Unofficial PHEV wifi app

[wazzad]

Howdy all,

Finally decided to join the forums from a lurker as I had something of value that I could input to the conversation.

I have been messing around with the PHEV remote app, so far have managed to reverse engineer it to get some of the features working from my Samsung Gear S2 smart watch! (already got remote charge status and remote cooling/heating without timer working, depending on licensing etc of the app I may release this to the app store soonish)

It looks like there are a ton of hidden commands and options within the app itself that I am working on decompiling and testing at the moment, it also appears that there may be quite alot that can be controlled through the wifi bus that is not documented within the app itself.

My main question is, what functions would the people who own PHEV's actually want on an unofficial app? so far I have come up with the following;

1) Read MMCS information on economy, driving history etc
2) Fine tune controls for auto heating/cooling, temp set, specified times
3) Profiles (preset settings applied when selecting a profile)

Any other awesome ideas people can think of?


EDIT: just want to make it clear that I have no intention of monetizing an unofficial app, I am a massive fan of Open source and do this as a hobby only.

 

[t3lmo]

Nice to know someone is reversing that
Count me in for a beta-tester!

I just would love to see the range value (km and %) while on charge.

Good luck and keep us posted on the project.

 

[wazzad]

Nice to know someone is reversing that
Count me in for a beta-tester!

I just would love to see the range value (km and %) while on charge.

Good luck and keep us posted on the project.

Great idea, this should be fairly trivial to guestimate based on charge state or even better pull from the MMCS itself thanks for the suggestion.

I am working on android and tizen (gear s2 SmartWatch) apps for now, hopefully have something to share around in the coming month or two.

 

[Carnut]

I'm with T31mo. but MILES not Km & %
thanks. well done!

 

[cwcltd]

How about switching the seat and steering wheel heaters on when conditioning.

 

[Hypermiler]

Sounds good. Being able to set multiple heating times in a day of less clunky blocks of time would be great - life doesn't always fit into 10 min slots!
Cheers
H

 

[gwatpe]

How about switching the seat and steering wheel heaters on when conditioning.

In my PHEV, the seat haters are manual switch controlled, so not much chance of these being controlled from an app.

 

[wazzad]

How about switching the seat and steering wheel heaters on when conditioning.

In my PHEV, the seat haters are manual switch controlled, so not much chance of these being controlled from an app.

Anything that interfaces with the MMCS is fair game, next few weeks I will be trying to get a firmware copy of the MMCS and break it apart to see exactly what is available for control by Wifi CAN -> MMCS -> ECU route.

Saying that it is obvious that there is alot more control provided by the MMCS then what is documented through the wifi app and/or the MMCS settings themselves so I am hoping to open up some new functionality. would be great to have stuff like this, windows, sunroof etc automated but as gwtape mentioned if its a manual switch and not controlled by the ECU at all there is no chance to interface with it at all (unless we step into some hardware hacking). . . . . . .

I will try and grab some of the hidden features of the current official wifi app itself up here over the coming week

 

[Bladevane]

I would love to be able to input my own POI list to MMCS and not just the EV Charging Points which seem to be never where I am.

 

[g0rsq]

Being able to set multiple heating times in a day

Can I second that?

Nice to have a preheated car when i finish work, as well as the mornings.

Biggest disappointment with the app.


Peter

 

[gwatpe]

Hi wazzad,

I have found that the OBD interface is a bit problematic, so any other method of data access would be great.

The MMCS has fuel consumption, electrical power energy data on various screens. A numerical value for petrol consumption as well as an average kWh/100km and L/100km on the same page would be very useful.

 

[user 221]

The MMCS has fuel consumption, electrical power energy data on various screens. A numerical value for petrol consumption as well as an average kWh/100km and L/100km on the same page would be very useful.

Yes, like a more advanced trip computer showing all kinds of data.
Like, Power consumption and real fuel consumption separated and combined. Total cost of trip ( electricity + fuel ). Time of trip. Distance of trip, etc. I have seen several cars with more fun/useful data than what I can se on the MMCS in my Outlander PHEV.
Would be great to bring that to the PHEV.

please

 

[Claymore]

This sounds excellent. Apart from the suggestions so far it'll be great if the thing can actually be made to register with the car unlike the buggy Mitsu version.

Is it likely to be possible to be able to register more than two devices?

JimB

 

[wazzad]

This sounds excellent. Apart from the suggestions so far it'll be great if the thing can actually be made to register with the car unlike the buggy Mitsu version.

Is it likely to be possible to be able to register more than two devices?

JimB

Connections within the mitsu app are handled quite badly IMO, I will be a user of this app myself so I will do my best to make it more usable than the official version. In regards to registering more than two devices, I suspect this is a limitation with the wifi controller itself however is not hard set (could be changed to allow more) however this will not be something I suspect I can change with the app itself as would likely require a flash of the wifi controller.

Saying that every suggestion here will be tested and will list up all of them with reasons as to why it will / wont make first release, so far everything mentioned I will try my hardest to implement.

Keep the suggestions rolling all!



On another more scary note, playing with this has given me the chance to work out how insecure these devices potentially are to malicious hackers. without going into too much detail as I will not disclose specifics till I can give Mitsubishi a chance to patch/address first but taking over your app and related functions is actually rather trivial, took me exactly 90 seconds to take over the car from an unregistered device! . . . . . . . kind of scary considering the more and more undocumented controls I am finding.

 

[gwatpe]

I suspect that any existing PHEV owner will be stuck with whatever hardware is in their car. MMC would be reluctant to replace any ECU, and it may not be possible to add say a firewall functionality to an existing ECU.

 

[ScottyP]

How about a car location function

That way I can keep an eye on when it is on the move when I am away

 

[wazzad]

How about a car location function

That way I can keep an eye on when it is on the move when I am away

Awesome Idea however this will require a mobile data connection, I have started playing around with RDS (Radio Data Streaming) but remote access without using the wifi is something I would not really be keen on suggesting to anyone considering how closely the wifi ECU appears to be linked with the rest of the vehicle control systems.

 

[dumfadog]

You've gone awfully quiet on this wazzad. Please tell me that's because you are heavily coding right now.
Otherwise I am going to have to assume that someone got to you and put a stop to this awesome sounding work you are doing.

Bring it on. Let's have some fun with our data exposition and car control !!

 

[vtechtuning]

Brilliant idea!
I am so unhappy with official app, it is so unstable and slow with sending commands to the car.
Maybe it is possible to set heating power to be lower than max while remote heating? Because now it is using more power than 2kW from factory charger and discharge battery a bit.

 

[SolarBoy]

On another more scary note, playing with this has given me the chance to work out how insecure these devices potentially are to malicious hackers. without going into too much detail as I will not disclose specifics till I can give Mitsubishi a chance to patch/address first but taking over your app and related functions is actually rather trivial, took me exactly 90 seconds to take over the car from an unregistered device! . . . . . . . kind of scary considering the more and more undocumented controls I am finding.

I hope Mitsubishi pay you a vulnerability bounty :shock:

Plus, there's an opportunity here for you to replace their awful app with yours ... should be a nice ongoing money spinner