2024 - OVMS and MG5

[jhenkins]

Hello!

I am attempting to get the most current information for 2024 together in this thread, so please forgive me for posting yet another "OVMS And MG5" thread.

Firstly, I have an OVMS unit that I have installed into my wife's Nissan Leaf '14 (AZE0) model, and we are immensely pleased with it. So it's based on this that I bought another one to add to my (new to me) 2021 model MG5 SR (49kWh). I've been reading that things are still pretty experimental with the MG5, so I did not expect things to work completely out of the box. Being a Linux user I am quite happy with the experimental nature of the MG5 support, and I am looking forward to opportunities to contribute.

What I have found so far:

Since I have the 2021 EU-spec model, I have observed the "Zombie" mode as described in other threads on the same topic as this one. I have also observed the fact that I have to run the OVMS in manual polling mode, or face the alarm going off. I also experienced the alarm going off when I left an OBD2 Bluetooth dongle plugged in overnight, which was interesting to say the least. I have also read that MG5 support has been moved into the edge firmware, so I have installed the latest version I could find:

3.3.004-117-gd7013460/ota_1/main (build idf v3.3.4-851-gfa4f07fb3b Jun 23 2024 17:00:42)

Before I upgraded to the edge version, I had the latest stable OTA installed. The battery SoC did not report correctly (and in fact it did not do so even after I upgraded to edge). Here follows some photos and screen captures.

Firstly, the dash reports 62% charge:

The next two graphics shows the data from the OVMS app (I used the images for the ZS because we currently do not have MG5 images in the app - I hope to have some ready within the next month). First one shows car details, and the second one the battery percentage:

As we can see, the battery percentage and GOM estimates does not reflect what is visible on the dash photo.

Here are the same info as above as visible in the OVMS web GUI:

The status view echos what is visible in the OVMS app, and the charger metrics view also adds the same details with SoC at 56% instead of 62%. At least the SoH value corresponds to what is visible via an OBD2 dongle and an app like Torque Pro or Car Scanner, so I'm happy about that. Oh, and I noticed that there is an artefact in the header of the charger metrics view that says my car is a ZS EV, which probably points to the fact that the ZS EV files were used as a starting point for the MG5.

My first question for this thread is how do I get the battery display to be accurate? It would be great if the GOM could also be tweaked, but I suspect that the GOM estimates are correctly calculated from the wrong battery SoC value. Any ideas, please?

Thanks in advance!
Jan Henkins

PS: Something I've forgotten to do before I posted the above: I will get the SoC value as reported by Torque and/or Car Scanner, and append it to this message. It would be interesting to see whether that is similar to the value as reported on the dash as opposed to the other value reported by OVMS.

 

[Coulomb]

There are usually two SoC values, display and real. The display SiC is adjusted to read 0-100% for the usable battery capacity, i.e. the top and bottom buffers are removed. The car will be showing display SoC, I'm pretty sure that OVMS is fetching real SoC. When you get Car Scanner etc running, you'll be able to confirm this.

 

[jhenkins]

There are usually two SoC values, display and real. The display SiC is adjusted to read 0-100% for the usable battery capacity, i.e. the top and bottom buffers are removed. The car will be showing display SoC, I'm pretty sure that OVMS is fetching real SoC. When you get Car Scanner etc running, you'll be able to confirm this.

Hi Coulomb,

Yes, you are indeed correct. Here is my current dash SoC:

And here is what Car Scanner displays for the same session:

Even here there are two different state of charge values being displayed. Interesting, but rather confusing for a noob like me. My OVMS unit is on the bench at the minute, so I will re-do the check tomorrow with both OVMS and Car Scanner.

This all seems to be in order so far - once the different SoC display values are understood, all seems good. The next adventure would be to get an understanding on how OVMS with the latest edge firmware behaves with charging. I also noticed that there is a plugin for A Better Route Planner which simply screams to be tested.

 

[bbuchan]

Hi Jan, did you have any issues setting up the OVMS for MG5? I've got mine set up, receiving status updates on the OVMS itself, but not receiving any SOC data. Did you have to do anything outside the guides to get it working? I've tried it with manual polling enabled, and disabled, and whilst charging and driving, but nothing coming through. Just wondered if I'd missed something, or if the connection is perhaps faulty.

Thanks
Bruce

 

[GreyPeter]

Hello Bruce and Jan. I am sorry but I missed Jan’s original post. I am happy to help out here. I haven’t done any work lately on the MG5 code as I had nobody to test things for me. If you are both able to do some testing for me, I am happy to help out. I personally own an MG4 so have done all the work on the MG4 code. The MG4 code is very similar to the MG5 code and there are a lot of improvements that I think could be ported over to the MG5. The MG4 uses a different polling location for SOC and I believe that will also work for the MG5. The MG4 also starts polling automatically when driving and stops polling again when the car is locked, Please let me know if you are willing to test some builds for me.

 

[GreyPeter]

Hi Jan, did you have any issues setting up the OVMS for MG5? I've got mine set up, receiving status updates on the OVMS itself, but not receiving any SOC data. Did you have to do anything outside the guides to get it working? I've tried it with manual polling enabled, and disabled, and whilst charging and driving, but nothing coming through. Just wondered if I'd missed something, or if the connection is perhaps faulty.

Thanks
Bruce

Hi Bruce, sorry to hear that you are having problems. Firstly the car needs to be turned on or charging before you turn polls on. If the 12V is low, the polls are automatically turned off. When the polls are on the SoC is polled every 30 seconds so it may take awhile to update. Are you using the App or a web browser? What do you mean by receiving status updates? Is the V2 Server connected?

Regards,
Peter

 

[dragon2611]

I have also observed the fact that I have to run the OVMS in manual polling mode, or face the alarm going off

Before I stopped using it (because an update bricked it and I couldn't be bothered to fix it) I hooked the is being flat bedded GPS event to start polling if the car was being driven.

If I could find somewhere better to mount the unit I might be tempted to set it up again, but I had it behind a panel in the centre console so it was a pain to go grab it if I needed to do anything with it.

 

[bbuchan]

Hi Bruce, sorry to hear that you are having problems. Firstly the car needs to be turned on or charging before you turn polls on. If the 12V is low, the polls are automatically turned off. When the polls are on the SoC is polled every 30 seconds so it may take awhile to update. Are you using the App or a web browser? What do you mean by receiving status updates? Is the V2 Server connected?

Regards,
Peter

Hi Peter, thanks for getting back to me and apologies for the delay (missed the notification). Turned out to actually be a faulty OVMS. New one installed tonight and receiving some data through. Checked the API and seems to be pulling through majority of the data which is great. Still having some issues with polling and alarms but think i have a solution that I can try tomorrow. Happy to help with build testing, you may have to talk me through it though.

 

[GreyPeter]

Hi Peter, thanks for getting back to me and apologies for the delay (missed the notification). Turned out to actually be a faulty OVMS. New one installed tonight and receiving some data through. Checked the API and seems to be pulling through majority of the data which is great. Still having some issues with polling and alarms but think i have a solution that I can try tomorrow. Happy to help with build testing, you may have to talk me through it though.

Hi, I am glad that things are working for you now. I should start doing some more work on OVMS soon and will let you know when I need some testing done.

 

[jhenkins]

Hi Jan, did you have any issues setting up the OVMS for MG5? I've got mine set up, receiving status updates on the OVMS itself, but not receiving any SOC data. Did you have to do anything outside the guides to get it working? I've tried it with manual polling enabled, and disabled, and whilst charging and driving, but nothing coming through. Just wondered if I'd missed something, or if the connection is perhaps faulty.

Thanks
Bruce

Hello Bruce,

Sorry for the massive delay in replying, life intervened and my OVMS unit was left on the bench until now. The only non-standard thing I did was to install the above-mentioned firmware build. After that I selected what seemed to be the correct vehicle, and I get all the SoC data and other interesting metrics - I did not have to do any strange fiddling with settings.

Regarding status updates - I only managed to get status changes once polling has been enabled. With polling disabled the OVMS unit seemingly remembers the last recorded information and display that until it gets new polling information. I will revisit my OVMS unit again next weekend (pending me finishing up some defered home DIY bits and bobs first), and see if I can get a handle on how things are at the moment.

Cheerio,
Jan

Edit: I missed your report of a faulty OVMS before I wrote the above reply, I'm glad you managed to get things going.

Hi, I am glad that things are working for you now. I should start doing some more work on OVMS soon and will let you know when I need some testing done.

Hello Peter,

I'll be re-installing my OVMS module soon, so you'll have another willing alpha/beta tester!

Cheers,
Jan

 

[Pebblefeline]

Just ordered an ovms

Will be very happy to test things.

Will let you know when it arrives

J

 

[Pebblefeline]

Hi all

I wondered if I could request a little help

I have set up ovms and all is connected and working.
I am not getting any metric on charging, the ac charger shows being off while charging and am not sure why. Any advice?

I have tried with manual polling turning the polls on in the console and with auto polling. No difference so far.

Quick update, it seems like it got some values and then can’t update further and is locked to them.

 

[bbuchan]

Hi Pepplefeline, did you get this working? To be honest i haven't used OVMS for monitoring charging, only loading the battery % into the charger. Auto polling always triggers the alarm for me when the car is charging, so tend not to use it.

 

[Pebblefeline]

I sort of did but then ran into a freezing issue which wouldn’t go away.

It would grab the data once and would then freeze until it was factory reset.

I think the module I had was possibly faulty