LCD Screen - What do you want to see?

Perhaps I'm not exactly accepting the mission, but I do have a suggestion. Regardless of what you choose to make available in the display, if you have more than 3 or 4 options, please consider allowing a two-way scan. I have a Camry Hybrid which will allow me 9 different options to be displayed on one spot of the dash. If I go from the first to the second, I must then cycle through all of the other options to get back to the first. A reverse option would really be nice.

Current pack voltage, current battery amps, Ah used / remaining, kWh used / remaining (those must be learnt initially), voltage of the cell with mimimum voltage (a BMS thing, in order to keep the rider informed of a possible cell demise should he/she overdo it), one trip meter counting forward, one counting down depending on some of the aforementioned values (must be highly damped though so as to not make the rider overly nervous by constantly decreasing and increasing ranges, battery temp, (somehwere from the inner core of the pack), controller temp., motor temp.
Just to name a few :-)

. . . (depends on how many buttons the hardware folks will "give" me!)

May I suggest a small, three position, rocker switch?

Here's my $.02 on the matter. I'd like to address the input method first, as that influences what's displayed.

For me, a single momentary switch to control the display is optimal. I have an older Cycle Analyst 2.0 on my Z-20a, and a quick bump of a single button cycles to the next display mode while riding. Holding in the button when the unit is already on resets all the counters, much like a trip odometer. When I'm stopped and need to configure it (making settings for wheel circumference so that it can calculate speed correctly, etc.), you hold in the button while powering it on, then navigate all the configuration menus with that same button. Configuration would be simpler with a second button or alternate input method, but while I'm driving I want the input method as simple as possible. Since the display on the CMC scooters will already be customized for them, there may not even be a need for a setup menu.

As for the display, while riding it should be able to alternate between speed, instantaneous current draw, pack voltage, Ah/mile (or Kwh/mile), and Ah remaining; possibly some of these could be combined to be on the display simultaneously, but I'd rather make the display easy to see at a glance while at speed. When I'm stopped, that's when I would want to see thing like min/max cell voltage, min/max pack voltage, peak current draw, peak regen, avg./peak speed, avg./peak Ah/mi (and motor temperature min/avg/max if that's available). Perhaps instead of holding in the button to reset it as on the Cycle analyst (since it's an add-on and doesn't have a method of determining when the battery pack is recharged, unlike the BCU), holding the button could put the display into an extended display mode where you can see all these min/avg/max stats.

Obviously, if something occurred like a cell over/under voltage or motor overheating condition were to happen, I'd want that to over-ride what I have set to display, and give me a visible alert of what the problem is.

One final note, I prefer ratings in Ah rather than Kwh; I find it easier to think about a 60Ah pack than a 5.76Kwh (nominal) pack when I'm riding.

Let's see... Probably nothing novel here:

On thing I'd like to see is a cell voltage check - say, 24 or 30 cells using 4-6 calibrated bars or three digit characters at a time. But I understand that this would be difficult to implement as the BCU does not currently have a means of doing this.

A couple trip odometers - which won't have the big error that the current mechanical odometer has. Having these odometers reading differently from the mechanical odometer is not very elegant - but I guess the mechanical odometer is still needed for title transfer purposes.

Motor and controller temperatures

Pack current

Once calibrated, the "fuel gauge" works so well that a SOC indication seems kind of redundant, but you might as well include it too.

Miles-left-on-charge - based on, say, a rolling average the AH per mile over last 5 or 10 miles (user selectable?)

Make any digital indications sufficiently large - remember your buyers who are over 50 and don't wear their reading glasses when riding.

I agree with what was stated above, if having more that 3-4 options, back and forward buttons to navigate the menu would be nice. And a reset functions if both buttons are pressed simultaneously.

First of all i would like to see the odometer and trip meter to reside where the speedometer is, not at this display (to lessen the number of things there and make the layout more logical).

Of course the display must be able to use both miles and km's.

At such a display i would like to be able to see:
Screen 1: Levels of Voltage and Amps, maybe both as a bar graph and numbers if it can be fitted.
Screen 2: W/km or Ah/km not sure what is best, but current "spending"
Screen 3: Km's (miles) to go before battery is out at current "spending" (and it is important that this is reasonalbe accurate since if you cant trust it it is unusable and is better left out)
Screen 4: Temperature of the batteries and motor, and possibly some other indicator, for instance from the BMS, which will indicate the state of the batteries (maybe just an indicator if the balance is good or not, least cell voltage or something).
Screen 5: Road temperature, Clock

At all times "juice left", as a small bar or similar - I know this is difficult and would need some smart algorithm, but to see how much you have left would be really nice (like in a normal gasoline powered vehicle).

/K

Looking good and most certainly looking forward to the new LCD.

My quick thoughts:

- Keep it simple. It is very easy to geek out on engineering data. Great for enthusiasts, not so great for mass market. Keep it as simple as possible and that might mean only a single button, even if it is painful.

- You might debate different behaviors when sitting still versus when you are riding. In the sitting still state, you can go full geek out in terms of aggregate statistics. In the riding state (kickstand / center stand up), perhaps dramatically cut down what the buttons do.

- From an HCI perspective, I would mock up a whole set of paper prototypes of what you want before you go about coding it. Might be good to run some of those designs by some of the test pilot group. Just mock something up on PowerPoint or Paint, that is more than good enough.

- For the advanced GUI, you might be better off doing that via serial and some sort of a laptop-based program. That sort of stuff gets awful difficult to cram into a small GUI.

- In the charging state, it might be good to briefly alternate between aggregate statistics and current charging statistics briefly. Similarly, when you turn off the key, it does a brief exit sequence that shows summaries of your overall trip / bike performance since the last turn-on of the key.

Sounds like a great display, could you please add si-units and sell it as an aftemarket add on as well? :)
I like the idea with 3 buttons, easier than just one.
Stand down or up as a mode changer is not as appealing, imlike to be able to toggle data at standstill even without kickstand down, it would feel like an unnecessary limitation to me if i had tomuse the kickstand as a fourth button.

Start sequnce: ok, as long as it is quick ans i will never have to wait for it longer than 1-3 s(unless required by bootup).
Exit seq: if it is toomslowmit will be tedious, to fastband i wouldnt be able to see what id like. I'd skip that. If i want stats i want to select it, not have to shut off and hope to catch it.

Charger displaynsounds good, it could alternate between two,three screens but not more, maybe even take user input, ie toggle with buttons as well and then maybe linger longer on the selection before resuming auto-toggle.

/k

Similarly, when you turn off the key, it does a brief exit sequence that shows summaries of your overall trip / bike performance since the last turn-on of the key.

Alternating between the pages is a good idea. I don't think I want to do the brief exit sequence and I want to shorten up the start-up sequence - I think I want immediate response to key-on/key-off.

But what does everyone else think?

Keep the ideas coming.

I like the idea of an exit display. My Camry Hybrid give me a 3 second display of what my MPG was since I last turned on the ignition. This is one of the 9 displays I could cycle to but I usually ignore it because I'll see it at the end of the trip. Something in the EV equivalent sounds good to me.

BTW: In my example, the Camry is totally shut down except for the display staying visible for 3 seconds. No delay in leaving the vehicle.

Wow, that's outstanding. It's more than I would have thought could be put into a 1"x1" display and still be legible from a few feet away. I like having an indicator in the header of brake and side-stand switches, and having just one 'block' in the header for that I think will be fine (I'm hoping it will show RB, FB, BB or SS as appropriate). Not only will it give a quick indicator of which state of regenerative braking you're in, but also give a quick diagnosis for those 'why won't this @#$!% go!' times; this was common on the Z20's I believe, as the sidestand switch would fail and suddenly leave you stranded. I've no doubt this will happen less with the CMC scooters, but it's still possible that a rider might fail to get the sidestand all the way up and not realize it.

One comment: I'd still like to see avg/max speed, avg/max current draw and average Wh/mi in the 'advanced info' (I'm assuming the efficiency display is an instantaneous measure of energy over a short sample time, not over the duration of the ride).

I agree. Good job John!

How exactly does the cell volts indication intended to work? Will the user switch the cells in sequence - or is this just an average?

Also, regarding the temperature indication, while there is no room for numerals, some kind of ticks at specific warning temperatures should be added to the bars to aid in readability.

And while the electronic odo is fine. DO keep the analog speedometer, although an electronic version would be an improvement over the old-style mechanical speedometer arrangement.

I would put the percent state of charge in the advanced functions to provide a check on the analog "fuel gauge", not permanently on the header. Think of the typical ergonomically tried-but-true instrumentation on a car - analog gauges for the important functions, a switchable panel for trip odos, fuel economy, range and other stuff.

The one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, but I really found nice to have in my LCD is a clock. Riding a motorcycle its kinda a pain to look at your watch to find out what time it is. Having a clock on the display is very handy. I installed a GPS chip just to pull down the time, a bit of overkill, but for my "one-off" gadgets, no big deal. Installing a serialized clock with a battery isn't to expensive. (Sparkfun.com has them :) GPS as a clock source is kinda cool though, takes about 1 second to pull time down from a satellite so my clock shows up almost immediately on my display and its always right (you do have to adjust for timezone/daylight savings).

I of course have much more room that 1x1 inch though... so clock may not fit 100% of the time, but as a selected option that could be nice.

I think having each portion of the display selectable would be handy. So header can rotate though "FB/RB/KS/..." and "Clock" and "small header items". Main display can rotate though Speed/SoC/Temps/Amps/Misc Graphs. Bottom rotates though Odo/Trip/Trip since Recharge. I have my trip meter reset once a recharge/balance has completed. That way I know how far I've gone since recharge without any manual resetting. So putting a trip meter that is manually resettable, but also tracking a "trip since recharge" would be nice as well.

Also when you display temps, it would be nice to show a green/yellow/red bar under so that we could see the zones that the bike will start limiting and shutdown...

The number isn't as important as how close I am to the limiting zone... 5 bars, one for each temp, and the 5th to show how close you are to each zone sort of thing might be nice.. or maybe make it an outline of each bar graph that has a solid part growing towards the yellow/red lines.. so you can see where you are in relation to "limiting on heat" ...

Hard to describe without a picture :)

Laters,
-d.

I mentioned clock and temperature as my #5.
Those two are really essential to me.
Maybe not all the time, but certainly as an option.

I dont know about north america, but in Europe time is vital for some speed zones, parking etc. And temperature is always nice to have, especially if you are a all-year rider when icing could be a problem... :)

/K

heart rate, blood pressure ( ;-) - hey, just teasing!

JUST TEASING? I was hoping for these.

Awesome, thanks for the visuals John. They look great.

Definitely understood on the post-turnoff and getting a clock running. Though the clock would be nice, guess I'll just figure out a way to strap on the cell phone after all :)

Were you planning on visually discriminating then between regen FB / RB and actual bike braking? One of the things I loved on my Prius was the ability to discern when one was freewheeling versus using the electric motor versus generating excess power. For the hyper-miling fun, that was essential. I get a reasonable feel from the bike but some way to tell when the brake is being officially engaged versus regen would be great. Perhaps a green bar to the side of the RB / FB icon that goes up at 33, 66, and full increments to denote the level of regen?

Were you planning on visually discriminating then between regen FB / RB and actual bike braking? One of the things I loved on my Prius was the ability to discern when one was freewheeling versus using the electric motor versus generating excess power. For the hyper-miling fun, that was essential. I get a reasonable feel from the bike but some way to tell when the brake is being officially engaged versus regen would be great. Perhaps a green bar to the side of the RB / FB icon that goes up at 33, 66, and full increments to denote the level of regen?

There are three different brake icons: F (front), R (rear) & F+R (both). If those lights are lit it means regen is on. Also, on the current draw screen you will see the amps screen title will change from "AMP DRAW" to "REGEN :-)" and the number will turn from either blue or red to green. (well, maybe not a smiley face - but who knows?)

Software is coming along quite nicely. I should have a prototype on the bike by next week. Then we'll do (at least) one more hardware respin. Then we need to figure out how to roll it out to y'all.

If it has a Ah counter like the Cycle Analyst I'll be happy to get rid of the cycle analyst all together. As long as I can program in my battery size say, 50Ah and the fuel gauge goes down from there. Plus when I plug in to charge, the fuel gauge slowly goes back up.

John,

To answer your question on Oct 26; yes, I'd just go back to the four RB/FB/SS/LO indicators. The analog "fuel gauge" under the V .30 software is working so consistently well (nice linear indication) that I don't see the point of a permanent SOC indication.

Paul

John, any chance of pulling error codes out of the Kelly controller and showing them too? I think you'd need to implement a CAN-bus interpreter in your BCU, but after that it would seem pretty simple. Showing the controller internal temp would also be good, in addition to the temps you monitor directly.