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Dr. Prius on my Gen 3 Prius

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by iskoos, Sep 8, 2019.

  1. iskoos

    iskoos Active Member

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    Just got my OBDII Bluetooth device (I went with Panlong mini) and started using it. It seems it connects to the app (I only have the free version so far) and battery monitor is working. A lot of good parameters being displayed. This app will be very useful down the road.

    I have one issue that I couldn't figure out though: Why do the battery bars move up and down so much???
    I understand that the batteries are constantly being charged and discharged but bars are moving up and down as if I am looking at a stereo equalizer appo_O not a Dr. Prius app.

    Any input?
     
  2. Grit

    Grit Senior Member

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    Each bar represents the battery pack pair charge voltage with actual voltage on the bottom. It moves up and down in correlation to the voltage. It’s easier to see which pair(s) are significantly lower than the other pack with bars than 14 numbers that are spread apart on a line.

    A stereo equalizer doesn’t have constant moving bars. A real time frequency analyzer has the moving bars.
     
  3. iskoos

    iskoos Active Member

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    Thanks Grit for the response. Absolutely visual inspection of bars is much better than checking bunch of numbers. The bars though move up/down so much that it is almost impossible to tell which ones really low. I tried to find a video of it to compare but all videos are about hybrid battery test (which I currently don't have).

    I will play with the app more to see if I can get an idea of which pair is lower than the others but I doubt I will be able to succeed. I will try to get a short video clip and post it here later on.

    P.S My Stereo Equalizer example was just a funny analogy:). Perhaps yours is a better one...
     
  4. Grit

    Grit Senior Member

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    I run 30 band equalizers and real time frequency analyzers on a regular basis to balance audio environments so it’s the real deal, no analogy :)
     
  5. iskoos

    iskoos Active Member

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    Well, I am not getting much answer to this. Seems this is pretty much the behavior for everyone.

    I used the app again this morning. I realized one thing which improved the issue. I rotated the phone to landscape orientation which made the screen wider and thus battery voltage bars got shorter.:) This reduced the speed of the bars since they do not travel up/down as much anymore. But they still move lot more than I would think they should. Let me put it this way, I cannot read any voltage of any block because they none stay at the same height for more than a second.

    May I ask something else? What is the yellow battery bar mean?
    I first thought they turn yellow when they get discharged but it is not it.
     
  6. PriusV17

    PriusV17 Active Member

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    You should be able to get a more stable reading in 12v mode. Press the Power button twice to enter 12v mode. Don't press the brake. But don't stay in this mode too long since it can drain the 12v battery. Nothing will charge or discharge from the hv pack in 12v mode.
     
  7. iskoos

    iskoos Active Member

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    Thanks for this tip. I will try that. I knew about this mode but didn't think about it.
    Do you have any idea of the yellow battery bars? They turn from green to yellow time to time. I have seen this during a discharge most of the time but I cannot say for sure because it doesn't happen all the time.
     
  8. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Maybe I missed something, but to the best of my recollection I had to unlock the app, buy the 1~3 vehicle license, before it would start reading? It was something like $15 (CDN), all in. Maybe you're looking at demo mode??
     
  9. iskoos

    iskoos Active Member

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    Hi Mendel,

    The free version of the app provides real-time battery monitoring. You get the voltages of the 14 pairs (each consists of 2x 6-cell NiMH packs connected in series) and some other important parameters like charge/discharge rate, pack temperature, etc.
    It doesn't do ant of the battery tests.

    When you were using yours, did you realize the bars moving up/down really fast and especially did you realize the green battery bars were changing to yellow color time to time?

    I will buy this app eventually, I just wanted to make sure the OBDII device I bought is working properly first. The voltage values changing at this rate does absolutely not look normal to me.
    If I can figure out how to do a screen recording on my device, I will post a quick video here.
     
  10. Grit

    Grit Senior Member

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    The bars changing colors corresponds to the amperage is charge & discharge rate, SOC and temperature. When SOC is near 70%, you get the red bars entirely.

    The real fast bars going up and down are real time analysis therefore it updates every second, thus called real time. The only thing to worry is voltage difference, all cells should no farther than .3volts from each other when HV battery is working condition. Their websites explains all this, I know because they post it on there.
     
  11. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    The bars were moving, but IIRC were staying green. I wonder would they go yellow if the difference exceeded some threshold?? Ok, @Grit has more info.

    Yeah I was think about that too; as far as I know (on lowly iPhone 5 anyway) can only do a still capture. FWIW:

    IMG_1122.PNG
     
    #11 Mendel Leisk, Sep 14, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2019
  12. iskoos

    iskoos Active Member

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    Thanks for the replies.

    Dr. Prius website really doesn't contain much information (unless I am looking at the wrong website) other than a few posted videos and most of those about battery test. None is about the real time voltage monitoring. I checked the FAQ section and found one question that is referring to voltage bar colors. It was only talking about the Orange and Red though, no mention of the yellow color. I will do more research on this.

    After thinking about the fast voltage bar movement, I have come up with only one possible scenario: The bars must indicate the tenth or possibly the hundredth digit of the voltage of each pair of modules (what they call block). Only then I can understand the fast movement.

    I will try wat PriusV17 suggested above to see if I can get a more steady bar graph.