Superchargers visited 3.0

[PLUS EV]

Tableau tips. When you interact with a map, a menu bar will show up in the top left corner of the map. The bottom item is an arrow that, when clicked, exposes a tray allowing you to select the behavior of your fingers or mouse actions. You can select to zoom, move, or select. Eventually, I'll build some maps visualizations that allow you to select on the map, which will then filter lists or other displays. For example, I'd like to build a map that links to a dynamic leaderboard. In that case, when you filter or select on the map, the leaderboard will dynamically adapt to what is displayed. Right now, selecting objects on the maps don't do anything.

View attachment 356281

I think the default for finger or mouse should be to move the map. Instead it seems to be to make some type of rectangle which appears to be fairly useless As it is, moving the map is somewhat difficult.

 

[David99]

I think the default for finger or mouse should be to move the map. Instead it seems to be to make some type of rectangle which appears to be fairly useless As it is, moving the map is somewhat difficult.

Agreed. Moving the map should be the default if possible. But I'm super happy and excited with this new setup. Pretty awesome! Great work! Thanks!

 

[JSergeant]

A couple of questions for everyone, particularly @tes-s and @theflyer:

- Do we need to keep columns L and M in the Superchargers tab? These are the links to Tesla.com and the TMC thread for each Supercharger. Initially I thought the links had been lost because the pop-up link wasn't working, but it's just that the sheet is now so slow. The links are not copying in correctly in the new Supercharge.info format, so it is some extra work to put them in properly. Does anyone actually use these? If not, I propose we delete these two columns.

- If we do this, I propose then using column L to show a Status date for the change of Status (i.e. it would show the date when the entry is added to Supercharge.info, then the date when it changes to Construction)

What do you think?

 

[juliusa]

I'm hoping we can find a way to get that data from supercharge.info in the future so we can import it to the visualizations. They did transfer over in the old supercharge.info format; the new format with the three links in a single column does not copy over well.

We can add more columns - though my hope was at some point to pull all the supercharger data from supercharge.info and not have to maintain anything other than "visit" data for the game. So if stalls get added, gps location gets tweaked, status goes from permit to construction, or any other change happens it would be reflected in our data. Fortunately it is pretty static so manual updates are not that burdensome.

I am planning on doing a reconciliation between our data and supercharge.info at some point - interested to see how synchronized they really are.

 

[Darren S]

I use those links in the location listing but 99% of the time it is the link to the TMC Forum thread. I very rarely click on the Tesla "Find Us" link or the Google map link.

If we want to keep dates for an entry then it should be all the dates: Permit date, Construction date, Open date, Closed date. I'm sure at some point it will be helpful to have these dates available.

For example, I tried to find last night when Sasmania visited Lyndhurst and Bethesda (both are listed as 'Closed' now) but they don't exist on Supercharge.info or Plugshare so I had to search TMC globally for those entries and find a rough date when it was no longer available. Same with any other closed or moved sites (Wausau and Aurora for example). It doesn't happen often but trying to go into the historical records right now is proving a bit difficult.

I also try to think about the ease of adding updated info to our sheet from Supercharge.info. The web address link is not maintained when pasted from the web page to Excel. It keeps the format (blue text) but the link is lost. The 'full' data (JSON version) from supercharge.info would be the best place to have the web address embedded so perhaps someone can ask Blueshift if he can add that to the full dataset? It has other info not on the webpage data table so it should be possible to include other info such as Dates and text-version Web addresses. In fact, there is a column labeled "urlDiscuss" and is either TRUE or FALSE so if it is TRUE then it could have the URL otherwise it could be FALSE.

 

[theflyer]

Agreed. Moving the map should be the default if possible. But I'm super happy and excited with this new setup. Pretty awesome! Great work! Thanks!

To the best of my knowledge, I cannot change that default behavior. If I can ever build more dynamic dashboards for each competitor, a selection box would allow you to select various locations and have it change other visualizations. For instance, you could select a group of supercharger locations and get a leaderboard visualization just for those locations.

 

[juliusa]

Visualizations are by year!!

 

[theflyer]

I think the default for finger or mouse should be to move the map. Instead it seems to be to make some type of rectangle which appears to be fairly useless As it is, moving the map is somewhat difficult.

After using my Tableau page this weekend for some SC hunting, I think I'll change my map to show the "Not yet visited" dots by default so when I go to the site, that's what I'll see. On the road, they are the most important and I hated having to turn off the years and turn on the "not yet visited" every time I went to the link. Clearly, Tableau only works okay on a smartphone but not great. There were several times I got the display into a configuration where I couldn't access the filter options.

 

[Bighorn]

Visualizations are by year!!
View attachment 357709

Welcome to November!

 

[juliusa]

I think I'll change my map to show the "Not yet visited" dots by default so when I go to the site, that's what I'll see.

If you do that, may as well also turn on the "Construction" ones too. There are not that many, and you don't want to get back from a trip only to find out a supercharger had opened on/near your route and you missed it...

Some people may like it the way it is now. Perhaps it depends on wanting to know where you've been vs where you're going. Or, it could be based on the number of superchargers you've been to - if you've been to more than half you may want to see what remains; less than half see where you've been.

 

[Bighorn]

I think many of us value looking forward moreso than looking back. It would be nice if the phone version allowed an easier toggle to an unvisited charger map, along with impending openings.

Not sure why the supercharger map is just populating a handful of CA chargers this morning. Oh, I see why—the day of opening slider is defaulting to 2012.

 

[David99]

How can I see my data on the map?

 

[juliusa]

We might be reaching the limits of what the Google Sheet can handle - I'm adding the new Superchargers from the last 3 days and the sheet is responding like molasses.

I think it is better now. The big thing I did was delete the 7000 rows in the Supercharger tab that we were not using. But we have a lot of arrayformulas...

I updated Parsippany and added Paulsboro - no delay.

Do we need to keep columns L and M in the Superchargers tab?

We probably don't need them any more. They used to be two different columns in the "data" view on supercharge.info, and have been combined into a single column now that is not particularly useful to us the way it copies over.

@BlueShift was nice enough to give us an export of the urls for the Tesla and Discussion links, which have now been put into two new columns. I'm hoping @theflyer will be able to make use of them somehow in the visualizations. We can manually update them for adds and changes going forward.

Status date for the change of Status (i.e. it would show the date when the entry is added to Supercharge.info, then the date when it changes to Construction)

What do you think we would do with that date? We could do it, but I hesitate to add another field to maintain unless we have a good reason. The status history is in supercharge.info - I created a new tab in the spreadsheet for the US supercharger history from supercharge.info data temporarily for illustration purposes. Gets to @Darren S point that we need more than one date column to capture the data. The only thing missing from supercharge.info is closed superchargers - but we can figure out something to deal with those.

 

[Darren S]

<snip> What do you think we would do with that date? We could do it, but I hesitate to add another field to maintain unless we have a good reason. The status history is in supercharge.info - I created a new tab in the spreadsheet for the US supercharger history from supercharge.info data temporarily for illustration purposes. Gets to @Darren S point that we need more than one date column to capture the data. The only thing missing from supercharge.info is closed superchargers - but we can figure out something to deal with those.

I had forgotten that the historical info for a location is listed in Supercharge.info on the 'Changes' tab and this tracks the date when a site is Added, and changes to Permit and/or Construction, and changes to Open. Once we have a site added to the Spreadsheet then any future lookup where it doesn't exist in Supercharge.info means it has been removed (i.e. Closed) and there might not be an exact date on it but it should be easy to narrow it down to a week or two at worse.

This is helpful for a future validation of someone's visit date and if it was prior to a site opening or after it was closed. There might not be a need for it just yet but I can think of a few scenarios where it would be helpful. Possibly even a visualization of how many sites were in Construction status or Open status in 2017 or Q3 2017 vs how many someone visited that year or that Quarter.

 

[JSergeant]

What do you think we would do with that date? We could do it, but I hesitate to add another field to maintain unless we have a good reason.

I would find it useful for trip planning purposes. Knowing when it changed to construction gives a sense of whether it is likely to open soon or not. If it only changed to construction last week we know it will be a while. If it changed 2 months ago there is a chance it might open soon so I would monitor it more closely on a trip.

 

[juliusa]

What if we changed the "Open Date" to "Status Date", and that would be the permit date, construction start date, or open date depending on the supercharger status?

I have found the time since the date a supercharger started construction in supercharge.info is a poor predictor of when the supercharger will actually open - it varies from 1 day to 10 months. I look at the discussion thread to find any that could possibly open during my trip, and monitor the discussion.

Here are the stats for US superchargers for time from construction to open.

Minimum: 0 (yes, this happened!!)
Maximum: 297
Average: 52
Median: 42
Std Deviation: 43

 

[juliusa]

How can I see my data on the map?

We're working on it...

 

[JSergeant]

What if we changed the "Open Date" to "Status Date", and that would be the permit date, construction start date, or open date depending on the supercharger status?

I have found the time since the date a supercharger started construction in supercharge.info is a poor predictor of when the supercharger will actually open - it varies from 1 day to 10 months. I look at the discussion thread to find any that could possibly open during my trip, and monitor the discussion.

Here are the stats for US superchargers for time from construction to open.

Minimum: 0 (yes, this happened!!)
Maximum: 297
Average: 52
Median: 42
Std Deviation: 43

I like the idea of changing the "Open Date" to "Status Date". I had originally thought of that but then thought it might be confusing. But not really I suppose, since we know whether the Status is Open, Construction or Permit. There's certainly no harm in adding it, and it's one more useful indicator. At 6 or 7 weeks from start of Construction we'll know it could open any day (or not!). I do in fact track the threads when I'm on a trip.

 

[Darren S]

I still like the idea of being able to track the dates separately / individually for each status. It might not be a feature or metric at the moment but could be useful down the road as opposed to a single "Status date" field. If all status dates are tracked then the most-recent status and date is always available but if a single field is used then it won't capture prior status dates.

That would mean a separate column for each status (Added, Permit, Construction, Opened, and Closed) but should provide any sort of sorting or filtering or graphing or mapping of it instead of just the most recent status and date. That way instead of seeing a map of ALL locations under Construction and having to click on each dot near D.C. or in Florida there would be a way to show this for this Quarter and last Quarter instead of Lifetime To Date.

As mentioned, if a site has been under Construction or in Permit status for 2 yrs then it is unlikely it will be finished in the next few weeks of planning a trip so I could ignore that but at the moment it isn't possible to filter that out as "date of Construction" is not an option. If D.C. shows 3 in Permit and 2 in Construction in the past 2 Quarters then I'll wait until some of them are open before visiting to grab the lone Open one that I'm missing and will just head across OH for an upcoming trip instead of a small detour to D.C. first.

 

[theflyer]

How can I see my data on the map?

David, if you don't see it by Saturday night, ping me in a Private Message. I might get to it today but more likely this weekend.