A way to monitor charger statuses

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 8:41am #1

If you're planning a longer trip in your EV, it can be difficult to get a good idea of what exactly is happening at the chargers you're thinking of using.

As a way to help, we've created a new way to monitor rapid chargers around Ireland. To make it more convenient than other maps and apps out there, we've taken the approach of grouping intercity routes into Slack channels, so that you can see almost-live information on rapid chargers along the route you're thinking of taking.

Currently, the routes included are:

Dublin to Belfast, Sligo, Castlebar, Galway, Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Rosslare

Limerick to Galway, Cork and Waterford

Galway to Derry

Plus a number of stand-alone Rapid chargers not on one of the routes above.

Right now, the data is for eCars Rapid charge points only (64 of them), but we are working on SCPs and other vendors too. More on that as it develops.

The Slack workspace is in beta at the moment, but to get feedback we have opened a time-limited invitation to anyone looking for early access who is willing to let us know what they think. The usual web etiquette rules apply, so play nice!

If you are interested in checking it out, please click on the invitation link below:

https://join.slack.com/t/evdriversireland/shared_invite/enQtNTAxMTMwNzc5OTExLWYzZGJkNTJkMTg0NzJhOTMxODdjZTAyYzIyNTNmZWQ3YjdlMjUyODIwZWUxYzRjM2Q1NDQ5N2JjYzZjODU3ODc

Gumbo · 11-12-2018 9:05am

Don't these guys get the same data feed that eCars use, so in essence, you are just as well off using the eCar app?

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 9:09am

kceire wrote: »

Don't these guys get the same data feed that eCars use, so in essence, you are just as well off using the eCar app?

At the moment it’s just the eCars data, but more sources will be added soon.

The difference with the Slack channel is that it shows a recent history for the rapid chargers, not just the current status. That can be handy to know.

Plus, having the chargers organized by route means you don’t have to go searching for individual separate ones on the eCars app.

It’s all still in beta, so constructive feedback is very welcome.

Wayne

ELM327 · 11-12-2018 9:25am

Recent history is available in Zap Map.
CP info shows all historical data.

I see no point in yet another app.

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 9:37am

ELM327 wrote: »

Recent history is available in Zap Map.
CP info shows all historical data.

I see no point in yet another app.

Yep, both of those show that info. In 2 separate apps. This is a way to combine it all into one space, presented on a route by route basis, not just individual charge points one at a time.

Have a look at it, and if it’s not for you, then that’s fine.

As before, constructive feedback is welcome. It’s a work in progress, lads, so try it out and let us know what you think after.

ELM327 · 11-12-2018 10:19am

"Constructive feedback is welcome"
or "Constructive feedback is disputed". I think you should decide which it is.

Making another app is not the answer, as demonstrated by the number of great ideas in theory (chargebump comes to mind) which don't pan out in reality

I think the best use for this idea - which is a great one, and already exists in plugshare - would be to collaborate with Zap Map and get the functionality added to an existing app with user penetration rather than trying to get another information source off the ground.

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 10:32am

ELM327 wrote: »

"Constructive feedback is welcome"
or "Constructive feedback is disputed". I think you should decide which it is.

Making another app is not the answer, as demonstrated by the number of great ideas in theory (chargebump comes to mind) which don't pan out in reality

I think the best use for this idea - which is a great one, and already exists in plugshare - would be to collaborate with Zap Map and get the functionality added to an existing app with user penetration rather than trying to get another information source off the ground.

Ok, thanks.

I'm not disputing your feedback at all. I was simply replying to it to make the point that what we're doing is different to both zap-map and cpinfo. It's not groundbreaking, don't get me wrong, but I think it's handy to have the chargers presented by routes, that's all. It just makes it easier to consume that data.

I don't think effectively saying "this is already out there, don't bother" is constructive feedback, to be honest. However, this:

I think the best use for this idea - which is a great one, and already exists in plugshare - would be to collaborate with Zap Map and get the functionality added to an existing app with user penetration rather than trying to get another information source off the ground

is constructive, thanks. We're working in the background on this. Right now all the info is "out there", but not in a single place, and that's what we're aiming for.

KCross · 11-12-2018 11:21am

waynegalway wrote: »

If you're planning a longer trip in your EV, it can be difficult to get a good idea of what exactly is happening at the chargers you're thinking of using.

As a way to help, we've created a new way to monitor rapid chargers around Ireland. To make it more convenient than other maps and apps out there, we've taken the approach of grouping intercity routes into Slack channels, so that you can see almost-live information on rapid chargers along the route you're thinking of taking.

Currently, the routes included are:
Dublin to Belfast, Sligo, Castlebar, Galway, Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Rosslare

Limerick to Galway, Cork and Waterford

Galway to Derry

Plus a number of stand-alone Rapid chargers not on one of the routes above.

One of the main advantages of Slack is that history is maintained. Thats not much use though in the context which you have outlined, which is for long journeys. Am I missing the point of it?

If Im travelling from Cork to Dublin all I want to know is the status right now. I dont care if it was occupied an hour ago.

So, really, all I'd need is the latest status and thats available on the eCars app.

I also found it a little difficult to find the chargers I wanted based on your routes method. As you said, you have some standalone chargers (e.g. Bandon) so I had to search a little harder to find that. As you add more chargers it will get even harder as I dont know what you consider to be a standalone charger or a route. So, do I search for iCork-Bandon or iBandon. I found myself doing too much scrolling.

When looking for the waterford charger I was looking for a Cork Waterford route but you have it under Limerick-Waterford. Thats not intuitive, to me anyway. Basically the routes method requires prior knowledge of how you have designed the channels.

In reality I just want GPS based coordinates to zoom me into the area Im in right now and show me the rapids near me. Again, the eCars app does this.

Positive side, the slack updates are easy to read and it allows you to get a more accurate view of when a charger became occupied(which is useful to know), but as we know that data isnt always accurate from eCars data, but it is useful nonetheless.

Overall, I'm not quite getting what USP the Slack channels give me. Maybe I've misinterpreted it, but there's my feedback anyway.

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 11:45am

KCross wrote: »

One of the main advantages of Slack is that history is maintained. Thats not much use though in the context which you have outlined, which is for long journeys. Am I missing the point of it?

If Im travelling from Cork to Dublin all I want to know is the status right now. I dont care if it was occupied an hour ago.

So, really, all I'd need is the latest status and thats available on the eCars app.

I also found it a little difficult to find the chargers I wanted based on your routes method. As you said, you have some standalone chargers (e.g. Bandon) so I had to search a little harder to find that. As you add more chargers it will get even harder as I dont know what you consider to be a standalone charger or a route. So, do I search for iCork-Bandon or iBandon. I found myself doing too much scrolling.

When looking for the waterford charger I was looking for a Cork Waterford route but you have it under Limerick-Waterford. Thats not intuitive, to me anyway. Basically the routes method requires prior knowledge of how you have designed the channels.

In reality I just want GPS based coordinates to zoom me into the area Im in right now and show me the rapids near me. Again, the eCars app does this.

Positive side, the slack updates are easy to read and it allows you to get a more accurate view of when a charger became occupied(which is useful to know), but as we know that data isnt always accurate from eCars data, but it is useful nonetheless.

Overall, I'm not quite getting what USP the Slack channels give me. Maybe I've misinterpreted it, but there's my feedback anyway.

Thanks! That's great feedback.

I agree, on-boarding and producing a user-guide/FAQ is something we should do, definitely. On it!

I think you've identified another thing that needs to be addressed, such as the missing routes. Yes, Cork-Waterford should be there, and will be added.

It's hard to know about some of the standalone chargers. You mention Bandon as an example. It's not really on a route, as such, by the way we've thought about it.......the attempt being made is to link routes that involve a string of chargers together, and Cork-Bandon as a route would only have a charger on each end (it's not like part of a Cor-Bandon-Skibereen journey for example. But I can see how we've defined a route needs to be clearer and worked on, thanks. I can see how having a Cork-Bandon route (even if it only has a one charger on either end) would work. Thanks. Same can be done for Dublin to Navan, Monaghan, Ashbourne etc.

Joining the dots to make other routes is not a problem, and is a fair request.

The naming convention is just a starting point, but, yes you're right, it could be easier to find the charger you're looking for. We're discussing this at the moment, and as you say, when more chargers come online it could be even more messy. What we're currently thinking of is using different prefixes, so it would be i- for intercity, u- for urban and c- for county. That would make it easier to find what you're looking for, I think.

You mention current status being the main thing, and I agree. Where I think having recent history is useful though, is just to get a sense of how the charger has been behaving. For example, at a charge point over the weekend that wouldn't read my card, I was able to see that it had a pattern of working, not working, going out of contact for about 10 minutes and then becoming available again. Based on that, I knew to hang around for 10 minutes, as it was likely to come back online. But, yes, the current status is the main one you'd be interested in.

No plans to integrate a map just yet, but we're working on data coming in from other sources to add to the eCars data that we're starting out with.

Thanks for taking the time to look at it and get back to me.

unkel · 11-12-2018 11:57am

Howdie Wayne, you just saw me sign up there

I've not used Slack before. And maybe it is me, but it was not at all clear to me how to get to these "routes" in the app

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 12:03pm

unkel wrote: »

Howdie Wayne, you just saw me sign up there

I've not used Slack before. And maybe it is me, but it was not at all clear to me how to get to these "routes" in the app

Fair comment. Were going to do up an FAQ thing today.

But just so you know.....on the left sidebar you will see a subheading called "channels", and the word "channels" is actually a button. If you click on that, you get a list of the available channels, and you can then choose which ones to follow. There are 31 at the moment, but I guess most users will just follow and unfollow the ones they need on an ongoing/temporary basis.

KCross · 11-12-2018 12:28pm

waynegalway wrote: »

Thanks! That's great feedback.

I agree, on-boarding and producing a user-guide/FAQ is something we should do, definitely. On it!

I think you've identified another thing that needs to be addressed, such as the missing routes. Yes, Cork-Waterford should be there, and will be added.

It's hard to know about some of the standalone chargers. You mention Bandon as an example. It's not really on a route, as such, by the way we've thought about it.......the attempt being made is to link routes that involve a string of chargers together, and Cork-Bandon as a route would only have a charger on each end (it's not like part of a Cor-Bandon-Skibereen journey for example. But I can see how we've defined a route needs to be clearer and worked on, thanks. I can see how having a Cork-Bandon route (even if it only has a one charger on either end) would work. Thanks. Same can be done for Dublin to Navan, Monaghan, Ashbourne etc.

Joining the dots to make other routes is not a problem, and is a fair request.

The naming convention is just a starting point, but, yes you're right, it could be easier to find the charger you're looking for. We're discussing this at the moment, and as you say, when more chargers come online it could be even more messy. What we're currently thinking of is using different prefixes, so it would be i- for intercity, u- for urban and c- for county. That would make it easier to find what you're looking for, I think.

You mention current status being the main thing, and I agree. Where I think having recent history is useful though, is just to get a sense of how the charger has been behaving. For example, at a charge point over the weekend that wouldn't read my card, I was able to see that it had a pattern of working, not working, going out of contact for about 10 minutes and then becoming available again. Based on that, I knew to hang around for 10 minutes, as it was likely to come back online. But, yes, the current status is the main one you'd be interested in.

No plans to integrate a map just yet, but we're working on data coming in from other sources to add to the eCars data that we're starting out with.

Thanks for taking the time to look at it and get back to me.

i'm not sold on your "routes" idea. Its too rigid. People dont drive and search for chargers in this way. They search based on "whats near me".

For example, if I want to drive Cork to Carlow. What route do I enter.... Cork-Dublin? Maybe I want to go a combination of M and N roads that you have no route for! Do I then have to consume all the messages about chargers I've no intention of using that day. You cant add a route for every possibility.

What might be useful, although it would be a ridiculous number of channels, would be to have a channel per charger and you could join to the ones you know you will be using that day and then you will get the notifications on those as you are driving along without having to reload the eCars app, zoom in again and turn off the SCP's etc. That would have some value but would people have the patience for joining the channels.... maybe, maybe not.

It would require pre-planning the route, but thats the use case you've outlined anyway as you said its for long journeys.

I dont think the routes idea will fly. If you are sticking with Slack you need to focus on what Slack's strengths are and tailor to it which is really the wrong way to be developing an app.... you should have the use case first and then pick the platform best suited. I think you are putting a square peg into a round hole.

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 12:46pm

KCross wrote: »

i'm not sold on your "routes" idea. Its too rigid. People dont drive and search for chargers in this way. They search based on "whats near me".

For example, if I want to drive Cork to Carlow. What route do I enter.... Cork-Dublin? Maybe I want to go a combination of M and N roads that you have no route for! Do I then have to consume all the messages about chargers I've no intention of using that day. You cant add a route for every possibility.

What might be useful, although it would be a ridiculous number of channels, would be to have a channel per charger and you could join to the ones you know you will be using that day and then you will get the notifications on those as you are driving along without having to reload the eCars app, zoom in again and turn off the SCP's etc. That would have some value but would people have the patience for joining the channels.... maybe, maybe not.

It would require pre-planning the route, but thats the use case you've outlined anyway as you said its for long journeys.

I dont think the routes idea will fly. If you are sticking with Slack you need to focus on what Slack's strengths are and tailor to it which is really the wrong way to be developing an app.... you should have the use case first and then pick the platform best suited. I think you are putting a square peg into a round hole.

Thanks again. You've put some thought into this, which I appreciate.

You're right, we cannot account every conceivable route, which is why we started by describing the main routes between the towns/cities. We had to start somewhere! When it comes to the rapid chargers, the routes are fairly well defined, but when SCPs are included, we'll have to keep it easy to follow.

Would the convention of having three categories, for urban, intercity and county-based groups be better, do you think? That way you could narrow down the channels to show the chargers you're interested in if the grouping by route that we've devised doesn't suit.

KCross · 11-12-2018 12:51pm

waynegalway wrote: »

Thanks again. You've put some thought into this, which I appreciate.

You're right, we cannot account every conceivable route, which is why we started by describing the main routes between the towns/cities. We had to start somewhere! When it comes to the rapid chargers, the routes are fairly well defined, but when SCPs are included, we'll have to keep it easy to follow.

Would the convention of having three categories, for urban, intercity and county-based groups be better, do you think? That way you could narrow down the channels to show the chargers you're interested in if the grouping by route that we've devised doesn't suit.

If you overlay a map on the chargers and click on the ones you want to "join" or be notified about in Slack. Thats all you'd need.

So, I want to go from A to B, which can be any combination of M, N or L roads and can include FCP's and SCP's and can also include multiple networks.

I see what chargers are on the route I'm travelling today. I click on each one in turn (that I'm interested in) and it auto-joins me to the appropriate channel for each charger and I'm done and set off on my journey.

I then get all the notifications for the chargers on my route that is specific to me that day.

Slack has an API so I'd imagine its do-able but, imo, you need to overlay a map and make the thing visual for people.

Non-techies wont have a clue what Slack is.

Zenith74 · 11-12-2018 1:25pm

FWIW I would regularly check all the chargers on a route in PlugShare to see if anybody has commented about issues in the last day or two, and to get a general sense of reliability (they give a score based on any ‘failed’ comments I guess). So I can see the purpose of your tool OP.

I think the challenge (and sorry to be yet another Debbie Downer, been there!) is that this kind of thing is only useful when you get to a critical mass of commenters actually putting in feedback. And this is hard to fix! You want to make it as easy as possible so hopefully enough people will do it, and even in an app as useful as PlugShare (which I’d be using to plan a route, find chargers, see which work for my car etc) you still only see a check-in every two-three weeks at the likes of the Naas charger which sees two-three people charge per hour (nearly :-) ).

The more we concentrate activity into one medium, the better to help us reach that critical mass. Given that a tool like PlugShare is kind of essential for an EV driver using public charging, that’s where I’d prefer to focus. Or ZapMap of course...

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 1:59pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

FWIW I would regularly check all the chargers on a route in PlugShare to see if anybody has commented about issues in the last day or two, and to get a general sense of reliability (they give a score based on any ‘failed’ comments I guess). So I can see the purpose of your tool OP.

I think the challenge (and sorry to be yet another Debbie Downer, been there!) is that this kind of thing is only useful when you get to a critical mass of commenters actually putting in feedback. And this is hard to fix! You want to make it as easy as possible so hopefully enough people will do it, and even in an app as useful as PlugShare (which I’d be using to plan a route, find chargers, see which work for my car etc) you still only see a check-in every two-three weeks at the likes of the Naas charger which sees two-three people charge per hour (nearly :-) ).

The more we concentrate activity into one medium, the better to help us reach that critical mass. Given that a tool like PlugShare is kind of essential for an EV driver using public charging, that’s where I’d prefer to focus. Or ZapMap of course...

Thanks.

Just so you know, the data in the slack channel is automated, it doesn’t require user input or comments. Although, users can comment in the channels if they wish.

Zenith74 · 11-12-2018 2:06pm

waynegalway wrote: »

Thanks.

Just so you know, the data in the slack channel is automated, it doesn’t require user input or comments. Although, users can comment in the channels if they wish.

Yep saw that thanks. Personally I use peoples’ comments as a double-check of the eCars data. I’ve also been communicating with PlugShare recently about getting the eCars data into their app, the same as it appears in ZapMap. They do it for other territories so would just need to do the integration...

waynegalway · 11-12-2018 2:25pm

Just by way of clarification:

We're not trying to develop an app. There are plenty of those already.

There are two main objectives with this project:

1. To provide information
2. To offer a separate channel for charge point discussion

1. To provide information
Previous posters have mentioned existing apps/sources, and these are valid points. There is PlugShare, eCars, cpinfo.ie, Zap-Map and ChargeBump. There are pros/cons to each of these, and if you break it down, none of them provide a single point of contact that covers all the bases. Because we're not developing an app, we're not trying to out-do these or in any way take away from them. What we're trying to do is take the best bits of each and combine them into one place. The only "best bit" that we do not have near the top of the to-do list right now is map based route planning, which PlugShare does really well.

Some of these provide live(ish) automated data, some require user input. The live data coming from eCars forms the basis of our live data too (for now). But this will be expanded by integrating other vendors and apps into slack soon (work in progress).

Yes, there are things that need improvement, especially around naming conventions and making it easier to find the data you want, and that will be addressed. To reiterate: we're not developing an app, we're not trying to compete with other apps, we're just volunteering our time to try and make information more presentable and useful. This stems from our own frustrations with what's out there already. It is something we want to get "right", but we're under no illusions that it's "right" right now.

2. To offer a separate channel for charge point discussion
Boards and Facebook were the two most useful resources available to me when I started researching whether an EV was right for me. Some of you may remember my constant questions from about 13 months ago. The info provided by Boards and Facebook was invaluable, and it really helped me get into an EV with my eyes open. I'm thankful for that, and I think it is how everyone should do it.

However, it's very plain to see that charge point queries/discussions are taking up more room on social networks over the past 6-9 months. While the current infrastructure has its problems, there is a risk that potential EV owners could be put off by that type of post. I know it's the reality, and therefore is part of the "eyes open" approach, but I thought it might be a reasonable idea to have a place for existing EV owners to discuss and get info about charge points, to free up space for potential owners to ask questions and see a more positive side to owning an EV. For anyone thinking about an EV who will do all their charging at home, the public network is irrelevant, but that's the prominent thing they might see on social networks.

I hope that helps you to see where this is coming from.

A way to monitor charger statuses

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