cost varies significantly among them. I thought it was AT&T, but when I try to recalculate the data call charges for myself, the closest match to the reported charges is T-Mobile at $0.20 per MB in increments of 10kB and with a minimum of $0.01 per call.
There were three data calls overlapped on one day during the trip, but I think that was an aberration. Normally there is one call in progress all the time except when the OVMS is unable to reach a cell tower. When the car is idle, a single call may continue for days. However, when driving, the connection breaks and new connections are established. Since the data rate is so low, the long call may only cost 1 cent, yet each of the several calls while driving also costs 1 cent. If users really want to minimize the cell charges, perhaps OVMS should have an option to not call while driving. That would preclude the location tracking function, though.
A short note on GPRS and 'connections'.
While SMS is a 'connectionless' protocol (you get charged per SMS), GPRS requires a connection to be established between the device (OVMS, phone, whatever) and the provider. A GPRS connection is something like a VPN - you establish the connection and then it stays open (allowing data to travel in both directions) until you tear it down (or some network error causes it to be torn down). In theory, the connection will survive a cellular tower switch (so it will stay open while you drive around). In practice, if you drive through a dead zone with poor/no cellular connectivity, the connection may timeout and be torn down by the provider - in such cases, you would have to reconnect when you get back to an area of good coverage.
Cellular providers don't charge for the GPRS connection, but they do charge for data transferred over that connection and they do charge a minimum amount of data per connection.
The annoying thing is that the reason a connection is torn down is invariably because of the cellular provider's poor network coverage - and they reward such poor coverage by charging you a minimum data charge for the connection torn down by their crappy network. Such is life.
The behaviour of OVMS is that it first tries to establish a good cellular link (the famous "COPS" shown by 6 flashing green lights). Once the cellular link is stable, it tried to establish and maintain a GPRS connection (so it can tell the server/apps about car status, but equally important so apps can send commands back to the car over the connection). If it can't establish a GPRS connection, it has an exponential backoff algorithm where it will delay for longer and longer times before trying again.
Without the GPRS connection to the OVMS server, the apps would have no way of contacting the module (to start/stop charge, unlock doors, enquire on updated status, etc). Hence, we try to keep it up all the time.
While SMS is a 'connectionless' protocol (you get charged per SMS), GPRS requires a connection to be established between the device (OVMS, phone, whatever) and the provider. A GPRS connection is something like a VPN - you establish the connection and then it stays open (allowing data to travel in both directions) until you tear it down (or some network error causes it to be torn down). In theory, the connection will survive a cellular tower switch (so it will stay open while you drive around). In practice, if you drive through a dead zone with poor/no cellular connectivity, the connection may timeout and be torn down by the provider - in such cases, you would have to reconnect when you get back to an area of good coverage.
Cellular providers don't charge for the GPRS connection, but they do charge for data transferred over that connection and they do charge a minimum amount of data per connection.
The annoying thing is that the reason a connection is torn down is invariably because of the cellular provider's poor network coverage - and they reward such poor coverage by charging you a minimum data charge for the connection torn down by their crappy network. Such is life.
The behaviour of OVMS is that it first tries to establish a good cellular link (the famous "COPS" shown by 6 flashing green lights). Once the cellular link is stable, it tried to establish and maintain a GPRS connection (so it can tell the server/apps about car status, but equally important so apps can send commands back to the car over the connection). If it can't establish a GPRS connection, it has an exponential backoff algorithm where it will delay for longer and longer times before trying again.
Without the GPRS connection to the OVMS server, the apps would have no way of contacting the module (to start/stop charge, unlock doors, enquire on updated status, etc). Hence, we try to keep it up all the time.