[PeterPerkins]

I've started this thread to document development and testing of my OBDIIC&C display device for the CRZ.

This popular device has been used extensively in the other Honda IMA cars for over ten years and has constantly evolved over that time.
It basically plugs into the OBDII port in the car and talks to it over the various CAN & K communications lines and gathers information.
It then parses and display that information or allows you to adjust various settings or functions and clear codes.

The device is incredibly well documented on numerous threads on Insight central and on my YT channel.
As I recently joined the fold and acquired a UK Nimh CRZ and converted it to Lithium, it was time to update the device to make it work with our cars.

Now firstly the OBDIIC&C is not a replacement for a cheap Honda HDS Clone tool (Which I also own)
The clone tools are incredibly useful for troubleshooting and diagnosis, but terribly clunky and impossible to use in the way you can use an OBDIIC&C.

The OBDIIC&C offers a unique real time view of the IMA world by gathering the information into a simple useable display.
It also allows access to information and functions that are simply not available to the millions of cheap generic e-bay OBDII devices.

Operation can be as simple as turn it on and go, as you might have already seen from the videos I have posted on the lithium conversion thread.

The way forward.

All OBDIIC&C updates discussion and feedback will be posted in this thread.

To develop it further I am asking for a couple of volunteers from the UK & US to test and evaluate prototype devices and new firmware as I develop it.
Thanks to some eager beavers over here I already have two UK owners on board and I am sending out their devices on Monday. (Thanks)

But I do need a couple of US owners in case regional differences in the cars ECU/MCM firmware throws up issues.

Here is the info from my earlier volunteer request.. Please read it carefully before applying to help.

I need people who are keen CRZ drivers/owners, active on the forum, competent with a computer,
and can use a USB PIC programmer (supplied by me) to update the OBDIIC&C display firmware if required.

I will need testers to provide accurate written feedback and comments on firmware and gauge operation, usefulness etc etc.
I'll start a dedicated thread on the forum for the device testing so all the info is in one place and it becomes part of the community archive.

I hand build the OBDIIC&C devices myself so they aren't cheap, and I can't send them out without a deposit to people I don't know personally.
Sorry. I have lost expensive prototype devices like that before.

However the deposit (£150 equivalent) would only be ~50% of the normal purchase price.
The testers would be able to return the OBDIIC&C and programmer at any time for a full refund, or keep it if they wish at the reduced price as a thank you for their help.

Your assistance will highlight issues and bugs, speed up the communities access to new features, and help with diagnosing and maintaining your own personal vehicles.
I can't do everything myself and as you know my Nimh car is in bits with a homegrown lithium pack in the rear, so it doesn't really represent a standard Nimh setup.

I would ask people to contact me via e-mail at 150mpg<<<<<<<<<<<<<@>>>>>>>>>>>>>>gmail.com in the first instance if interested.

Thanks in advance for your help and support. Peter UK.

This video gives some info on the firmware upgrading process for my PIC based devices.

The link shows the PIC programmer website and offers info and downloads for the various operating systems.

iCP02 - USB Microchip PIC Programmer (3.3V/5.0V, with ICSP & PICkit 2)

USB ICSP Microchip PIC Programmer used to program 900+ Microchip PIC10F, PIC12F, PIC16F, PIC18F, PIC24F, dsPIC30, dsPIC33 family and serial EEPROM 11LCXX, 24LCXX, 25LCXX, 93LCXX and KEELOQ HCSXX with PICkit2 Plus, PICkit 2 and MPLAB IDE.

www.piccircuit.com

It's also possible to build your own OBDIIC&C CAN device even cheaper, and I can supply the blank pcb for £50 which also covers the lifetime firmware licence.
The schematic is freely available and there are many many OBDIIC&C videos on my YT channel. A lot of people have done this for other IMA cars.

Ideally it might be good to have one or two UK and US volunteers so we can see if any regional programming differences show up.

So that's where we are. I'm working hard on the firmware and looking for two US owners who want to come on board.

Thanks for your support and interest. Peter UK

 

[PeterPerkins]

I still need two US volunteers..
Nobody want real time IMA data and the ability to tweak things? Oh well......

Anyway my UK guinea pigs have received their test devices today.

Quick guide to what is on the CRZ OBDIIC&C screen with this first alpha firmware.

There are no decimal points (except for the Amps) due to lack of screen space.

Line 1

L000 = 12V Under bonnet battery voltage. eg (138 = 13.8V). How low is yours......

U75 = Useable Battery Capacity (This is a percentage of the 5.75ah OEM new battery capacity available)
Higher = better. The maximum is 75% which equals 4.3125Ah. Most peoples will probably be much lower than 75%.

S24 = SOC State of charge. (This is the current SOC of your pack) 75% = 8 bars, 50% = 4/5 bars, 25% = 0 or 1 bar on the dash display.

A+249.0 = Amps of current flowing in and out of the battery. Range is +/- 250A depending on whether car is assisting or regening.
The current will be noticeably lower in cooler weather when the battery temperature is <20C.
The car will simply not allow full power in low temperatures.
Remember just because all the assist bars light up does not necessarily mean the car is giving loads of power.
You can work out the actual IMA power doing the simple calculation Watts = Volts x Amps. (So 100A x 100V = 10kw)
(I might add the instant Kw reading as a display parameter in the next firmware release.)

Line 2

A13 = Battery temperature sensor 1 in centigrade.

B13 = Battery temperature sensor 2 in centigrade.

C13 = Battery temperature sensor 3 in centigrade.

D00 = The DC-DC Converter temperature in centigrade.

I00 = The IPU (Intelligent Power Unit) temperature in centigrade. This unit does all the hard work and it will vary under assist/regen loads.

Line 3

V037 = IMA Battery total voltage as calculated by the BCM from the voltage tap data. It will range from 96 -130V or so. This voltage does not equal the SOC.

053 = Voltage Tap 1 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc. (The voltage taps 1-7 should all stay within 0.2/3 volts of each other for normal operation) Normal Range = 12-20V approx.

053 = Voltage Tap 2 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc.

053 = Voltage Tap 3 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc.

053 = Voltage Tap 4 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc.

Line 4

M000 = IPU Voltage. It will range from 96 - 130V or so and should closely match the IMA battery voltage.

053 = Voltage Tap 5 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc.

053 = Voltage Tap 6 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc.

053 = Voltage Tap 7 data. (053 = 5.3V) (142 = 14.2V) etc.

423 = A looping 0-999 counter to show the refresh rate and the fact the gauge is working.


Button.

Up = Set SOC to 75% (High) 8 Bars.

Down = Set SOC to 25% (Low) 1 Bar. (Note if running the car will start charging until a minimum SOC of 30% is reached)

Left = Set SOC to 50% (Medium) 4/5 Bars. (Note the car will charge when driving at any SOC lower than 60%)

Right = Not used yet.

 

[Spetrax]

Afternoon everyone,

I am Davey, one of the UK volunteers helping Peter with the project.
Short background info about me, I live in the UK originally Dutch but have been working over here for 4 years (Aviation before covid) Big honda enthusiast with a DC2, s2000 and CRX in the garage and in my spare time i do some work mainly on hondas including ecu chipping/soldering Mapping, engine and suspension builds etc, having aqcuired a CRZ as a daily a few months ago this project had my interest from the moment it started, hopefully we can gather a lot of information and help all the CRZ owners keeping their IMA system in good condition so we can enjoy these cars for as long as possible.

Anyway, lets get to the topic of discussion, I've recieved the Unit from Peter this morning and today being a nice dry sunny day it made the perfect occasion for a little blast in the CRZ after a quick food shop. Plugging it in for the first time revealed the Usuable capacity in my Pack is 27% at the moment, which is quite a bit less as i had expected so that will need some work soon. Driving round town normally the car charges to 75% very quickly and maintans the SOC between 65-75% most of the time im just going with the traffic, with the battery being cold (under 10 degrees centigrade) the output to the IMA was limited to only 60A. as soon as the battery had some heat in it i had a continuous max assist of 110A irrelevant of driving mode or state of charge. After dropping the shopping off at home i went for a quick blast at a quiet B road to see what the behaviour would be like driving the car in a more spirited way, i had the heating up to 22 degrees to make sure the batteries would get up to a nice temperature while driving. with continuous blasts trough 2nd and 3rd gear the car kept giving 110A of assist with the SOC anywhere between 45 to 65%, the battery temperatures went up to about 29 degrees. the voltage of the pack was at a stable 114-116 volts all the time.

I was actually quite suprised with the low usable capacity left in the pack in my car, when i went to buy a CRZ i've driven 5 and this one felt the most lively out of all of them. My car is a 2012 with 74000Miles on the odometer, So there might be some cars out with packs worse then mine. I think it might be a good thing to order some LED drivers and charge the pack as Peter has described in another post and see what the results will bring. The 12V battery voltage hovered anywhere inbetween 13.8 to 14.1 Volt which could see improvement aswell.

Peter if you would like me to aqcuire any specific data please let me know.

 

[smurfuk]

Hello all. I am the other UK tester.

My background is in control and instrumentation engineering in the power industry, and this is right up my street, so I'm looking forward to helping it evolve.

I haven't had much chance today to give it a good test, but I got a few miles under my belt to be able to see a few bits of interest.

My car is a 2011 with about 50000 miles on it. Usable battery is at 35% which wasn't entirely a surprise but more would have been nice. I'll have to get geared up for a grid charge to see if it improves the battery. By the time we are out of this lockdown hopefully I can have the battery in a better state. A long journey on the M62 over the Pennines I have made a few times in the past should be a good comparison for me, as there are a couple of spots where I consistently empty the battery on the long uphill climbs, and a bit more battery would make a big difference.

The 12V battery was at 11.6V before starting the engine. Not great, and you can see why they end up as the weak link in the cars reliability. With the engine on it was straight up to 13.9V, but I had lights and the rear demister on so the DC-DC converter will have been working hard to compensate.

 

[NY-Z]

This is tempting, I do have a Chinesium HDS but as you said it's not practical to keep connected with all the hardware plus a laptop. However these days it's a crapshoot getting something delivered here from across town never mind across the pond. Does look cool though-

 

[PeterPerkins]

Interesting data from my testers. Thanks. If my maths is right then we have......

The maximum available new pack useable capacity is 75% of the OEM cell nominal 5.75Ah specification. That equals 4.3125Ah.

1) Has 74,000 miles and 27% remaining useable capacity of the 5.75Ah OEM new cell spec. That's 1.5525Ah (His useable capacity is down about 64% from new)

2) Has 50,000 miles and 37% remaining useable capacity of the 5.75Ah OEM new cell spec. That's 2.1275Ah (His useable capacity is down about 50% from new)

Hopefully simple grid charging and a reset will rebalance and recover some of that lost capacity.
If it doesn't then you try cycling the pack a couple of times and keep your fingers crossed.

Note the effect of temperature as has been discussed and the Nimh pack only allowing 60A assist when cold, but 110A when warmed up. (Basically double)
That's why I faked the temperature sensors in my Lithium pack so it allows full power at all times.

 

[PeterPerkins]

Gents. I'm interested in how many bars you see on the assist and regen gauge and what current (amps) that equates to on my device.

Does they always correlate or is there scaling going on. (I suspect there is.. )

i.e. When you have the maximum number of bars of assist/regen does that always equal a set amount of current or does it vary?

 

[Spetrax]

I’ll take the gopro out tomorrow and see if i can make a video with the assist/regen bars and the obd2C&C on top of the cluster so its easier to analyze than me driving and watching all the parameters at the same time👍

 

[PeterPerkins]

Good idea and only go out if you have to etc.
This can wait until you have an essential journey. Thanks

 

[smurfuk]

I can tell you that I have noticed on very cold mornings that it sometimes restricts the assist, and it shows as restricted on the dash. i.e. I see only approx 75% assist on the bars when normally I would have full. The car is noticeably slower for my throttle position which is what made me look at the dash and notice I didn't have full assist the first time it happened. It doesn't happen for long though, a couple assist/regens over a short distance and it is back to full assist. It doesn't seem to do it every time, but some mornings I am straight off the drive and gone, and some mornings I might be idling for a minute or so waiting to get off the drive, so it may be that the bit of extra time allows a little bit of heat to get into the batteries. With a bit of luck I will now be able see some numbers to get an idea of what is actually going on.

 

[PeterPerkins]

A few questions for my testers.

At what battery temperature does the car start to allow higher current.
Is there a scale that you can detect. Say 50A at 10C, 60A at 11C etc

Does the useable capacity change at any time?

For the next version I will get rid of the annoying flashing green led!

 

[PeterPerkins]

At the moment I'm optimising the CRZ OBDIIC&C software to try and gather more information in one pass.

As we know from the attached pdf HDS IMA list a lot of information is available from the IMA system.

The PCM in the Nimh CRZ is like two computer modules combined into one physical unit.
In the original G1 Insight the modules were physically separate with a serial communication bus between them.
Honda combined them into one unit from the 2003-2005 HCH1 Civic onwards.

So inside our CRZ PCM magic silver box we have...

1) The MCM (Motor Control Module) part which deals with driving the IMA motor.

2) The BCM (Battery Control Module) part which deals with the IMA Battery.

These have separate CAN ID's on the FCAN bus and can be communicated with completely independently.

They each have a large live data area which can be read with appropriate commands and transferred to the OBDIIC&C.

I've now worked out the commands to transfer the complete memory chunks across.
It's remarkably fast and each section (BCM or MCM) takes about 15ms to read on my bench setup.
Of course in the car it will take a bit longer as lots of other modules are also chatting on the FCAN bus.
Even it takes ten times longer that's still only 150ms per module.

Once we have the data table in the OBDIIC&C we then have to examine it, find our chosen information, and parse it as required before displaying it.
That's a whole project in itself.

Anyway the point is we can read all the data very quickly with much neater code instead of just repeatedly going and getting small chunks of it.
So now I want to get the alpha firmware working as is with the new memory access code then start adding more parameters.

 

[smurfuk]

I have a bit of data for you. All gathered via my Mark I eyeball so it won't be perfect.

What I have noticed is that the assist gauge on the dash is not linear in respect of assist current flowing. 2 bars on the assist gauge is about 30 amps. Around 75-80% on the assist gauge is 50 amps. Full assist was 110-115 amps. This was consistent and I saw no different scaling linked to battery temps.

Ambient temp reported on dash as 2 Deg C, and batteries showing the same, as I fired up the engine. Managed to drive straight off. Accelerating in low gears (1st &2nd I think) the assist was really held back to only about a quarter on the assist gauge. Unfortunately the road layout ,darkness, and a 30 zone, all meant I couldn't just hold the gear and continue accelerating further whilst looking across at the OBDIIC&C. First full throttle in a higher gear the assist was limited to about 50 amps and showed accordingly on the dash (about 75%). After that, when applying full throttle, it gave full assist for a second or so before steadily pulling it back to 50 amps.

Once the batteries were above 10 Deg C I did a couple of full throttle high gear accelerations from about 40-45mph. It was the same as above - full assist initially and then it pulled it back.

The first I noticed that full assist was being given and sustained all the batteries were at or above 20 Deg C. I think I tried when one of the batteries was still just below 20 Deg C and it restricted assist, so, if I was a betting man, I'd say all batteries above 20 Deg C is a fixed parameter for the amount of assist given/available. That was as far as I got as my 12 mile round trip came to an end.

Usable battery never changed from 35%.

 

[Spetrax]

So a bit more info from my side, the gopro didnt set up very well as i couldnt get it to focus on both displays so need to come with a better solution. Ive been doing a few drives tonight (uber eats drops) so i had a chance to run the car under a few different conditions, it seems that battery temps lower than 10 degrees limit the assist to 60amps and also give roughly 2/3rd of the assist bars. As soon as the temps go over 10 degrees it will assist up to the usual 110amps. What i do notice though is the regen bars are completely random, somstimes 30a regen shows as 2 bars and sometimes the full scale is lighting up. Doing steady 30mph sometimes shows no bars but still indicating a 10amp charge and a few minutes later it will show 1 bar of regen charging at 5amps. It is a chilly -2c here at the moment and during hard accelaration the battery drops to about 83 volts with the battery temps being around 18-20 degrees and the cabin temp set at 22. The useable capacity hasnt moved at all, the car maintains a SOC between 58 and 70 all the time which makes sense i guess as there is not a lot of usable capacity indicated in the pack. The 12volt battery voltage is still anywhere between 13.7 to 14.1 volt

 

[PeterPerkins]

Interesting the battery drops to ~83 volts under assist.
That's around where we expected and about 1V per cell under load.

 

[PeterPerkins]

The OBDIIC&C code is coming on well and I hope to have some cool new firmware for my testers by Monday at the latest.

I've managed to pick up an ECM as well with harness connectors so can improve my desk test setup by adding the ECM.

The PCM and ECM connect together using the separate IMACAN and FCAN busses.

I can monitor comms very easily on the bench and work on my IMA control man in the middle device as well as the OBDIIC&C display.

 

[Spetrax]

Amazing work Peter, looking forward to test this soon! as for a tiny bit more data, during normal driving the batteries tend to settle at around 28-30 degrees with the heating on 20 degrees, the DC-DC is at a continious toasty 62-63 degrees. I've managed to fully charge the battery to 74% SOC and under full load the battery voltage only drops to 100V then. when the SOC drops below 65% they drop to the usual 83-84 volts. I've also ordered all the neccesary stuff to grid charge the pack so looking forward to do that as soon as i got everything in

 

[PeterPerkins]

Temperature really makes a difference to Nimh Battery performance.

If your 12V battery is weak the DC-DC will have to work harder and it will load the IMA system impacting economy.

I suggest my testers have a go at flashing the faster firmware I posted earlier into the gauge to get familiar with the PICKIT PIC updating process.

I now have live data logging directly into Excel running on my laptop.
It uses a Picaxe Axe-027 serial to USB lead and free old PLX-DAQ software available online.

The OBDIIC&C can now dump data into Excel at 128,000 baud which barely effects the refresh speed.

 

[Spetrax]

i've just flashed mine and it's working, Green led is blinking like a 90's Disco!

 

[PeterPerkins]

Well done. It should be much faster.

I have turned the flashing led off in the next version except when the Excel data logging output is enabled.

Data logging only takes place on the main display screen and is toggled on/off by pushing the button up.